Have you ever been in a situation where YOU are the only one to solve the dilemma, the whole thing is entirely unfamiliar, yet The World is expecting you to act immediately?
I was a teacher in Egypt for awhile – had just taken a sea voyage to Alexandria, and went down into Upper Egypt and arrived on a Tuesday in Assiut, the fourth largest city in the country. The whole culture was a Great Unknown. I even began to wonder who I was in this setting. I was taken to the school where I would live on the top floor. Suitcases followed. A cup of tea with bread and amazing date jam (made from the tall tall date palm tree outside the window).
I was settling, starting to look around at my surroundings, when suddenly someone said, “Oh it’s Tuesday. Choir practice. Could you go to the chapel and accompany the choir? That’s one of your jobs.”
“Sure,” I said confidently. My past experience, with a Masters in Music Education, and a few years of thumping children’s songs to Elementary School singers, would certainly prepare me for playing in church, wouldn’t it?
This was the first day in my new job, and, with time and culture zones somewhat wobbly, I was here to do as instructed. I followed this unfamiliar person to an unfamiliar destination, hearing my Dad’s voice gently playing in my heart: Before I left, he had said, “You will go to a place where you know nothing. Make a note of everything you want to change, anything you think you could improve. Yes, write it down. But don’t say anything for the first year. Then you will know what, and how to make suggestions. And for heavens sake, keep your sense of humour!”
We arrived at choir practice in the corner of a large church. I met the director, a young Egyptian man who was already rattling off instructions in Arabic to the assembled choir members. The piano was there. A hymn book propped up on it. A hymnbook with what???? If I had been a comic book character my eyes would have popped out of their parent sockets. (They nearly did anyway.)
Yes it was a hymn book. Yes, there were notes to play. But…they were backwards. The treble and bass clefs were on the right side of the page, notes to follow the Arabic words, also right to left. Usually, I could skim over the music and get a general feel for the tune. But no way could I sightread Backwards Music . None of my four years studying music in University, nor the subsequent two years of teacher training included anything about sightreading backwards.
I looked around. There was no one to ask, no one to do it for me, no one to explain to, that this music would take time and diligent practice.
We were about to begin. First hymn. I stumbled through the first phrase, and……
“No no no” said the choir director, “much too high. Transpose it down two steps.”
This is when I learned that when you work in a strange job, when you are the only one to do it, you just do it. So I did.
I never did learn to sight read backwards, but played for church each Sunday and choir rehearsal. I managed by fumbling through the practising, focussing on the right hand, and letting the left hand play left-to-right or sound the appropriate chords for the harmonies demanded by the tune.
One time I started a hymn that sounded vaguely familiar. By Verse 2 it was even more so. I shot a quizzical look at a friend in the front row. She rolled her eyes, nodded her head. I was playing “Old Black Joe”. Actually, if you don’t know its original words, it makes quite a passable hymn tune.
There were other things I wasn’t prepared for, like Saturday Morning Inspection, for head lice, (if lice eggs were spotted, the girl had to sleep with kerosene in her hair), supervising homework time in a huge hall, getting used to the startling habit of the whole class standing up as I entered, the Headmistress allowing students to cheat on exams because “they’re friends! Friends should help friends!” (definitely a different culture), the delightful occasions to go by “taxi” – a horse drawn carriage, and “Assembly” – always out on the playground with a microphone from an upstairs balcony, because Assiut’s rainfall was only half an inch a year. (One day there was a tiny dusty driblet from the sky and students blamed us foreigners for bringing it with us.)
I coped with all of those, but that first Choir Practice Incident has permanently scarred my brain – the eNORmous clash between Expectation and grim Reality.
Back to the question at the beginning: how about you?
Mixed Vegetable Thoran
Taken from – of course – The Hairy Bikers’ Great Curries
This is a new recipe to me, so I thought we’d try it together. Cooking time seems short, so I prepared all the ingredients and placed them within grabbing distance of the cooker (stove). I halved the recipe. Here’s the uncut version.
370 gms green or savoy cabbage (about half a British sized cabbage)
2 medium carrots
1 medium onion
3 tablespoons desiccated (dried) coconut
2 tablespoons cold water
2 tablespoons sunflower oil (I used coconut oil).
1 tsp black mustard seeds
½ tsp cumin seeds
4 fresh or 8 dried curry leaves
½ tsp dried chilli flakes
½ tsp flaked sea salt (I used normal)
¼ tsp ground turmeric
Place the cabbage on a chopping board, and cut out the hard centre. Then finely shred, and put in a bowl.
Peel the carrots and grate vertically (watch fingers!) so that they end up with long ribbons.
Cut the onion in half and slice it thinly.
Put the coconut in a small bowl, add water, let it soak.
Heat the oil in a large pan or wok. With a pan cover in one hand, add mustard and cumin seeds – cover the pan immediately. They are vicious little things when they start to crackle and pop. As soon as they perform, add the onions on a much lower heat, until they are soft, then stir in the carrots and cabbage, chilli flakes, salt and turmeric.
Stir fry on high heat for two minutes. Add the coconut and its water, and stir fry for a minute until vegs are only just tender – they should maintain some bite. Add a little extra salt if necessary. The high heat means that they are crunchy but the onions are well cooked. Serve hot, the Bikers say, but the combination is so delicious, I’m trying it as a slaw, even though the vegetables are a bit flabby.
I used my largest frying pan for half the recipe. They really do mean “large” .
Next day the slaw was okay-y-y, but much better warmed. And much better when first out of the frying pan. I was surprised at how yummy it is.
