Mambu Time!

My friend, Ini, invited me to a "mambu" recently and I was excited to finally get to experience another example of good Highlands cooking.  Ingredients needed:  chicken (live preferably), greens, ginger (lots of it), and bamboo.  So I headed to the market to buy our poor victim.

This chicken market is conveniently located where every chicken market should obviously be - behind the hardware store. 

Our chicken was affectionatly named "kakaruk" ("chicken" in Melanesian Pidgin), and kept inside the house overnight to be kept away from our campus dogs.

 Off to the village we go, bright and early.

Ini's husband, Allen, and another lady help get the greens ready.  I knew they'd be using a leaf I didn't really care for so I picked up some watercress at the market to add to it.

  

Ini.

This is one of my favorite places in our area to go. 

Fresh ginger is ground into the leaves.  They really like their ginger here.

Allen was pretty excited to get dressed up to get his picture taken.  The choir robe and cowboy hat make for an interesting combination. 

Poor Kakaruk.

The chicken is cut up into tiny pieces...ALL of the chicken.  There wasn't a single part that wasn't chopped up and added to the mix. 

The chicken is mixed with the greens and ginger and stuffed into freshly cut pieces of bamboo.  The ends are stuffed with grass to keep it all in and then the "mambu" (the Melanesian Pidgin word for "bamboo" and the name for this particular meal) are placed over the fire to cook.  Beside them to the right are tapiok (cassava root) and to the left some cooking bananas. 

I've seen them put everything in their hair from feathers to clothes pins...it's a pretty handy place to store anything you don't want to hold in your hands. 

The hors d'oeuvre: cooked banana.  After a while the mambu were done and I was sent into Ini's house to eat by myself.  For this I was thankful since I could pull out all the fat and bone without being seen!  I set them aside with the leftover mambu I couldn't eat and Ini was more than happy to finish off the "best" part afterwards.