Kreyol Colombo

CT farmer's market fresh veggies

Pierrette, our fabulous Guadeloupean chef, made a chicken colombo, a signature Creole dish, her first night with us, and it was a knockout. She served the bright yellow concoction right right out of our comically large pots. It was a stewy dish with tons of vegetables and bone-in chicken thighs and legs (pretty much the only way chicken comes on the island.) As we ate we took turns guessing which vegetables we were eating; there were the usual key players: carrots, potatoes and onions, but definitely a few unfamiliar ones as well. When we asked her later she claimed to have used whatever vegetables we had around, which included some kind of yucca-like root vegetable as well as some under ripe green mangoes. It was decently spicy as she also threw in a couple small peppers that I later found out Guadeloupeans slice and throw in just about everything. All served over steamed white rice, which cut some of the spice, it was delectable – hearty, nutritious, and exotic.

I found that by cutting all the vegetables to similar sizes and thicknesses that they all cooked evenly

The real secret to this dish is the seasoning, which I bought in a small, unmarked plastic bag at a spice market on the mainland one afternoon with Pierrette. I tucked the little tied off bag in my luggage and it managed to perfume most of my clothes on the way home. Without the spice, there is no dish. It’s pretty uncomplicated. I have no idea what is contained in that magical blend, but definitely some curry judging by the scent and the bright yellow color the dish ends up coming out. As about 10% of Guadeloupeans are of Indian descent it makes sense that there would be some blurring of the food cultures.

Seasoned chicken with sliced veggies on top

I improvised my Amerian version of colombo with the pretty vegetables John and I bought up at the Coventry Farmers Market this past weekend, and imagine you can really use whatever you feel like. 

Chicken Colombo (Serves 4) 

A few tablespoons of olive oil

1 smallish eggplant, cubed

1 squash (I used golden zuchinni), cut into disks

~1 pint of small potatoes, scrubbed, skin-on and halved

1 large green pepper, cubed

4 large carrots, halved and cut into segments

1 medium white onion, cut into rings

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1/2 small red pepper, minced
A few thin slices of a green pepper that turned out to be way hotter than we thought when John had a coughing fit just cutting it
Juice from 1 small lime
4-5 heaping tablespoons of Colombo seasoning, depending on how spicy you like it
1 package of about 5 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (there we skinned our own bone-in parts)

I heated a few tablespoons of olive oil in a deep pot and laid the chicken down at the bottom. I then sprinkled ~2 tablespoons of the Colombo seasoning over the thighs and then added the chopped vegetables on top, topping them off with about 2 more tablespoons of seasoning. I cooked the whole thing, covered, for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, mainly to keep the chicken from sticking to the bottom and to more evenly coat the veggies with the seasoning. The juices from the chicken and the liquid from the vegetables combined with the spices to create a nice sauce. You could probably add a half a cup of water and some cornstarch if you wanted more of a stewy version. I didn't do this but imagine that some lime juice would be excellent squeezed in at the end.

Not very well presented but delicious final product

I made a vegetarian version for my Mom and I in which I simply left out the chicken. It cooked exactly the same, with an olive oil base for the vegetables, however, I added about a half a cup of water throughout the 30 minutes of cooking. 

I served both over some rice I cooked using about ½ a tomato bouillon Pierrette also gave me and added some fresh chopped parsley at the end.

I also boiled a couple plantains (halved, still in their hard green skin), but accidentally bought the green skinned, white, starchier variety instead of the sweeter kind with yellow skin. I recommend the latter.

And voila, my parents were able to try my version of a traditional French West Indies dish. 

Dr. Dog

Doc is warming up beautifully to life in Yuppieville. He has his own bed and porcelain bowl and my mother has already started to ruin him with chicken breasts and baby talk. I, with the help of the Caesar Millan (aka the Dog Whisperer) book I recently rented from the library, at least know how to maintain some semblance of discipline and am confident that the Doctor is just on the brink of grasping the “sit” command.

I’ve called around the greater-Harford area for several days now looking for a vet who isn’t asking for my entire VISIONs salary to give Doc his requisite examinations and vaccines. It’s pretty difficult being a single, unemployed, mother, and if anything this experience has taught me the importance of having money before having kids. I’m also starting to question the necessity of having Doc neutered. I mean, if all the other dogs here are neutered/spayed, which they are, where’s the harm? Couldn’t he be the avant-garde European dog who still retains his reproductive organs? Thoughts?

Gwada-loop

I’m back. From where exactly? After spending last year in Toulouse France as an English teaching assistant, I returned home for about ten days in June before turning right back around and heading for the French overseas department of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean where I worked alongside 5 others as a summer camp counselor for 25, very affluent, high school kids. Our camp, working under the umbrella organization of VISIONS, was not based on mainland Guadeloupe, but on a smaller, lovely and welcoming island called Terre-de-Bas which is one of the two tiny Saintes islands southwest of the mainland. Terre-de-Bas is about 4 square miles and has a population of around 900 inhabitants. Needless to say 30 Americans made quite a splash.

VISIONS has been coming to Guadeloupe/Terre-de-Bas for about 15 years and have very strong relationships the local families. For the past 8 years or so the Guadeloupe chapter has been run by a husband and wife directing team who made Terre-de-Bas their second home, staying each summer almost a month after the kids left. Ryan and Annie are infamous on T-d-B and the islanders honor them with the title “Santoises.” This year Ryan and Annie were starting up a VISIONS location in Ghana, Africa and we had a new director Andrew who had been to Guadeloupe once before with VISIONS in 2008. Other than Andrew, our entire staff was brand new. We spent the entire first week before the kids arrived explaining to community members that no, Ryan was not coming back and Andrew was the new director. They were equally happy and excited to have us there all the same, but we got the impression we had big shoes to fill.

The community was so graciously welcoming, and were always offering our kids fruits from their yards or bringing some over to the kichen. I was continuously greeted by name on the streets by the one police officer Laurent, our cab driver Ronald, the ferry captain Danny, and the storekeeper Michel. Picture a Carribbean spin on the opening scene of Beauty and the Beast.

Commerce in our neighborhood of Petite-Anse consisted of 2 convenience stores, and one local restaurant that made a different dish every night. There was one pay phone which I used calling cards to call home about once a week. We had a modest “port” from which several boats left daily for the mainland, and the other Saintes island, Terre-de-Haut, following an indiscernible schedule that seemed to fluctuate daily and accommodate the boats that inevitable and regularly fell “en panne.”

My specialized role as staff, in addition to being responsible for the happiness and wellbeing of all the little munchkins, was “food honcho”. After an insane Dinner Impossible-esque first week of being more or less solely responsible for 2 hot meals per day equipped with not much more than 2 bunsen burners, I had the incredible experience of working closely alongside our full-time Guadeloupean chef, Pierrette. Pierrette is somewhat of an international legend, and what some of the counselors described as who their image of what God might look like.  I was incredibly intimidated by her at first be we ended up working magnificiently together, and hers was one of the hardest goodbyes I made. We would get gorgeous produce shipments from a man named Jean Paul on the mainland and everyday we have had local bananas, melons, pineapple, mangos and passion fruits. I earned the (loving) nickname from the kids "The Kitchen Witch".

Our accommodations were very “rustic” to say the least. Our camp was once the old middle school on the island and we inhabited 4 fiberglass huts with tin and plywood roofs. There was one temperature of water, and due to exposed pipes in places it was usually warm – which was nice for showers but not so nice when it’s all you had to drink. The island was rampant with wild goats and chickens, iguanas, and tiny lizards and frogs that seemed to get into everything. Cockroaches and millipedes were also not as uncommon as I would’ve liked.

 I slept on a tiny twin bed frame on a plastic wrapped mattress under a frustratingly ineffective mosquito net. I learned how to shake out my sheets every night before bed, and quickly understood what “bucket flushing” a toilet meant.

My days started around 5:30 everyday and ended around 11pm. We would work with a group of 6 kids on one of our 5 work sites from 7 until noon. After lunch we would either hike, go to the beach, or participate in cultural exchanges with community members. On the weekends we had larger excursions that included hiking a volcano on the mainland, and scuba diving on Terre-de-Haut. I had roughly one day off every week. It was go-go-go 24/7 and just when I thought I’d given 100%, or I couldn’t process another person talking to me or telling me what they needed, I’d have to step up and bandage up a knee, or flush someone’s poop.

VISIONS summer: cool but crazy.

A Leap of Faith

Intertwined in our séjour in Guadeloupe was the reoccurring character Dr. Dog. Dr. Dog is a small golden stray who our group ran into one afternoon while at the beach across the island called Grande Anse. A sweet, gentle dog starving for attention, he hung around our knees all day and somehow followed us back to home base, staying there for a couple days, with his own bowl and everything, before Pierrette finally said enough was enough. We brought him back where we found him across the island with us on a 3-hour hike that Saturday.

I ran into the Doctor a few weeks later on one of my days off when I took a cab over to the beach. As soon as I was out of the car he was jumping around licking at my knees. He followed me to the beach, waited until I set up my towel and then plopped down directly across from me staring at me until he fell asleep.

On the kids second to last day in Guadeloupe we did a final hike, and who should we run into on the trail but the Doctor. He of course trotted happily with us all the way home and there he stayed. The kids left Wednesday, and Thursday morning he was still sleeping pressed up against our door on the top step outside our cabin, waiting for us to come out.

All sitting around, the Doctor sprawled out in between us Thursday afternoon, the six of us counselors looked at each other and decided someone had to take him. I said I’d look into it and that afternoon I walked to the only payphone one the island to start my research. After speaking with American Airlines who said it was no problem to add him to my reservation and gave me the dimensions of a carry on versus checked dog, I called a vet on the mainland whose card Rebecca had found for me. The vet seemed completely on board with the idea of me bringing him home, telling me to come in tomorrow and volunteering immediately to fudge the date on the rabies vaccine that should be administered a month before the departure of the dog. I was leaving in 2 days. The last important phone call was to Mom and Dad, who, after listening patiently as I outlined the logistics of what I was trying to do with the Doctor, asked simply, “so I assume this dog will be living at 41 Gray Birch?”

The next day the Doctor and I set off for the mainland on the 9:00am ferry. Walking him along the dock at the port on a leash that James had fashioned out of parachute cord and a couple of carabineers, I felt like “that crazy American.” On the island people don’t keep pets, and dogs in general are regarded as dirty, which partially explains why the Doctor ended up the way he did.

He was fabulously well behaved on the ferry and just slept at my feet, looking up deep into my eyes once in a while as if to make sure I was still there with him. The next hurdle was getting him to the vet’s office. We hopped off the ferry and before we were off the dock the man who checked my ticket called me over showing me a car that would take me there. My drivers name was Cyril and I figured I better start chatting him up if I wanted him to come back and get me afterwards in time for the 12:30 ferry. He assured me he’d be there at 12:15.

The vet was very nice and efficient (kind of a rarity in those parts) but running a million miles an hour. When she was ready she grabbed him, put him on the table and while her 2 assistants were spraying him down with a flea bath she fixed me up with a little doggie EU passport complete with requisite rabies vaccine and general certificate of health. She started rattling off all the things I needed to remember to do once I got him home and how to administer the sedatives for the airplane while ringing up my three figure bill. Somewhere in there I managed to feel a tinge of jealousy that the little bugger got a European Union passport, something I’ve vied for for ages, just like that.

Cyril is there as promised at 12:15 and we start heading to the port, inching along in traffic and we make just in time to see the ferry pull away. The next boat isn’t until 4:45pm leaving from the other port, Trois-Rivieres, across the island. He very nicely drives me over there. I split a baguette sandwich with Dr. Dog and spend the next 2 hours on the payphone, thanks to the still full phone cards I fished out of the kids trash cans, and start looking for a crate as it’s apparent I will need to check him due to his size. I call John who searches pet stores on the island and weeds through the French to get me some numbers. I start to call, talking with the animal departments of hardware stores, pet stores, and other vets. No one had what I needed for less than 90 euros. On my 4^th call I started chatting with a man who asked if I could come in to look at the crate. When I explained that I was actually living on the smaller island, Terre-de-Bas he asked me in so many words what the heck I was doing there. I loosely outlined VISIONS and, what do you know, he knows the infamous Ryan. Turns out he’s the brother of the woman Chantal who does our laundry. I perk up and he says he can give me the crate for 60. Done. I tell him I’ll pick it up on the way to the airport the next day. Paperwork, check, hardware, check. Next hurdle: I call American Airlines to get to the bottom of this temperature embargo.

American Airlines tells me that under no circumstances can a checked dog take off if the weather in the city of departure, correspondence, or touch down will be hotter than 85 degrees.

I get on the ferry sufficiently bummed, I feel like the Doctor and I have come this far, and something as out of my control as the weather is going to hold us back. When we pull in the port on T-d-B James, Jackie, Becca and Vince are all waiting to go to the beach for or last swim before going to dinner at a community friend, Cindy’s, house. While there I fill them in on my day and the latest news. They agree that we still have to try it. We’ve come too far, but we need a Plan B. I can’t go to the airport with this dog and no plan except to miss my flight if he can’t get on.

We get to Cindy’s that evening and I fully expect her to make me tie the dog up outside. When she ushers us in telling me that of course he could come inside because she herself had a pet goat who she took to the beach and let sleep in her kids’ beds when they weren’t home, I though I might have found my Plan B girl. I explained what I was trying to do with Dr. Dog and Cindy assured me that she could finagle a ride to the mainland to take the Doctor of my hands should he be refused. Phew.

After getting home that night, James, Jackie and I de-ticked the Doctor for about an hour and half on our front porch. Jackie, who owns 2 dogs, held him with gentle but firm hands, and James dove right in there and pulled about 50 ticks off and killed them with his hands. I sat there with the light and moral support. Doc didn’t cry bite or try to run away, it was really incredible. Now sufficiently de-flead and de-ticked we let him sleep in our room under our bed.

We our selves pulled an all-nighter finishing last minute packing and cleaning of home base, and clambered into the cab for our last ride down to the port, ignoring the raised eyebrows from Ronald about the Doctor who we were toting around on his makeshift leash. We got to the mainland and sat at a café at the port for three hours waiting for our ride. Time to turn on the charm. I gave him the address of the animal store who supposedly had a cage waiting for me and he begrudgingly obliged. We found it with relatively no trouble and the cage was a perfect fit. In the backseat James, Rebecca and I starting trying to get the doggie prozacs into the Doctors system. That didn’t go well. All too soon we arrived at the airport and as our cab pulled away there were James, Rebecca, myself, a lucid dog and a cage, and 2 hours until our flight. What were we doing?

Standing in line at the airport was one of the more nervewracking experiences I’ve put myself through. James, Becca and I stood there with our luggage, the crate and the dog wondering what the heck was about to happen to us. As time drudged by, it was too late to have any prayer of calling Cindy to come pick up the dog and still make our flight.

When it came time I put on my biggest eyes and smile. The person behind the counter listened to my speil about the dog who I’d added to my reservation yadda yadda yadda, and asked me to pay the 21 euros for an extra checked bag (NOT the $125 American Airlines said it cost to check a pet?). My credit card wouldn’t go through and I had to run around the airport like a madwoman trying the impossible: to get a European storekeeper to make change. After 3 tries I forked over the 21 and he ushered me over to an “oversized baggage” counter. I wheeled the Doctor over there, they did not ask me for any piece of identification for him or anything. They were so nonchalant about the whole thing that I felt the need to specify, “there’s a dog in there” before he was carted away on the belt. I walked back over to James and Becca grinning ear to ear, however, the final hurdle of our connection in Puerto Rico still remained.

Well, we all missed our connecting flights in Puerto Rico due to a late takeoff from Pointe-a-Pitre and after the classic airport customer service shuffle, were all put in the airport pet friendly hospital, but not after a few hours of sitting on the floor amongst all of our luggage, with a supremely drugged dog tied up with p-cord. Not my finest hour.

The next morning all three of us rolled out of bed bright and early at 5am, even James who wasn’t flying out until 2pm, to walk me and the Doctor to the pet check in counter for the final trial. It was like Pointe-a-Pitre all over again as I held my breath watching the woman check the weather. I saw her shake her head slightly in skepticism as she wrote down 83 degrees for NY weather. Oh my god he was in. We were going home.

Now, I’m home in Stamford, CT sitting at my feet as I write this. For me it proves if you really set your mind to something you can do it, to borrow from the Beatles, with a little help from my friends.

Thank you Jackie, James, Becca, Vince and Andrew. I couldn’t have done this crazy thing without you.