The Window…

You don’t have to go to fancy restaurant to get international cuisine in Malakal, please just come to our ‘Tukul’ (Tukul is Sudanese way to call their traditional house, we built one in our compound as our gathering place) and you will enjoy our international cuisine. They were all guaranteed to be authentic because the recipes were brought directly from the original countries.

We had Christmas dinner last weekend and I was amazed with the menu selection, it was very impressive! We consist of various nationalities such as Sri Lanka, Philippines, Indonesia, Holland, Canada, Peru, Honduras, and Uruguay. So that night every continent cooked their own food and brought them in to our Christmas dinner.

I’m not very good in identifying food but that night I was trying my best to observe what kind of food that was served on the table.

Let’s start with Asian continent! I saw my Philippino friend, NR, was preparing roasted chicken. He stuffed the chicken with sweet corn, garlic, onion, green paprika and seasoned it with fish sauce, olive oil and salt. When the chicken was well roasted and taken out from the oven he then cut the chicken into pieces. If you see the photo you can hardly see that it’s roasted chicken but trust me, the taste was incredibly delicious!

Our roasted chicken cut into pieces

Another Asian food served that night was chicken curry! Yes, my Sri Lankan friends made very tasty chicken curry and of course it was very spicy too… Whoa!!!

Sri Lankan chicken curry... Spicy one!

From European continent, my dear friend from Holland, JV, stirred vegetables (potatoes, carrots, green beans) together with chicken and rice. When JV brought the food in I knew right away that it would be one of the best foods served that night and I guess I was correct!

Stirred vegetables with chicken and rice

Last but not least, my American continent fellows made beef sirloin steak. They cut the steak into small pieces so we could enjoy it as a ‘finger food’… Yummy!

'Malakal-American' version beef sirloin steak

Apparently that night was not only for Christmas dinner… We continued with singing (luckily one of us knew very well how to play guitar) and salsa dancing (with authentic Latino DJ!). I really enjoyed that night and now I’m seriously thinking to join salsa class next year…

Malakal Idol

I’m living far away from my family and friends now but in Malakal, I have finally met many people from various countries to be my friends and family whom I can share the joy with… I’m truly grateful for that!

Despite different nationalities, we are one family!

This story was published at http://pralangga.org – Our Peacekeeping Journey under the same title.