Supper is on Us

Supper is on Us Day 47 – March 23

Hmmm – it was three days ago now. Must try harder.

We read “The Tyre” out loud as is our custom, late into the night.  We were worried but in the end Ranji narrowly escaped disaster, rediscovered love and finally found a use for the Tyre and a new job for himself.  So that’s alright then.  Happy ending. Good book.*

Woke up in the early morning light.  Around 6am it is still almost cool and a luxury to lie in near comfort.  Dragged myself up off the floor and downstairs to find Veasna.  We had agreed she would help me with shopping at the market. 

From a variety of stalls we put together the vegetables needed for a decent pasta sauce.  I was worried about the ripeness of the tomatoes but very gratified to find some good aubergines.  Taran and I have been talking a lot about cooking a meal but today we must walk the walk.  Supper for 20 – outlay $10 but we still have the extras to get. We have planned Garlic Bread, Salad, Pasta, Cheese.  We have high hopes that the cheese and pasta, completely unavailable locally, will buy our gastronomic success.  But they are still far away, in Phnom Penh which we are visiting today.

We take a motorbike (driver and 2 passengers) to the main road.  

We hail a bus and three hours later we are breakfasting with the ex-pats at the NGO hangout “The Shop on 240 Street”.  We are so cosmopolitan, if a little grubby and seated at elegantly distressed wooden tables, under colonial era ceiling fans we devour Lattes, Caesar Salad, Mango Lassis and Mozzarella Paninis.  Very nice to see John Patch, a friend from Oxford who is here on EU business and is taking the afternoon to show us around a little.

I genuinely try to cover the bill, which would feed the 20 four times over back in Kbal Damrei (KB)  but he insists.  He is being paid to be here.  What a pleasure.  It feels like being taken out by my dad. I have mentioned before and will again the new perspectives that living with people who dine for a dollar a day and count the cost of every 50c beer and tuk tuk ride casts on our own relationship with money.  It is complicated but at least on one level it makes spending anything more than loose change on ourselves feel over indulgent.  So it is nice for the EU (or rather its representatives) to pick up the tab.  Thank you John.

Our time in Phnom Penh is limited – the bus trip was, un-remarkably,  two and a half  hours longer than scheduled and we have some shopping to do before we go.  We ditch The National Museum in favour of a stroll past the impossibly ornate and gilded royal palace and repair to John’s hotel swimming pool.  This both so that we can have a swim and for John and Juan can meet.  Juan has had business today with an entangled bureaucracy and arrives rather upset over something to do with passports and land leases.  But he settles into a conversation that I was keen to promote.  John lived in PP for 6 years from the late 90s and has been back several times.  He consults at a policy level on development programs and his clients are frequently governments and the larger NGOs.  It seems to me that Juan is active at almost the exact opposite end of the development spectrum.  He works outside government, at an extreme local level to increase independent self-sustaining educational capacity.  John was impressed with Juan.  Juan interested in John’s work.  Maybe they will stay in touch or be of some use to each other. I missed the whole conversation (and didn’t even get a picture) as I was playing with Taran in the pool.  It turns out I can hold my breath for 1 minute and 40 seconds.  Who knew!  Taran (50 secs) was very impressed. I was pleased myself.

We got a PassApp (Cambodian Uber) air con SUV to agree to take us shopping from the hotel and on to KB as we were in a bit of a rush and at $40 who cares right.  It’s complicated.  We bought cheese and wine and oil from New Zealand and Oregano and Thyme from somewhere all in familiar packaging with familiar prices.

Back at school Veasna was waiting and quickly mobilized the family in the kitchen.  

Granny on chopping. It is hard and hot to cook over wood and I almost burnt the onions.  

I did burn my hand and hit my head so many times that I almost cried.  But Taran and Jo and Veasna persevered and 90 minutes later having used every pan in the kitchen I took great satisfaction in emptying a full bottle of red wine into a vast bubbling cauldron and setting the spaghetti to boil.

Garlic bread was fried, salad tossed and cheddar sliced (we got through 2kg).  Dinner is served to an excited throng. We babble through an enormous supper. We took care to thank Veasna who skilfully cooks two meals every day and I worried might feel upstaged by this feast (produced at 5 times her daily budget) and I think it was OK.  The Cambodians stay the course but are not so excited by our taste of home and some do not take to the Mediterranean flavours so much (we can have equivalent difficulties). Several of them after a taste decline the sauce. 

But everybody loves Garlic bread. And everybody loves pasta.  And everybody loves cheese!

* Taran, ever the details man, now tells me that we actually finished the Tyre the night after but we did read late on the night of day 47 and were very worried for Ranji.