BUNYA BUNYA BABY

This is an earthoven - a bunya meal. More details to follow - I just want to get the pictures up. A hole is dug about 3-4 feet down and a fire built inside. The fire is covered with rocks, and as the first burns out you are left with hot rocks at which point you cover them with palm leaves (or something) and then your food. You cover that with more hot rocks, more leaves and more dirt and more random stuff (like a trap and a piece of corrogated tin?!?) then you let it cook most of the day. In this photo we are loading the food into the oven. Back row left to right: Kevin, Matt, random Momma, Eddie, and Ryan in the navy blue. The food in the oven at the moment looks like Taro root, or maybe Kumala - either way it wasn't good. The structure in the background is a nakamal where kava is served. And this is on the Peace Corps office/house property.