The Picnic Kings

That would be local people here. When I was in Bible institute, one of the projects I had to do was make a checklist for having a successful picnic. When we did leaders’ outings or staff outings or EQUIP outings in Indianapolis, it was critical to plan the successful picnic. Well, there are elements to a perfect picnic here, too, but my local friends make it look bloomin’ simple, like breathing. I think it is because picnics are less events here and more of the normal fabric of life.
 

The more I picnic with local friends, the more common elements I notice. Here are the Picnic Kings' tools:
 

1)      A mat (basat). I now suspect that every local man stores one in the trunk of his car. It’s a heavy woven plastic creation that seats about seven people (unless you have the monster version). It’s way better than a picnic blanket, because it is thick enough to pad slightly rocky ground (important!) and it shakes crumbs off so well that it doesn’t really need to be washed, at least not frequently.
 

2)      A disposable plastic tablecloth piece (samat), or two or three, depending on how many times you plan to stop on a given trip. You lay this on top of the mat as your actual tablecloth, only you wrap up all your trash in it at the end of the meal and dispose of it all together. Bye bye forever, silly plastic tablecloths. Who wants to wipe a tablecloth if you don’t have to? The samat also explains why the basat doesn’t really have to be washed.
 

3)      A thermos of coffee. They make these things well; they can keep hot drinks hot for hours! Because really hot coffee is vital to life here. (Optional: a thermos of tea if you are having breakfast)
 

4)      Dates & fruit, because even if you are going for lunch, there’s gonna be a coffee time before or after.
 

5)      Food & water. Except that you really don’t have to bring loads from home, because of the ubiquitous cold/corner stores. For today’s breakfast, I think they brought triangle cheese and a container of cooked kidney beans. But I think they stopped and bought pita bread and a massive bag of local potato chips (like barbecue chips), which they call “potatoes” in Arabic. I mean, they are, just cut and cooked a different way. A very normal breakfast here (I’ve seen it more than once) is a) smear your bread with triangle cheese, b) dump potato chips on top, c) crush everything together, and d) enjoy! Only today I learned the trick of stuffing your sandwich back in the potato chip bag, which then becomes the sandwich wrapper and catches falling chip crumbs. Brilliant. We also had beans, which was a luxury for a picnic, and milk tea, which I love, love, love.
 

For lunch, they picked up chicken and fish biryani from a restaurant, plus an assortment of drinks from a cold store. Orange juice for the 11-year-old, despite her protests that it was a baby drink. “Dew” and orange Mirinda for the more mature. (One friend calls Dew the local whisky.)
 

6)      A container of water for washing hands before and after the meal. (Optional: hand lotion for after washing after the meal)
 

7)      A big plate to dump the biryani on, to save you from eating out of the little aluminum disposables. It feels like home!

Am I missing anything? Probably, because I’m not from here. But I still marvel at the simplicity of the local picnic. When Kayla and I picnicked with our little brother this summer, it was a variation on this theme for dinner. But the basat, the restaurant food (shwarma), the chips, and the Dew were all in common. But a cell phone for a flashlight—what a happy memory.
 

Andrea and I think that we could go home tomorrow and forever want to plan picnics this way. I guess the big difference for us is that we don’t have the small corner stores. Our home equivalent, convenience stores, are ridiculously overpriced. As is most restaurant food. Plus restaurant food here—at least biryani—is the same idea as what you’d prepare at home, while a McDonald’s cheeseburger is not. But I’m learning a lot about the simplicity of picnicking and the value of choosing a place by the side of the road and enjoying it … from the picnic kings.