23 April 2006

Attack of the killer vegetable

The killer vegetable
© Greenpeace/ Prout

Cooking our dinner takes quite some preparation, because we live in the camp with a number of people and cook on campfire. When it was my turn to help out, I was given the task of making coconut cream out of grated coconut. Petteri helped me by putting water on it; then I had to squeeze all the juice out of the coconut.

A few days later I developed a blister and some red spots on my hand. I also had a scratch on my face. The locals told me it was a taro rash. A taro is a vegetable and when you cut it you are not supposed to touch it because you will develop a rash.

Well I touched the taro while my hands were wet, because I mixed it with the coconut cream. Almost two weeks later, I still get new blisters, even though we tried several lotions. I probably won’t die from it …

Preparing coconut cream
© Greenpeace/ Prout

There are in fact some nasty animals and plants around here – apart from the vegetables! Deadly snakes, mosquitoes, leeches and of course the mungi – a very little, itchy bastard making the life of the volunteers less than comfortable. But they all belong to the forest though and they are all useful in a way. For example, sugarcane thorns are used as fishing hooks.

When the taro is cooked there are no problems anymore. Some of the rough leaves that scratch you are used as sandpaper when they are dried. Everything has its purpose in the rainforest and therefore it’s important to be very careful with it.

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://weblog.greenpeace.org/cgi-bin/mv/mt-tb.cgi/1625