After I'd been here for about a week I said I was going to write about all the weird things here, but then I ended up writing about the rivers. But now, here are all the weird things.
The gas stoves. Are just normal gas stoves. The weirdness is that they use gas stoves in the first place. During my life, I've learned to associate gas stoves with places with no electricity, as in mostly scouting cottages, or just events where people cook for a lot of people in the middle of the forest where it's impossible to have an electric stove. Or any stove. So basically, gas is used to cook in places where electricity and/or stoves are inaccessible. And the US. But the US is the US. Them using gas tells absolutely nothing about the rest of the world. I mean, they also do use units of measurement the rest of the world gave up as ridiculously impractical what, two hundred years ago?
Anyway. I asked them why in the world they would use gas to cook here. Apparently the reason is simply that gas is cheaper than electricity. Which made me wonder why the roofs of all houses aren't simply covered with solar panels, because that would actually make a lot of sense this close to the equator. Though I guess the answer to that is simply that this is not the kind of developed country where people are like "hmm, the sun shines pretty much here. Using that to save on my electric bill sounds like a great idea". I don't know.
The toilets. Well, the toilets are normal as such, except here you don't put the toilet paper into the toilet. You put it in the trash. For a reason. I have no idea what that's all about.
The traffic. Is chaotic. Which isn't surprising. But what's weird about it is that from the larger streets, the ones with two or three lanes in both directions, you can only turn right. Which is impractical, if you want to turn left. So every once in a while there is a place specifically designed for making u-turns, so that if you're coming from the wrong direction, you have to drive past the crossroad you actually want to turn from, do a u-turn at the next u-turning place, drive back, and then turn right onto the street you want to turn to. Also you can only turn right when you come onto the big street, so again, turn right, make a u-turn and continue in the direction you actually want to go.
The license plates. Of the cars. So the plates here have three letters and four numbers. The weird thing is that almost all the plates start with a J, N, O or P. The other letter are rare.
Ok, this isn't actually that weird. It was explained to me. Different states have different letters with which they start, and in Amazônas they happen to be J, N, O and P. And the handful of plates starting with something else have been moved here from somewhere else. I suppose the weird thing is that N, O and P are all in a row in the alphabet, but then suddenly J? Why J?
The food. The food isn't actually that weird. It's mostly the same ingredients we use, except that somehow everything is so good. (Ok, I did eat some weird plant as in the leaves that had a really strong taste, and after eating it twice I decided I didn't like that. But everything else is super-good.) And I don't know how that's possible. Because the only fully familiar thing I've eaten here is yogurt. And everything else is at lest on some level unfamiliar. And yet, everything is really good. You would think that eating unfamiliar things for a few weeks I'd run into things I don't like, but no.
Ok, there is also weird food here. There are so many palm tree fruits that people eat that we obviously don't have in Finland. Or Europe. Or anywhere outside tropics. Well, they're not actually weird. Just different.
But tapioca. Tapioca is actually weird. It's a flour-kind-of-thing made of cassava (or mandioca in pt and maniokki/kassava in fin, which is a big deal here and elsewhere in the tropical world in general, not just in the tapioca-form) that people here use to make these... pancake... no. The only way tapioca is like a pancake is that they're both made on a frying pan (yes, I mean that kind of pancake). The point is you put it on a frying pan. Nothing else except the flour. Actually Wikipedia calls it starch instead of flour. The Portuguese word for is is goma, which google translates to gum. So I don't even know what the thing you put onto the pan is. The consistency of the thing is quite close to potato flour, except it's... wetter? I mean potato flour is more powdery. But it's pretty close.
Anyway, what was I saying?
Right. You put the flour-thing on a pan, alone without anything like liquid and eggs and what ever you'd think goes into pancakes. And you heat it, and it just... sticks together. On it's own. So the thing you're left with is something that is definitely not like a pancake in anything but shape. And then you put anything in it. Cheese. Fruit. Palm. Something that isn't lettuce but is a leaf. I don't know what they are. But tapiocas are really good, despite the fact that the tapioca itself tastes pretty much like nothing. But I already miss them for when I'm returning to Finland.
Anyway, the weirdest thing is how in the world does the thing that basically looks like potato flour stick together when heated. I don't understand.
Also.
Red bananas.
These are so weird that even the locals were like "wait, is that a red banana?!"
(There are also some other plants in the basket, obviously. The brown-pink-ish long things at the bottom are the cassava roots. But red bananas?! Or possibly orange. I can't quite decide.)
They're good, though. And they kinda taste red. Is a weird thing to say. I mean, they taste like banana, but I can also taste the red. It tastes like red. Or maybe I'm imagining. Also perfectly possible. The human brain is quite easy to fool when it comes to things like this.
Also.
Banana chips. I realise this doesn't sound like a weird thing. But I don't mean the dried, pretty much tasteless banana chips that are the worst and most annoying part of any müsli that happens to have them. I mean chips. Deep-fry-and-season-with-salt chips. Like potato chips, except banana chips. They too are good.
And then there's this food:
Ok, actually the end result looked like this:
(No, but seriously. That too was good.)
The yellow thing that isn't banana in that food is another form of cassava that has in this case been used basically like couscous. In general here it's used in everything. You know, you're eating and on your plate you have some rice and fish and this tomato-onion salad that is apparently a big thing here, and next to those is a heap of this couscous-kinda-like thing, except it's dry. As in uncooked. As in hard. And then it just gets mixed with all the other food while you eat. I actually really like it. Which is good, because it's literally everywhere.
Anyway, the point was onion-banana-not-couscous-risotto-thing. Farofa, it's apparently actually called. I mean, farofa isn't necessarily done with banana and onion but I think is a general name for a food that has the cassava in that form the same way basically any food that's couscous mixed with anything is called couscous. Unless the couscous (or the cassava) has a minor role in the food, like in a salad that's more a salad than a couscous but has also couscous. I think. It's also possible that I completely misunderstood what farofa is.
Wait, when did this turn into weird banana things -post instead of weird all things -post?
Anyway, I think these are all the things I wanted to say. Probably. Even if they were all about bananas. Maybe I'll make another of these once I've been here longer and discovered some of the deeper strangeties. (What do you mean, spell check? Of course strangety is a word. Oddity is a word, why wouldn't strangety be a word too?)
~matu
