After our school visit, we went to a village leader’s house for lunch. The food for lunch was a combination of the food that we had purchased in the market this morning and vegetables and things from their own gardens. In addition to having brought part of the food to eat for lunch, each of us was assigned a job or two to help in making our lunch. Most of the locals spoke no English, but we all managed to join together to produce a fine lunch, enjoyed by our tour group and a large contingent of village elders and their families.

1. Vicky was one of the first ones chosen and she was sent out into the fields to pick some cabbages, garlic, and other vegetables and bring them back. You can see her in the first photo with one of the Danu people.

2. Some of us, like Pete and myself, were assigned much higher duties. Our first assignment was making Rum Sours. Their recipe was a half-bottle of rum, one finger of raw honey (see second photo), one finger of lime juice, and the rest water. It was really hard to mix it all up, due to the honey, but eventually, I got the whole bottle blended together and ready to try, or I mean serve.

3. I wanted to make certain that I had correctly made the Rum Sours, so I took my bottle outside and found a village elder and some other members of the village and poured them a round to test it. I offered a toast first, though none of them spoke English.

4. As if making the Rum Sours wasn’t enough, Pete and I got assigned to cook a vegetable dish in a wok over an open fire. We cooked up some garlic, cauliflower, carrots, green beans, and seasoning. I improvised when I saw some basil growing not far from the kitchen. I had one of our hosts go pick some basil and we added it to our dish. You might notice that while stir-frying up a storm, I still managed to keep a rum sour in my other hand. Our dish came out excellent with all fresh ingredients.

5. I never quite understood the ending of this party. Somehow we all ended up out on the patio dancing to some cymbal and drum music. You can see Pete showing them how it's done in the last photo.