UMY International Cultural and Culinary Festival 2019

Team Suriname. From left to right: Baggio (a classmate from Madagascar),
Anyra (from Suriname) and Elfira (the Liason Officer from UMY to the Surinamese booth)

“International Cultural and Culinary Festival (ICCF) is an annual event held by Universitas Muhammadiyah Yogyakarta (UMY), designed for providing a space for international students in Yogyakarta with “get together” ambiance. This program has been started and successfully conducted since 2015.”

Extended introduction

The above is an introduction of the ICCF as described by the host university. On March 18th, 2019, the 5th ICCF was held in the Sportorium of UMY, and sekitar 30 countries were represented by students from those countries who are currently studying in the Indonesian city Yogyakarta, often also spelled as Jogjakarta or Jogja as a shorter version.

These were the countries represented (in order of their booth number): Malaysia, Taiwan, Ukraine, The Philippines, Suriname, Italy, Egypt, Rwanda, Thailand, Japan, Tanzania, Ghana, Botswana, Timor Leste, United States of America, Vietnam, Yemen, Colombia, The Gambia, Sudan, China, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Poland, Pakistan, Nigeria, Mexico, Palestine and last but not least, Hungary.

The Philippines and Thailand were also represented by their embassies during this event. And also by students. So some countries had multiple booths.

I do not have a lot of pictures of this event as I was very busy decorating and frying. :( Don’t mind the low-quality screenshots later on in the blog.

Introducing myself

First, let me briefly introduce myself: My name is Anyra Hamat and I am an international student at the State University of Yogyakarta (Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta- UNY). I am here with the Darmasiswa Program. This program allows me to be in Indonesia for a year to learn the Indonesian language and culture. I currently live in a small studio near my university. I currently have two pans I cook my food with. This information is important for later on.

Now let’s get back to the amazing cultural and culinary festival.

Participation explained                                 

First of all, thank you to UMY for the opportunity to represent my country at this festival.

Apparently being the only Surinamese student in Jogja at the time, I volunteered to participate in this festival when UMY reached out to UNY to recruit international students who wanted to represent their country. I love representing my country, I love educating other people in the world that Suriname does, in fact, exist. So I volunteered.

But I am neither Wonder Woman nor Supergirl. No way I would not burn out (this is a deliberate double negative) if I tried to take on this event on my own, so I asked a classmate to help me. His name is Baggio and he’s from Madagascar. (hey dude, if you’re reading this: thanks again for being such a good sport and helping me!)

For this event, every booth gets a budget to work with. With that biaya you have to decorate your booth, buy all your ingredients for the food from your country, buy all your packaging/serving material, buy back-up gas, pay for transport, this and that, etc etc. Things add up real quick.

Plan B-akabana

bad screenshot. because not many pictures were taken. Look, there is one of the two pans I own lol

Initially, I wanted to make bruine bonen met rijst, a very popular dish from Suriname, but I couldn’t find all the ingredients needed. I also did not have all the cookware to prepare this dish. After all, I live in a tiny studio and had to buy all the cookware when I moved in. I literally only have two pans I cook with. I also had a limited budget for this event, so buying all the cookware needed for the bruine bonen could get pricey. Let’s not even talk about pom, another classic Surinamese dish. You need an oven to prepare that dish. Oven? What is that? Some kind of exotic animal? Sorry, doesn’t exist in my tiny studio. *insert emoji laughing in tears*

Helaas dan maar roeien met de riemen die ik heb. Loosely translated: I had to play with the hand I was dealt. Yes, me using three different languages in this blog is a conscious decision.

After much consideration, I decided to make bakabana for the festival. Bakabana comes from the Surinamese language ‘Sranantongo’ and literally translated means fried bananas and in Indonesian: pisang goreng. It’s basically bananas deep fried in a batter. Why in Heaven’s name would I want to make a snack that supposedly already exists in Jogja??? Am I trying to make a fool out of myself in the country of my ancestors??? Hold on.

Screenshot made from an Instagram story I made of my bakabanas. 
Because why use a HD picture that was never taken if you can use a blurry screenshot, am I rite?

Comparing pisang goreng and bakabana

To my surprise, and probably also to yours if you’re Surinamese, I discovered that the pisang goreng from Jogja differs from that from Suriname. The batters (deeg, kental) are significantly different. In Jogja they apparently add eggs, baking powder, vanilla powder and other things to the batter and sometimes even milk.

on the left the Kepok banana (commons.wikimedia.org) and on the right ripe plantains

The type of bananas usually used also differ. From what I could find, the Kepok banana is usually the first choice for pisang goreng in Jogja. In Suriname we like to use ripe plantains. That type is called Tanduk in Jogja. The type of banana does exist here in Jogja but is not the preferred choice for pisang goreng. The Kepok banana can also be found in Suriname but is not the most popular type used for bakabana.

The way the snack is eaten also a big difference: In Jogja the snack is more (a lot) on the sweeter side, usually topped with chocolate or other sweet toppings and even cheese. In Suriname bakabana is usually enjoyed with spicy peanut sauce. More on the savory side.

Look, I am NOT pretending that I know the full history or origin of this snack and why they differ even though they have the same name but in different languages. I’m just sharing my personal observations. All I’m trying to say is that the Surinamese version arguably differs A LOT from the Jogja version.

Phew, so happy I was able to make that clear. Ok, moving on. 

For all the reasons mentioned above, I decided to make bakabana for this festival, so people could see (AND TASTE) the differences between both snacks that have the same name in different languages.

So why did I decide to make bakabana? Let me sum it up for those sitting in the back:

• Limited ingredients for other Surinamese dishes;
• limited cookware, limited budget;
• ease of the recipe;
• last but not least: so the good people of Jogjakarta and all the international students could see and taste the differences between the version from Suriname and the version that exists in Jogja.

Booth shenanigans

Now that my reasoning for choosing bakabana as the featured snack is out of the way, can we talk about the booth? HA! I decided to go all out with my decorations. And I really mean ALL OUT. I probably overdid it. Probably. You see for yourself.

https://youtu.be/GgIcAFE-BSY

But yeah, I wanted to highlight the Surinamese colors, the palm trees, the color green, the Surinamese flag, etc, etc. I also brought postcards from Suriname (that I bought at the airport before my departure to Indonesia) and hung them in the booth. It was so much fun decorating! A lesson for next time though: edit a bit. Just a tiiiiiiny bit.

I also made giant flowers in the colors of the Surinamese flag. Or at least as close to the actual shades as I could find. I used tissue paper and crepe paper to make the flowers. In the week leading up to the festival, I spend hours and hours making these flowers in various sizes, because I really wanted decorations in the color of the Surinamese flag. So worth it. And I learned another skill. Win-win. Thanks to YouTube tutorials.

Disassembling the decorations was so much fun too! We got to pop the balloons and in a way release some tension and stress that came from being super busy frying bakabana’s and explaining the snack for about three hours straight. Popping balloons ya’ll! And of course make sure everything is cleaned up and all the trash is in the garbage bags. Opgeruimd staat netjes.

Wrap

Aaand that’s a wrap. If you want to see Instagram stories of this event, feel free to check out my Instagram page, especially the highlight that has a banana in the title. In those stories, you’ll also find reactions from people trying bakabana with peanut sauce for the first time. Click here to go to my Instagram page.

New experiences had
New people met
New voices heard
New lessons learned
And now we move on.

Byeee,

Anyra

This blog was originally posted on my Medium account: https://medium.com/@anyrahamat . 

I tweaked this blog a bit before I published it here on Blogspot.