Blog 6 Tapioca Chips

I awoke (with the help of my alarm under my pillow), showered quietly and headed down the slippery slope at 5.15am ready for morning arti. By 5.45 I got the feeling no one else was coming. 

At 6.30 I gave up waiting, sang a few songs, finished my chanting and headed over to the kitchen.

“Chop chop?” I smiled at the doorway, “Yes yes Mataji, chop chop” beamed Ganesh quickly producing things for me to chop chop.

At 8am Simheswara arrived to inform me that Alex and I could make chips from the farm grown tapioca for the forthcoming Rathyatra festival in a few days. At last we had a mission and I happily piled into the truck to be driven through the pouring rain the short distance to the factory.

Unfortunately the tapioca hadn't quite been harvested yet so we had a slight problem about making them into chips ....... but the bags and labels were there which allowed Alex and I to spend a happy two hours chatting while labeling bags and putting them into neat piles to await the soon to be made chips.

(Chips = Crisps to the rest of us in the UK!)

Outside the rain continued to  pour down but we were inside and although the noise was deafening at times, we remained dry and warm. 

At 10am Simheswara arrived with the truck to take us to breakfast. Although we had done barely an hours work, I had been up since 5am and breakfast sounded great!

After breakfast we were returned via the truck to the factory to find three boxes of tapioca waiting for us along with two knives. Neither Alex nor myself have ever seen fresh muddy tapioca and with the briefest of explanations from Simheswara about how it pealed and was then soaked to get the arsenic out of it, we were left to our own devices!!

We sat, we pealed, we slipped with the knife and plastered ourselves up. The mud covered our hands, the tapioca, our clothes but we were happy, we had a mission! 

As each piece of tapioca was skinned we popped it into a huge blue plastic drum that we had filled with water so it could soak. The drum began to fill up (even though the water was so muddy you couldn't see the tapioca in the bottom) and the first basket emptied.

Simheswara arrived to take us to lunch.

We looked at the mess we had made. Muddy water, a pile of discarded skins and two more boxes waiting to be done. I put the knife down. “Do you come back after lunch and finish?” I enquired. “If you want,” was the smiled non committal answer.

We were dropped back at our accommodation block to find that lunch was being served there for a change as a school trip was visiting the farm.

Children with clothes tinged with orange mud sat cross legged on the floor of the large communal area while food was served to them on banana leaves.

Alex and I were given seats at a table and served the same amazing array of foods followed by fruits from the farm!

We felt like guests of honour at some great function!

We ate our amazing lunch, helped tidy the room and went to rest in our private rooms while the rain continued to pour from above.

No truck came to pick us up and the rain was too sever to venture outside. 

We waited until 3.30pm but still no one could be seen on the wet road outside.

I was not exactly sure where the chip factory was, as while being ferried around in the truck, I hadn't really paid attention to where we were going, so Alex and I read. 

The rain eased off slightly about 5pm, we read some more and then as darkness fell we went for dinner.

“Tomorrow we go to KL Temple” Simheswara announced just before we went to bed. There is a big festival in Penang and then another the day after on the island. You want to go to the festivals?”

Both Alex and I were delighted to go! I packed a small bag while Alex packed her stuff. She had only planned on a week long visit to the farm and if we were to be away for the next few days she felt she should take her stuff with her. We were beginning to learn about the spontaneous planning that seemed to happen at the farm.

I awoke at 5am the next morning but decided not to get up for arti as no one had turned up the day before.

It was only the sound of the conch shell being blown that alerted me to the fact that someone was indeed at the temple and I rushed to wash and get down there.

The devotee seemed surprised yet pleased to see me and together we sang the songs and performed the morning rituals before he left and I sat alone for my morning meditations under the watchful eye of Lord Narasimha.

At 7am I was in the kitchen with my Chop chop companion.

We had been told we would be leaving about noon so I stayed in the kitchen until Ganesh announced that Chop chop was finished and it was now eating time!

Again I felt I had hardly started to work before it was over! Alex joined me for breakfast and as we walked back to our rooms Gopesa arrived to enquire if we were ready!

Luckily we had packed our bags the night before and managed to be ready within a few minutes. Bags were dropped into the back seat of the truck and we climbed in, only to stop again at the base of the hill.

After about ten minutes I asked if we were waiting for someone.

“Tapioca” was Gopesa's one word reply.

“Oh the tapioca we did yesterday?”, I smiled.

“No, different” again a man of few words.

When the tapioca arrived it was put in the back of the truck and we were off. 

Something slowly began to nag at the back of my mind. We had had to wait while the boys stripped and washed fresh tapioca............ So what had happened to all the tapioca Alex and I had done?

We had left it soaking as instructed but we hadn't returned to the factory to see what had become of it.

Through a few questions, with only one word answers, it became clear that the tapioca Alex and I had spent four hours cleaning had been ruined while it had sat all night in the water. The water was so muddy no one had realised it was sitting in the bottom of the barrel until they had emptied the container in the morning!!

Lesson I – Tapioca gets soaked for 20 mins, if you leave it all night it is NOT good!!! 

I wish someone had told us that before we had worked so hard!!!!

It was also clear that no one wanted us to feel bad about what had happened, hence the one word answers and no blame what-so-ever.

This was going to be a very interesting Workaway!!