Fun Times at the River and Chicken on a Stick...

Today the kids had a half day of school so myself and two other moms decided to go somewhere fun with the kids. One mom wanted to go to Lake Sentani and swim but after her son told her that the last time they went there was human excrement floating in the water, that idea was nixed. Instead we went up to a hill known as Ifar. Back in the forties it was known as General McAurthur’s lookout. At the top there is a memorial to him. To get to this place we needed to enter into an army base. As women are not allowed to wear shorts there, I stayed in our vehicle while another mom, who was more appropriately dressed, left her identification at the guard booth. I was asked to roll down our windows so they could see who was in the car although the guards did not approach the car at all. Then off we went. You feel at first that you are in a different place/country as the road is nice (at least at the entrance) and the grass is green and nicely cut and there are palms planted alongside the road. We passed by army buildings, some still from WW2, houses of soldiers, and a training ground complete with a water pit and other obstacles. Finally we reached the mouth of the trail and we parked our vehicles and walked about fifteen to twenty minutes. On the way we passed cocoa trees with their odd-shaped fruit hanging down in different stages of ripeness. I never knew they made cocoa powder from the seeds of the fruit of this tree. Then we reached the river where there is a fairly large pool to swim in. It was quite deep in one spot so the kids could jump off the rocks into the pool. A fun but tiring afternoon.
Not feeling very energetic after that, I decided to fire up the rice cooker and order some stir-fried green beans from one place and some chicken satay from another. They make a delicious peanut sauce at this little place, it’s got a zip to it. I watched them barbeque the chicken and was horrified when the girl (she took over from the older woman in the photo) put the already cooked chicken back into the container holding the marinating sauce along with some raw chicken! I politely asked her if she could please cook that chicken again… I hope that it was cooked enough again… I guess we’ll find out tonight… Don’t you love the burnt out fan they use? They barbeque with coconut husks and the bbq is not deep so they often need to “fan” the flames. It sure is tasty and at 12,000 rupiahs per portion (10 sticks-although not a ton of meat per stick…), not too dear!
As I’m writing this, the power has gone off three times and is still off….