Man Bush

In Bislama, “man-bush” is slang for someone who is out of their element and thus doesn’t know what they’re doing.  While it derives from someone who was raised “in the bush” not knowing anything about the modernities of city-life, it applies equally as well to this city boy living in the bush!

On Saturday, we ran out of gas for our stove.  The stores that sell refills are in town, and wouldn’t be open until Monday anyway, so cooking on the open fire was our only option.  Even during my limited camping experiences, someone else started the fire and cooked, so all I had going for me was a little common sense and few times of witnessing locals start fires (though I must admit I hadn’t really ever paid attention to how they did it). 

Wood is, of course, plentiful, so I gathered up some pieces that were dried out, as well as a few dead coconut branches (I knew those were perfect fire starters).  I got two cinder blocks and four pieces of re-bar to make a grill and we were ready to go.  Though it probably would have been beneficial, my pride was glad there were no locals around to help - my “man-bushness” would have been embarrassing.  It took me about 20 minutes to figure out how to actually get the fire started for lunch, but once we got it going we fared quite nicely.  And stir-fry on the open fire tastes great!

Alsen came by later that evening, saw the ashes and inquired.  I told him the story and he got a big smile on his face - “was it hard for you?” he asked.  Haha, I just told him that I was man-bush and he laughed.  I must admit that once I had a few episodes under my belt, I started to enjoy it, and by Sunday night I was pretty efficient.  The major downside was that the smell of smoke was everywhere, not to mention how time consuming cooking became.  We quickly determined that Monday would be our go-to-town day that week, so that we could replace our gas bottle.  But, it was a true village experience, and next time we’ll be more prepared.