What Has Happened To This World?

Photo Autumn

Weather-wise, it was a typical day for England. A little foggy and drizzly. I arrived with two bulky suitcases that did not actually contain too much. Some clothes, some shoes, some documents and notes. Most of the space in one of the suitcases was occupied by a massive and very heavy Oxford English Dictionary – a symbol of my dedication to mastering the English language and a continuous and nagging reminder of how much I still need to learn. At the time, this dictionary was the only materialistic possession that really mattered to me and regardless of its weight I had to drag it along with me.

I was never a very practical type. More of a dreamer, adventure-seeker, hungry to see what’s beyond the horizon of my little but picturesque village in Poland, hungry for knowledge and new experiences, always thirsty for doing things by my own, finding out the truths for myself. I wanted to experience life elsewhere with my own skin, touch it with my own hands, enjoy it with my own soul. Just to live and pursue the dream of learning and finding out. Speaking English was not just a symbol of freedom and adventure. It was a swipe card that opened more than one world and enabled me to explore more than one reality. Amazing things happened ever since I put my foot beyond our Polish boarder. I looked after two Nigerian children while working as an Au-pair, wore a pink Thai dress while a waitress at a Thai restaurant, poured Fosters while bar-tending with Australians, celebrated the year of the Dragon with my Chinese students, devoured pieces of Black British writing at university, dipped bread in a fragrant curry while sitting on the floor with my Afghan friends, I sang nursery rhymes in Greek to my son’s best friend and celebrated my son’s baptism with our dearest friends of other beliefs.

But why am I writing this? I’ve been listening to the news and looking at the headlines and I’m getting concerned… it is alarming to see that attitudes against diversity are being promoted and are spreading around the world. For what reason?

The globe has been wounded and scared many times by attitudes similar to those. The trees of our genealogy are witnesses to those events. Many people went through great efforts and reconciliation processes because they wanted to learn to love again. And they did. And they love. And they cherish. And they care. Most of us individually have not experienced severe hatred, we haven’t been exposed to maltreatment at the hands of others – so my questions are: Why are so many hearts around the world closing? Are padlocks in fashion or something?

Key

3 Myths That Block Progress for The Poor: Bill Gates’ Annual Open Letter (Link)

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I seem to be coming across very illuminating articles recently. Here is one that is wonderfully enlightening and fully informative. It is a must-read. Please do share it further. It’s good to dispel doubts and clarify confusions: 3 Myths That Block Progress for The Poor – Annual Open Letter by Bill Gates.

About a mum who stopped buying children’s products: link to an article

Baby playing with a wallet 2

Just a link to a brilliant and informative article about a mum who said ‘no’ to consumerism and made parenting without spending possible: ‘Successful parenting without spending money – a mother’s story.’

Baby playing with a wallet

Eating Well in Winter: Curried Chickpeas (and experiments with food photography)

making curry

It’s winter in the UK. Days are wet, windy and unpleasant and we keep on getting one cold after another. Fighting bugs with medicine doesn’t really work for most us. It’s the warm and nutritious food that strengthens our immune systems enough to complete the recovery. One of the nicest aspects of living in England is that it introduces you to foods from all the corners of the world and so it’s very easy to get all the necessary spices and ingredients to make these amazing dishes at home. I rummaged through our larder and took out a few good and healthy foods to replace the loved and cherished but eaten far too often pasta. There are many alternatives to it, of course, different types of wheat, lentils, pulses, sweet potatoes, brown rice. All good and yummy as long as you get the right recipe. I found one for Cholay (Curried Chickpeas) online at allrecipes.co.uk posted by Shammi Edwards (here). I thought it might work well so I decided to give it a go.

pasta fusilicieciorkaIt took me quite a while to prepare the dish but I wouldn’t worry if I were you… it’s the photographing, a moving toddler in the kitchen and my personal choices regarding the recipe (like using dried rather than tinned chickpeas) that did it… not the recipe itself. Here are the ingredients I used: Assam tea, bay leaf, water, dried not tinned chickpeas, garam masala, garlic, onions, coriander seeds, turmeric, cumin powder, ginger root, tomatoes, basil, salt. If you’d like to do it, you can find the quantities on the original site where I found the recipe. I used basil out of pure necessity as I just didn’t have any fresh coriander leaves to put in and I was pleasantly surprised how well it worked in that dish (made it quite refreshing and invigorating) and Assam tea as a replacement for English Breakfast tea worked fine too. I actually think that this dish lends itself to some manipulation and as long as you get the spices right and add a bit of water here and there in order not to burn the spices or the onions you’ll be fine. You can also make the dish hotter by adding extra garlic and ginger. That was my option and I was happy I used it. I was not too preoccupied with having grounded spices. I just grounded the seeds myself. It adds extra freshness to the dish.

grinding

Dried chickpeas can take a bit of time to prepare as you need to soak them overnight then drain and discard the water. After that you cook them in salted water even up to 40-50 minutes. It felt like ages for me so when my little son went for his afternoon nap I decided to experiment with photography a little. I was trying to find a way of reducing shadows from ingredients on that chopping board that you see on top, normally photographers would use a white sheet of card to disperse the light and I thought that I’ll try a mirror. It worked well and actually it allowed me to take a very interesting shot of the arranged ingredients. Here’s how it came out:

ingredients in the mirror

I finished cooking after sunset so  I didn’t take any more photographs. The light was too poor for it inside the house. But back to food, I served the curried chickpeas with jasmine rice and it was delicious. Honestly, heaven. So much so that I felt slightly guilty about eating it as I seemed to have pledged to have a year without a luxury…  and having this food certainly felt like having one. ;)

This post is a contribution towards: The Caring 2014 Project.

Lasting friendships

Sea

My friend is moving. To the other side of the big pond. She will take with her caring family, love of beauty and her sensitive and reflective mothering. Her sense of humour, passion for reading and timely wisdoms thrown at me just at the drop of a hat. She’ll move and from then on we will only be able to have virtual cups of tea when the time change or our owl-like natures permit.

This has been happening to me quite often ever since I settled in England. Different characters and personalities cross my life and our living room, share with us their life events, moments of joy and sadness, jokes and frustrations but eventually venture further to explore different realities and live different lives. It’s difficult to nurture those friendships… divided by space, time and daily routines. We try though… by emails, cards and messages sent now and again, occasional get-togethers, chats and phone-calls… because we miss them, those exchanges of common interests and problems, being part of their lives and their contribution to ours. It often takes to be removed from one’s reality to understand how valuable and enriching our relationships were… how much we’ve been learning from them and how much of a better person we became through them.

When I moved from Poland and decided to study here, I was missing my friends so so dearly. All of them… and you know what… this feeling hasn’t changed. I still miss them. They are still in my thoughts and they are still my reference points, I still see myself somehow in them and through them… starting from those in my primary school through to those that I met at later stages of my education and through various other experiences. I just think that it’s impossible to forget a friend. Lose touch with, yes, that’s possible but forgetting is not. And I think that often this is what we are afraid of, of being forgotten, or of being not loved by them as much as in the past. And perhaps they fear that too.

I met once a very eminent senior academic and had a chance to have dinner with him. Over a plate with nice hot food and glasses of wine, he told us stories… of his friends. His whole conversation was filled with friends. You very quickly realised that they were his focus and his life and what a wonderful focus to have! I expected (and feared slightly) a conversation laden with reflections on politics, literature and history or a strong focus on his academic work but no… as he was reminiscing with a pause to smile or laugh, it was becoming more and more apparent to me that this man is just living, breathing and enjoying his friendships… he was with those people mentally as much as he was physically with us…. he loved them dearly… and that love surpassed the distances that he had travelled.

There is a term in psychology called ‘mirroring’ and it refers to us subconsciously (or consciously) copying of gestures, language and emotional responses of others during our conversations. Apparently we tend to see people who mirror our emotional responses as more empathetic. [Therefore this ‘technique’ of mirroring is frequently recommended to parents who want to build a good relationship with their children… not to reject or disregard the feelings but to mirror them.] I am thinking of my close and long-distance friendships and I can see that yes, regardless of the distance, changes in our circumstance, developments, perhaps this is what we still want from our friendships and friends… to be able to ‘mirror’ us somehow. If sharing and being part of daily struggles is not possible, what else remains for us to do?