Tuesday 25 August 2009

Lunch of the Month

At the Lae Golf Club



The theme was "colour me crazy", which was harder than it sounded, given that my luggage was lost and I pretty much had on the clothes I'd left Melbourne in, THREE DAYS BEFORE!



I establish my position as the new village idiot with The Goode Wymen of Lae, by whipping out my camera and taking photos of food. Like the locals at the market, they are all a little weirded out by this.



Pretty much all the food in PNG is organic, primarily because pesticides et al are just too expensive. When you buy your fruit and veg at the markets, the produce is from the surrounding villages, each of which grows one, maybe two crops. Locals may have walked 3 hours down from their Highland village to sell their produce.



Possibly the sweetest, plumpest prawns I have ever eaten.



A side of smoked salmon is promptly demolished.



It sounds all very Mehm Sahib and pink gin, but it's not. Expat wives aren't allowed to work. It's a condition of their husband's visa. LOTM provides an excellent networking opportunity, and raises money for local charities and schools. Education isn't free in PNG. In a country where the average wage is about $1.10AUS per hour, educating a child can cost as much as $500. Rather than the clique of hot house flowers that I expected, I met a wonderful group of intelligent, sassy, independant women who are very involved in their local community. AND I possibly lined up a gig for some volunteer work with Médecins Sans Frontières as well.

Not bad for a morning's work.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you're gonna love it; you sound so excited.

Many expat wives aren't ladies who lunch and I know in USA my mum joined an expat (or migrating women with their husbands' jobs) group and they got involved in lots of interesting things and lots of volunteer work.

I love the picture of the asparagus, and I want to know who has one of those dishes that the prawns are in! It's FANTASTIC!

xx K (grocer)

Griffin said...

What??!!! No pink gins?!!! Good grief!

Are you not going to lounge on a chaise longue looking languid and ravishing while served drinks and food by handsome young things then?... and if not can I do it for you?!

Jazz said...

It's gonna be fabulous Mehm Sahib!!! But sadly lacking in pink gin. Ah well, there'll be all those hot Médecins to drool over. ;-)