Making Kwak

Kwak is the Grape Nuts of the Amazon. It is made from bitter cassava, a poisonous variety of the staple food on the Tapanahony River. With these seven easy steps, you too can make your own crunchy yellow goodness for an essential part of your complete breakfast.

Planting: Cassava is a soil-intensive crop and, given thousands of years of dense growth, planting in the Amazon Rainforest requires extensive fertilization or slashing and burning a new farm every year for decent cassava. After planting, set your timer for a year, and the cassava is ready to harvest.

Peeling: Cassava is a root, and it should be pealed before soaking. With a large batch, this takes little effort and a lot of time. Group storytelling or singing can relieve the monotony.

Soaking: To soften the cassava, and partially to dilute the poison, the tubers should be soaked in water for a couple of days until slightly mushy. This can either be done by placing tubers in an old burlap rice sack and depositing them in your local river, or by placing directly in a gigantic basin.

Milling: While traditionally cassava is grated with flattened pieces of metal punched with holes and nailed to a board, this step is much easier with a cassava mill. Simply grate as with cheese, or drop tubers into the cassava mill and watch it work. Caution: cassava mills are like wood chippers; they grind to bits any object or bodily appendage placed inside.

Draining: Bitter cassava is poisonous, or at least the liquid inside it is. After milling the cassava into a fine mush, it should be packed into a mahtape, a long, thin basket that when stretched presses the water from the cassava. Cassava presses have been invented, of course, but they are just as much work, louder, and not nearly as pleasant to the eye as a good mahtape.

Roasting: After being drained, the cassava has been naturally compressed into large chunks. Place chunks onto a large metal surface heated by a wood fire, as shown in the picture, and stir with small light hoes until the kwak breaks down into tiny Grape Nut-sized pieces. With a large batch of cassava, roasting can last all day. When you get tired, convince young children that stirring kwak is fun and let them work for you.

Enjoy: A bowlful of yellow goodness can be enjoyed with water and bushmeat for lunch or with milk, as I often eat it, for a tasty breakfast. Another healthy option is to mix it with fresh podong (called assai in Brazil and the States). Kwak should never be eaten dry or it will absorb your body fluids and give you a nasty stomachache. In fact, Kwak is so absorbent that within a few years it will be used to keep everything from shoes to greeting cards waterproof.

For more pictures of the Kwak-making process, see my Suriname album at: http://picasaweb.google.com/michael.brannagan/Suriname

Halfway In

This week is my halfway point in Diitabiki. When I first arrived, about a year ago, I was struck with the beauty of this place, but I felt isolated. Though I’m normally independent, being surrounded by people of a new culture, none of whom I had known two weeks before, made me quite lonely. I had to learn how to cook, sometimes ending up with embarrassing failures as using salt instead of sugar in my pancakes. Dengue fever forced me to come to the city after only three weeks in Diitabiki, but this was a good thing, as I had lost about twenty-five pounds, and needed to eat and rest.

Because of various Peace Corps and Red Cross trainings and other important events in the city, I never spent more than three weeks at a time at home before January. People in Diitabiki started calling me “city man.” My major project in 2008 was a food security assessment for Red Cross and the subsequent distribution of planting materials, which provided many adventures all along the river.

My parents came to Suriname for Christmas, and we flew to Trinidad for about a week. At seven months, this set the record for the longest time I had not seen my family. That record has now been broken again, as I have not seen them since. Our week in Trinidad will probably be the only time I leave the Guiana’s until my close of service. From January until April, I stayed down country, grew my Peace Corps beard (every male Peace Corps volunteer should grow a beard once during their service), and probably set the Suriname record for the longest time at site. Fishing for piranha became a new hobby for me. I encountered some fascinating cultural experiences, including accompanying a special delegation to protest poor development practices. Within the last few months, my work with the radio station has occupied me with projects I both enjoy and consider beneficial. I have made new friendships and developed those I have had for some time.

While I have learned some fascinating things about myself, for the most part, I do not feel that I have changed as much as I expected before I came. It is impossible to tell, however, until I return to the States and have some frame of reference with friends from the past. I do know that I have become more flexible and resourceful, though I still may not enjoy disruptions from everyday life. I now consider air conditioning, refrigeration, and washing machines as luxuries. I have not felt hot tap water for over seven months, and since I bathe in the river, I have not had a shower for over two. I paddle my dugout canoe just about every day but have not driven a car in well over a year. With a Caribbean climate of constant heat and nearly 100% humidity, winter sounds like wonderful reprieve. When I arrived in Diitabiki I wrote that I wanted to grow to love the place as home, and yet be ready and excited to return to the States when the time came. At this point, I do love and consider Diitabiki my home, but I have a lot more to do and learn before I can leave.

Endurance

I am, officially, in love. She is beautiful and elegant with a few minor flaws that serve only to endear her to those who know her peculiarities. She seems to glide through every movement, and is deliberate in every course of action. I was introduced to the object of my affections yesterday in Godolo and stared in disbelief that she could be mine. I took her home with me to Diitabiki after only a few hours together.

Here is a picture:

Her name is Endurance, and this morning we had our first disagreement. She wanted to go in a direction that I was not comfortable with, and she would not respond to my gentle prodding. After going around in circles a few times we compromised and ended the discussion at the bank. I’m going to have to work on her. Then again, the fault could lie entirely with me.

Yes, I am now the proud owner of a dugout canoe, and it feels like getting my first bike all over again. In March I started exploring the possibility of getting a boat. A friend of mine asked the Godolo craftsman, Baya, to make the canoe. About a month afterward, expecting the boat to be well under way, I discovered that Baya had not begun and that the price was above my range, so I went to Godolo to negotiate. I was successful, but I later learned that in other villages, boats can be found for a little less. By this time it was May, and the boat maker said it would take a couple of weeks before he completed the canoe. True to Suriname timing, the Endurance was finished on schedule about a week ago.

It’s a very nice boat. It is not, however, simply a bow and a stern and crossbeams and planks; that’s what a dugout canoe needs. But what a dugout canoe is, what the Endurance is…is freedom. Now I can explore the river whenever I want, paddle my own way to the airfield, and visit friends on other islands.

I had originally wanted to paddle from Godolo to Diitabiki, a five-hour voyage downstream, but my protective neighbors adamantly opposed this. Where is the sense of adventure these days? Fortunately for them, another friend offered to take me to Godolo and bring the canoe back with us in his larger, motorized canoe. I am now finding that paddling a hollowed-out tree trunk upstream through rapids is a great workout, and while I did not travel solo through vast stretches of virgin rainforest for the Endurance’s maiden voyage, there are plenty of challenges to conquer in the Diitabiki archipelago.

Paddle-making Part II

After our expedition into the bush to cut a piece of the boogu-boogu tree, I had just begun to make my paddle. Fortunately for me, a master craftsman named Jimmy from the village of Chon-Chon came to visit my neighbors, the Ajambias, the same week. Jimmy helped me shape the paddle with a machete, first by filing the blade until a full half-inch shone razor-sharp, then by carving the general shape using only the machete blade to guide his measurements. Since the wood twisted, we carved it light and thin to straighten it as much as possible while maintaining the height of a Manningae or “manly man’s” paddle. Jimmy helped me carve in a couple hours what would have taken me days to chip away.

Next, the wood needed to be planed and sanded and shaped more finely with a small knife. Heni helped me plane the paddle, and Seephra and Elizabeth, Heni’s nine-year-old twin daughters, helped me sand it. As keeping with Ndjuka tradition, I rounded the head and shaped the base with a knife.

My paddle is now functional. My last step is to paint it, and for that I’m taking lessons. An elderly man named Da Medae is teaching me the artwork and symbolism of timbae, an ancient Ndjuka method of woodcarving and painting. I have taken several lessons from Medae already, but to go deeper will require time. I’ve taken pictures of about twenty-five paddles, and having studied them, it is rare that I find a layout, motif, or color sequence that I have not seen before. Medae assures me that some of the shapes and colors that I have seen repeatedly, are mere copies of what the artist has seen elsewhere or follows the sequence of what looks good (light blue, dark blue, or green background with a clearly distinguishable interior design of usually red and white). I feel my teacher is somewhat hesitant to teach me the significance of all the symbols at once, and I need to demonstrate my commitment to learn. After some time, I plan to paint my paddle with a combination of Ndjuka art and my own design. This will be the last stage.