17/11/2013
Lu is a traditional Tongan meal typically using taro leaves, coconut milk, onions, and some sort of meat. The taro leaves are used a pocket to hold the rest of the ingredients and then that is wrapped in banana leaves and the put in the underground oven (umu) for about an hour. This is the meal that pretty much the entire country eats on Sundays after church. The Peace Corps decided to get together and have a little competition to see who could make the best lu, with a palangi (western) twist. We all got together with some of the new volunteers to prepare our own lus and umu from scratch.
I decided to try a chicken curry rice lu, that in my opinion was the best. Mandy ended up with the winner, with her eggplant soy lu. The judges were Don and Nori, they graciously let us use their house to have the event.
In reality all the lus were really good and we had a lot of fun trying to cook them ourselves. Even though I didn’t win the trophy I have high hopes for next year!
After the event i took the left overs back to my site to my friend Hepi and his family. He took one bite of Mandy's lu creation and announced that it was ta'eoli (gross), then he tried mine and said it was good but he was full (lie of course). His mom still chastises me about putting rice in lu because apparently that is just wrong. I told her it's lu fakapalangi (white people lu) to which she replied yeah well lu fakatonga (Tongan lu) doesn't use rice.
Good morning, how are you?
ReplyDeleteMy name is Emilio, I am a Spanish boy and I live in a town near to Madrid. I am a very interested person in knowing things so different as the culture, the way of life of the inhabitants of our planet, the fauna, the flora, and the landscapes of all the countries of the world etc. in summary, I am a person that enjoys traveling, learning and respecting people's diversity from all over the world.
I would love to travel and meet in person all the aspects above mentioned, but unfortunately as this is very expensive and my purchasing power is quite small, so I devised a way to travel with the imagination in every corner of our planet. A few years ago I started a collection of used stamps because trough them, you can see pictures about fauna, flora, monuments, landscapes etc. from all the countries. As every day is more and more difficult to get stamps, some years ago I started a new collection in order to get traditional letters addressed to me in which my goal was to get at least 1 letter from each country in the world. This modest goal is feasible to reach in the most part of countries, but unfortunately, it is impossible to achieve in other various territories for several reasons, either because they are very small countries with very few population, either because they are countries at war, either because they are countries with extreme poverty or because for whatever reason the postal system is not functioning properly.
For all this, I would ask you one small favor:
Would you be so kind as to send me a letter by traditional mail from Tonga? I understand perfectly that you think that your blog is not the appropriate place to ask this, and even, is very probably that you ignore my letter, but I would call your attention to the difficulty involved in getting a letter from that country, and also I don’t know anyone neither where to write in Tonga in order to increase my collection. a letter for me is like a little souvenir, like if I have had visited that territory with my imagination and at same time, the arrival of the letters from a country is a sign of peace and normality and an original way to promote a country in the world. My postal address is the following one:
Emilio Fernandez Esteban
Avenida Juan de la Cierva, 44
28902 Getafe (Madrid)
Spain
If you wish, you can visit my blog www.cartasenmibuzon.blogspot.com where you can see the pictures of all the letters that I have received from whole World.
Finally, I would like to thank the attention given to this letter, and whether you can help me or not, I send my best wishes for peace, health and happiness for you, your family and all your dear beings.
Yours Sincerely
Emilio Fernandez