Cooking Class and Preparing for a Creation Class

Tuesday, April 8

I decided to give each of the church ladies a copy of each recipe I was going to teach. I printed them up and put them on 3 x 5 cards. Only one problem. I forgot that most of them don't read English! So.....I had Sophie translate them into Malagasy. Then her husband, Rado, retyped them in Malagasy for me. Then we decided to give them both the English and Malagasy recipes.

I was incredibly nervous about teaching! I'm the person that likes to blend in with the wallpaper on the walls. Not the person up front doing the speaking! *grin* And then to have an interpreter on top of that makes one already nervous person incredibly panicked! I had to pray really hard. And the Lord blessed and everything went better than I expected.

The first thing I taught them was cleanliness in food preparation. The Malagasy people aren't very careful when it comes to raw meat and fresh fruits and vegetables. Either they don't know about the risk of becoming sick when there's cross contamination or they don't care. I'm not sure which is correct. So....I spoke to them on that. Basically, I just reenforced what the Pritchards have been teaching them.

On to teaching the ladies how to cook pancakes. I showed them the ingredients and put it all together and then had them come up to where I was to watch me pour the batter into the pan. The ladies loved it! I can't tell you what a relief it was to see them want to take over and cook themselves! I told them "go for it" and they did. Better yet, when they ate the pancakes, they loved it!

The pots in the background behind me are the pots the Malagasy people use to cook with. Typically, they only have one pot. Sophie is next to me interpreting. The look on my face is weird to say the least. No, I was not mad at all. Walter snapped the picture at an awkward moment.

I consider myself a pretty good cook. But it was interesting to cook on something so different. I almost needed the ladies to show me how to cook on their "stove" (really a charcoal burner).

The pots would get so hot that we had to take them off the burner for a few minutes so the pancakes didn't burn. Hence, the picture above.

The ladies that came to the class. The one reading the paper is my interpreter's sister. Her name is Vula (pronounced Voo luh).

Walter gave a short Bible study/devotion with each cooking class I did. The ladies seemed to enjoy it.

Earlier in the day, Bro. Ja had asked my husband to have a sign made advertising the creation class that he would be teaching. He also wanted a flyer made up to pass out to the people on the streets. Ja went to the local radio station and had an advertisement put on the radio about it, too.

Walter found a nice piece of wood to have the sign painted on. Walter, LuCein and I set out on a walk (it was a very long walk) to the paint shop. Really, it was more like a shack. LuCein explained to the men exactly what we wanted done. They nodded their heads saying they understood the directions. Walter then had LuCein tell them that we wouldn't pay if the job was done wrong. They said ok. In the Malagasy culture if the people perform a job for you, you must pay even if the job is done wrong. Walter told them "no way" if you don't do it right. LuCein told us later that it was a good thing to tell them to do it right the first time!

Some pictures of downtown Antsirabe. Notice how the Malagasy are surrounding all the 'white' people. They are 'rich' and must give the Malagasy money!

This is an actual picture of the pizza delivery truck! I was surprised. What's even more surprising is that there are quite a few pizza places there. And the people love it, too. In fact, several of the ladies asked me if I would teach them how to make it. Even if I could figure out how to make it on their charcoal burners, the people couldn't afford to buy the ingredients. The pizza there is just ok. Nothing like what we have here in America.