Posted on by wrote in Haiti, Musings.

I got a chance to cook Sauce Pwa today. I’d be lying if I said sauce pwa (bean sauce) is my favorite haitian dish, though I did use to enjoy immensely the boy(dough boys) my grandma used to include.

Random Aside : In my child’s head I somehow mixed up the haitian boy and english guy. Throughout my childhood I called the little dough boys guy and my family particularily my mom still love to point fun at this fact.

Anyways for years my grandma cooked awesome sauce pwa for dinner probably once or twice a week. It is definitively one of my greatest regrets that I never bothered to learn her methods of cooking. I remember as a child watching her pour her soul into these dishes, and not yet understanding that it was one of her ways of showing love. The dedication and effort she put into simple household tasks like cleaning the dishes, cooking food, and folding laundry were not just her daily routine and job within the household, but shows of the dedication and affection she felt for all of us, even those who do not yet nderstand the love she bore them.

That’s a rather long and ponderous opening for a simple story. Today I got to to cook Sauce Pwa with a wonderful lady named Margaret. For days she was the quiet cook who fed the staff of the clinic and construction company that happen to share the compound with GOALS international staff and the 2 remenants of All Hands (sadly I won’t be including details of the drunken adventures with Patty and Quinn, two of the best people I’ve ever met). Yesterday I struck up a conversation with her and she was only too excited to talk about her craft. Watching her cook I was given goose bumps, as she reenact things I had seen my grandma do too often and paid attention to too little.For the entire morning I gave her my utmost attention, as she smiled and shared secrets passed down from her mother about how to cook sauce pwa (add cocunut water to make it extra good), Iwas left with a mixture of emotions. While we can’t go back and change the past, I do hope moving forward I learn to value even what seems to be the smallest most insignificant moments with the people I love.

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