Barbados Day 2

Day 2

Cou Cou and Flying Fish

Cricket in my neighborhood

Conkies

Today I woke up to the sound of people laughing and yelling.  When I ended up looking out my window, I saw they were playing cricket.  Cricket is a national pastime.  My house is in a Bajan village, so I assumed it was the people that lived in the village that were playing.  After I got dressed, I went outside and asked if I could play.  They were not super eager to have to explain how to play cricket, but they were nice and let me play.  Cricket is similar to baseball in the way that you hit a ball with a bat.  But in cricket after you hit the ball, you run in between the two home bases instead of running to 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and home base in baseball.  Also, you can hit the ball wherever you want, including backwards.  So when it was my turn to play, I ended up being horrible and only got one point for my team.  I am bad at baseball, so this makes sense.  At about halfway through the game, one of the Bajans invited us over for lunch.  It was a delicious meal.  There was mauby to drink.  Mauby is local tree bark that is boiled, then sweetened, and lastly strained.  To eat, there was conkies, cou cou and flying fish, and Bajan candied sweet potatoes.  Conkies are stuffed banana leaves.  The stuffing includes coconut, corn flour, and pumpkin.  Cou Cou and Flying Fish is Barbados’s national dish.  It is steamed or fried flying fish with okra and corn meal seasoned with salt and pepper and a special Bajan spicy sauce.  Lastly, the Bajan candied sweet potatoes are mashed sweet potatoes covered with pineapple and a dusting of brown sugar.  This was a most delicious feast and I would certainly love to eat it again.