"ghgadoihgoahgoidgih!”
"ghgadoi....?" I try.
"gh ga doi..."
"gerr hga," it’s not getting easier.
He shakes his head. “No no no! Liike dis: ‘gerr’ – ‘gh’”
"gh…"
“jes jes!!! ‘ghgadoihgoahgoidgih!’
I don’t know what I was saying or if I was even ordering the right thing.
“That one,” I say, pointing to the foreign food.
“Jes juu van ghgadoihgoahgoidgih. Free hundre' fidy pliz”
The day has started well. One foreign language transaction, one satisfied teacher/food vendor and one less-hungry me.
Finding a place to sit at an over cramped Chinese New Year Celebration is hard. The tribe – I’ve decided to call them this because the size of the families seems to be significantly more than the 2.4 average I’m used to in a western country – are taking up every square inch of this park.The mothers sit surrounded with their children and their children’s children, who hang off grandma as though she were a swing. The men standing in circles nearby are like a gaggle of geese: harping on in various incomprehensible dialects, shuffling left and right on their feet biding their time until the fireworks display. Or perhaps another event that I’m unaware of, probably due to my visitor ignorance.
Back at the food stall, my new friend nods his head in my direction asking: “How’s the ghgadoihgoahgoidgih?” Perhaps he can sense my awkwardness. Standing in a sea of Malay and Chinese people, on an island that is obviously not my home. I smile and give him the thumbs up, hoping that this gesture doesn’t mean something offensive in his culture. He smiles back and I see now for the first time just how old he is. His back curls forward from years of bending over the stove, his hands wrinkly and dry and his face creased more often than a well used origami paper, his mouth barely contains any teeth and his hair is all but gone.
I stand up, having finished my food, making my way through the busy crowd, towards my hotel, smiling as I go, knowing that today, I had my first taste of ghgadoihgoahgoidih.
