Happy Belated National Day in Guinea-Bissau!! It was not planned, but we happen to study Guinea-Bissau right during a major holiday for the country – Sept 24th, when it celebrated 44 years of independence!

Though, this tiny western African country has had quite a troubled past. It started with resistance under the Portuguese, who used the natives for slaves in the Europe and the New World. And after independence continued with coups and assassinations. Consequently, the country is still extremely poor and there is very little infrastructure.  The average person earns just $590 lives to 50 years old!

Despite this unrest and poverty, you cannot overlook the natural beauty of this coastal nation.  In fact, the Bijago islands off its coast are all a protected UNESCO Biosphere Reserve and its tidal estuaries are home to rare breed of salt water hippopotamuses (ones of Andrew’s favorite facts!)

To learn more about the people, economy and history of Guinea-Bissau. Click here: Guinea-Bissau_info.

And to test your new knowledge click on this Word Search: GuineaBissau_WSSome other interesting facts that we learned are:

• The countries proportion of land under forest (73 percent) is the second highest in Africa after Gabon
• The name Guinea is thought to come from an Amazigh (Berber) word meaning “land of the blacks.” And they added Bissau to differentiate from the neighboring (and formerly French) Guinea.
• Guinea-Bissau is the sixth largest producer of cashew nuts.
• Only about 40 percent of school aged children (7-14) attend school.
• About 30 percent of the population still practice traditional religions like animal and ancestor worship.

FOOD

As we studied Guinea-Bissau over a holiday, we thought we would prepare a holiday like meal. Being so poor, The people of Guinea-Bissau do not eat meat regularly – mostly millet or rice, and ground nuts and fruit. Everything we cooked and ate was surprisingly delicious and we will definitely be making version of the rice and chicken again! Though, it was hard to find any info on what they ate for breakfast beyond Portuguese pastries and cookies – so we went with that!

Dinner

Cafriela de Frango – Basically a lemon/garlic chicken. And despite the review in the recipe, it tasted extremely flavorful! though it does take a bit of time to cook.

Jollof Rice – This one of the few dishes Guinea- Bissau is known for. And it is amazingly tasty! And Isaac ended up making this dish all all by himself!!

Tuna and Avocado Salad – I wouldn’t think to mix these two – especially with coconut and evaporated milk – but it turned out surprisingly delicious. And Isaac made this all on his own as well!

Breakfast 

Portuguese Cinnamon Cookies -These are fun to make but not super tasty on their own. The kids decided to add jam and syrup to dip them in and I just dipped them in my coffee.

Guava Juice/Coffee

Melon

CULTURE

Like many African tribal cultures, the coming of age for a man is a very important time celebrated with a big ceremony. And its no different for the people on Guinea-Bissau’s  Bissagos Islands. An important part of their ceremony is having the boy/man wear a bull mask and dance around like a bull, symbolizing the aggression that is part of manhood. (And in case you were wondering, the Portuguese brought bulls and cattle to the islands in the 16th century and they became extremely important possessions for the Island tribes.)

So we decided to make our own version of the bull mask (going more for the bull “hat” which we saw in several pictures). But as carving wood and finding actually bull horns  was not happening, we used cardboard and natural items like sticks, grass, shells and coral. Here are some examples of  traditional Guinea-Bissau Bull Masks.

Guinea-Bissau Bull Mask

• Cut a strip of cardboard about three inches wide to fit around your head
• Take a paper bag and turn it inside out and stuff the edges inside the bag to forma ball and then mold it into a bull face shape (strong, long line a the top and narrow to the nose)
• Tape the “face” on the cardboard band as best you an
• Add the face element and horns gluing the them on with a glue gun. They boys choose shells for eyes and nostrils and coral and sticks for the horns. Isaac decided to top his bull off with a little grass for hair.
• Put on your head and make your toughest bull face and stomp around!

Hope enjoyed traveling with us to Guinea-Bissau. Next week – Honduras!!

 

This resort island nation in the Pacific is certainly a surprise. Having about half the
population being Indian and the majority of the population is Methodist. As a member of the Commonwealth, it gained its independence from the Brits. At first, Fiji just seemed like a normal Polynesian country to us but then, it turned out to be very interesting.

For more detailed information on Fiji’s history, economy, people and climate,click on the PDF:FIJI_info . The Fiji scrambles right there. FIJI_scramble 

Interesting facts about Fiji

1. The 300 islands, and 550 islets in Fiji, only about one – third of them are inhabitable.
2. That Fiji’s national languages are iToukei(Fijian), Hindi, Fijian Hindi, and English because of the big Indian majority.
3. The top of the head of the leaders in Fijian villages is sacred, so if your going to Fiji, don,t touch the leaders head and DEFINITELY do not wear sunglasses and/or a hat.
4. Western countries use “Fiji” as the name, that is the Tongan name for these islands, the natives call their home “Viti”.

                                         — By Isaac

FOOD

Fijians eat a lot of Indian food, such as curries, chicken, masala etc. But then there is also Native Fijian food: like cassava, tropical fruit, fish and more fish. Coconuts are also very popular. A coconut palm is on their flag with the bunch of bananas.

The national dish of Fiji is Lovo but we didn’t make it because it takes about a day to cook, and you cook the meat in the ground with charcoal… but I’m not sure if were that advanced.

Breakfast

Fijian Roti – We made it our own way because we couldn’t find a Fijian roti recipe.  We went with a version we know that involves coconut, as well, everything Fijian – including the flag – has coconut.

• 2 cups flour
• 2/3rd cup shredded coconut (NOT the sweetened kind)
• 1 cup hot water

Mix together flour and coconut and then add in hot water and stir until forms a ball. Let it rest for 15 minutes. Form dough into 10-12 balls and flatten into discs. Cook the discs in oil in frying pan for about 2 minutes on each side or until they start turning golden brown.

Sliced Pineapple & Guava Nectar

Dinner

Kokoda  – This is a dish like ceviche. Cooked in lime juice for 24 hours with peppers and onions. The only difference is that Fijians use coconut cream mixed in as well. Everybody loved it.

Cassava Sticks – Very much like french fries but a little crispier. Super delicious

Pina Colodas

Dessert: Cassava Cake –  Yummy! Make sure you get the cake nice and brown

                                                                                                        — By Isaac                                                                                                    

CULTURE

While Hawaii has its Hula, Fiji has a similar dance called the Meke – grass skirts and all. Its a traditional dance used to mark holidays and important events. From the videos we watched it seems to start out slow and pick up to quite a fast pace. Both men and women dance it, though in all the videos we watched, it was typically the men in grass skirts. Check out the video here: Malaga Meke (It starts off kind of like a music video – dancing starts a third of the way through)

So we decided to make our own “grass” skirts and try the Meke for ourselves. Love the way the kids got into it!

Fiji Grass Skirt

• Measure yarn around your waist with about six inches extra on each side
• Measure crepe paper from your waist to your ankle – then double it.
• Cut/rip about twenty strips of  double – length crepe paper
• Fold the crepe in half and place the loop end just over the yarn, then pull the two ends through the loop and tighten gently
• Repeat the prior step for the rest of the paper strips, and space them out evenly
• Tie skirt around your waist – Enjoy!

And here the kids are getting their Meke on!!! Meke in Maryland

 

We decided to go back to Europe for E, visiting the tiny country of Estonia. I can admit, I did not know a lot about this Baltic nation before we “traveled” there.  But I now have new respect for Estonia. It is one of the most high-tech countries in Europe and it also has one of the highest literacy rates in the world. Estonia has come a long way since their communist era, and we all really loved the way Estonia ended Soviet rule with the “Singing Revolution.”

To learn more about Estonia, please browse our info sheet: EstoniaINFO

And test your new knowledge on this awesome crossword puzzle: ESTONIA_CW

Below are some interesting facts that we learned

1. Estonia has about 1,500 islands
2. About two-thirds of Estonians live in apartment buildings
3. Estonia finally became independent from the Soviet Union in 1991, in part because of the “Singing Revolution,” where hundreds of thousands of Estonians expressed their freedom in song.
4. Estonia inventing a sport called kiiking, where competitors stand on a swing and try to flip it completely around in a circle

COOKING

Cooking Estonian was familiar ingredients put together in new ways.  They have influences from Finnish, Russian and German roots. Breakfast was a big hit and half of dinner was. Dinner was kind of summed up by Andrew when he said, “Why does Estonia food smell stinky but taste good?”

Breakfast

1. Estonia Kringle – This is delicious and beautiful cake of sorts, that is a close cousin to to the cinnamon roll. It’s actually a special cake typically made for birthdays, but we thought it would make a great break aft – and it did!
2. Brown bread with melted cheese. This actually what a typically breakfast is. But its usually more a sweetened cheese curd.
3. Yogurt with crushed cereal. They usually have yogurt with  something called kama – kind of a crumbly topping made from different flours, but as I could not track that down, so we used a easy to find alternative.

Dinner

1. Muglikapsad – We did this in a crock pot for a few hours and turned out great. (We also wanted to break apart the pork until the end.) I also added caraway powder as another recipe suggested it. And as the recipe states, it does taste even better a day (or few) after.
2. Estonian Potato Salad – After looking at a few recipes we went for this one, but without the sausage and with pickles instead of cucumbers. Andrew was a particularly big fan of this!
3. Brown bread with butter. A staple in all Estonian meals

Culture

We learned that singing is of huge importance to Estonians. As mentioned above, singing helped them break free of Communism and gain their independence! From 1988 to 1991, several gatherings were held in Estonia were hundreds of thousands of people sung Estonian songs to express their freedom to the Soviet Union and the world. One time they even formed a human chain that stretched across the length of Estonia and sang.

So we decided just to look at some videos on the Singing Revolution and practicing singing the song they sang (but in English).  Here is an informative YouTube video: Singing Revolution History  And Here is a preview for a film about it all called the  “The Singing Revolution”

And here are the words. Best English translation of “Mu isamaa on minu arm” (Land of my Fathers, Land that I Love), the most powerful song of the revolution :

When it comes to tiny island countries Dominica is defiantly on that list. When being about a third of the size of Rhode Island and having lots of devastating hurricanes, this is one of the least known and poorest countries in the Caribbean.

We picked Dominica because we didn’t know anything about Dominica. Make sure to say it Doh – mih – NEE- kah. Dominica turned out to be very interesting country with a natural disaster history not a war history and the only Caribbean country today to be populated with Carib – Indians.

Click here Dominica to know what we learned.

The word search is right here DOMINICA_WordSearch

Interesting facts about Dominica

1. It was the last island to be formed in the Caribbean.  
2. It is the island in the Caribbean to be the most densely forested.
3. Dominica has a boiling lake that is the second largest hot spring in the world.
4. At age 31 in 2004, the new president of Dominica: Roosevelt Skerrit was the youngest president in the world at that time.
5. The bird on its flag – the sisserou – is an endangered parrot only found in Dominica

• By Isaac

FOOD

While in the Caribbean, Dominican food is quite distinct from that of its neighbors. They do eat lots of salted meat and fish and use Creole flavors, but it tends to not be very spicy and they use some, um, interesting meats. The most famous dish in Dominica is, in fact, Smoky Mountain Chickens, which are the legs of giant frogs, native to the Island. They also love to grill up opossums and agoutis (like large rats).

We didn’t go that quite extreme and stuck to their National Dish of Calloloo and traditional Fish and Bakes. Other Islands have similar versions but I tracked down a Dominica version. (It’s surprisingly hard to find recipes from Dominica and searches often confuse it with Dominican Republic cuisine.)

DINNER

1. Callaloo – We pretty much followed the recipe, except we used kale instead of Dasheen leaves and cubed ham instead of salted meat. Also we did puree the onions with the kale. And I found other recipes that called for crabs in the soup, so we topped ours with a little crab meat.
2. Toasted Bread

BREAKFAST

Bakes and Saltfish – Followed the recipe pretty closely. And we easily found salted fish in the our regular grocery store.

CULTURE

What Dominica is most known for is its music and dancing. In fact, the World Creole Music Festival is held in Dominica every October, and they have their own very popular Carnival in February.  While calypso, soca and reggae are popular they also have their own style called bouyon  and Candence-lypso.  Both blend many Caribbean styles (and are super fun to dance to!) You can have a listen here: Bouyon Music

We decided to try a little Dominica dancing ourselves. And the kids, reluctant at first, had a great time, and also got quite the work out! We found a few video which clearly demonstrate and repeat key Soca/Bouyon dance moves: Soca-Aerobics, and are fun to follow.

What I learned is that basically you need to:

1. Move your hips in a circle a lot (apparently this is called “whining”)
2. Use dramatic stomps to break up hip circles
3. Wave your flag/rag/shirt around lots

And here’s the kids dancing: Soca/Bouyon Kids. Enjoy!

Sorry for the delay in this week, but next week we promise to promptly present “E is for Estonia!”