Friday 27 January 2017

Day 5:: Pickin' Chickin' and More Unicorns

So today was looong!

I mean it was a standard 8.30 till 7.30 day, but it felt long as hell.
It started with finishing off the days curry ready for the lunch service. It was a red curry with tomato, fenugreek, and kidney beans, it came out well and had a nice smokey flavour about it.

After lunch we started work on my curry for tomorrow, which was supposed to be a nice simple bombay aloo, with potatoes, onions, peas, spinach, finished with lemon juice, mint, and fresh corriander, then the chicken showed up....

So each element you add to the meal adds hours, and I mean hours of work, and prep time. You want onions at home, that can be done in 20 minutes, you want onions over here, it's 4 people chopping them for an hour, followed by 2 people constantly stirring them, and reducing them down for between 3 and 4 hours, normally me.
When some short dated chicken got donated there was an instant pang of happiness, because the refugees love it so much, followed by a bout a dread due to 70kg of supremes need to be prepped, roasted, and then pulled off the bone to be added to the curry. We were making really good time and on track for an early finish, but the addition of the chicken added a big load to the job, and as such the day became a lot longer and harder. Still I have a giant amount of chicken skin left over, and am going to make chicken skin crisps for the volunteers at lunch tomorrow. Who says I can't get a bit cheffy in refugee kitchen, aye? We were thinking of sending the chicken skin crisps into camp, but it makes big problems if there isn't enough to go around, in the past it's caused fights, and problems with the mafia in camp who would insist they got it, and might take it from others.

The mafia are a problem. Most of the refugees come from very difficult countries, like Iraq and Afghanistan, where all they have known is war. War breeds very hard people, and while vast majority having nothing to do with criminality, when you have 1000's of people caged in a camp, by police who don't like them, the gangs take over. They are mostly very friendly to the volunteers as they know that it we don't do our jobs, then they don't eat either, as they are trapped just like everyone else. However a fight almost kicked today when a guy pushed to the front, and was asked to wait in line. He may have been mafia, he may have just been someone that was desperate, I don't know.

The evening was really good fun, I mostly hung out with Celeste who is mad into unicorns! I downloaded a game on my phone that involved them, and we played that for a while whilst wearing her unicorn hat, then she tried to teach me how to use her hover-board. I wasn't very good, and ended up on the floor more than once, to screams of delight from her.

Todays Kurdish word: Mirisk, meaning Chicken, as in 'you want me to put HOW MUCH mirisk in the curry?'


T

No comments:

Post a Comment