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| Washing and Sun drying |
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| Svetco... step 2 |
Two weeks in country and one week under my belt living with my host family. Living in someone’s home was one of my few concerns and it has turned out better than expected. This is a family of genuinely good, kind people and they have treated me extremely well. When I am in my room, finishing up the days language work or writing this, they are still busy doing their daily work. It could be with the animals, preparing food, etc. but it is surely work of some sort.
We are still doing most of our communicating with gestures and poor attempts at each other’s language, but we are getting by and getting better every day. Language classes are something to look forward to each morning as it is a chance to speak English with my fellow trainees and have a laugh or two about our experiences living this very different lifestyle. We do however work hard for those four hours each day and at noon we are usually spent. Three of the five afternoons this week were busy with training and /or informational sessions. Add in the “homework” and I can use a day off! On Saturday I hope to make the trip into Kumanovo to buy a memory card for my camera. There were some great photo opportunities this week and I do need a few other things I have been adding to a list.
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| Nadica (red hair) peeling with sister |
This past Tuesday I got to participate in a traditional food preparation event…making Ivar. The making of Ivar, referred to jokingly by my language instructor as Macedonian Caviar, is a daylong work process and somewhat of a social event involving friends and family. It begins after the peppers and eggplants are harvested and involves several steps. Our group consisted of Svetco and Nadica, Nadica’s two sisters, one neighbor and me. The women go about the tasks effortlessly and the small talk is constant. One will be washing the large sacks of red peppers and one placing them on the surface of the low round stove. there they remain until the skin begins to blacken on all sides. From here they are put into big plastic buckets and then the hard part begins. Each pepper is peeled of the blackened parts of skin and then split by hand to remove all seeds, and there are plenty of them and the stems. These peeled, flat red peppers are now tossed into another container. The buckets of water used for rinsing the seeds and skins are periodically replenished by one of the women and another breaks small branches to feed the fire in the stove. During this process they seem to sense when it is time to change tasks. Without a word apparently knowing through experience when it is time for a rest or change by one or the other. My first experience was peeling and removing seeds for an hour or so and I then moved to a job which allowed for sitting at a much more comfortable height than the small stool I had been using. The new task was to run this very large pan of peppers through the hand grinder to be ground to a consistency resembling relish. After an hour and a half or so working on the continually replenished supply of peppers, and the smaller amount of eggplant, I was told “pauso”…take a break! From then on, maybe with the group sensing the change in the pace of the grinder arm turning, I then only occasionally relieved Svetco at his job, stirring the large pan as the ivar cooked down. With five hours behind me, I did go into the house at 6 PM or so , but they continued the process until well after 8PM. Two large pans like the one in the photo were then put up in jars..I don’t know how many... but I think we will have plenty of ivar while I am a guest for the next nine weeks.
This past Tuesday I got to participate in a traditional food preparation event…making Ivar. The making of Ivar, referred to jokingly by my language instructor as Macedonian Caviar, is a daylong work process and somewhat of a social event involving friends and family. It begins after the peppers and eggplants are harvested and involves several steps. Our group consisted of Svetco and Nadica, Nadica’s two sisters, one neighbor and me. The women go about the tasks effortlessly and the small talk is constant. One will be washing the large sacks of red peppers and one placing them on the surface of the low round stove. there they remain until the skin begins to blacken on all sides. From here they are put into big plastic buckets and then the hard part begins. Each pepper is peeled of the blackened parts of skin and then split by hand to remove all seeds, and there are plenty of them and the stems. These peeled, flat red peppers are now tossed into another container. The buckets of water used for rinsing the seeds and skins are periodically replenished by one of the women and another breaks small branches to feed the fire in the stove. During this process they seem to sense when it is time to change tasks. Without a word apparently knowing through experience when it is time for a rest or change by one or the other. My first experience was peeling and removing seeds for an hour or so and I then moved to a job which allowed for sitting at a much more comfortable height than the small stool I had been using. The new task was to run this very large pan of peppers through the hand grinder to be ground to a consistency resembling relish. After an hour and a half or so working on the continually replenished supply of peppers, and the smaller amount of eggplant, I was told “pauso”…take a break! From then on, maybe with the group sensing the change in the pace of the grinder arm turning, I then only occasionally relieved Svetco at his job, stirring the large pan as the ivar cooked down. With five hours behind me, I did go into the house at 6 PM or so , but they continued the process until well after 8PM. Two large pans like the one in the photo were then put up in jars..I don’t know how many... but I think we will have plenty of ivar while I am a guest for the next nine weeks.
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