Traveling Africa, Making a Big Rice Cake > Bonds Gallery

Traveling Africa, Making a Big Rice Cake

It looks like a museum.
The outside is adorned with glass.
It's a simple, one-room museum.

Something is on display inside, but it's hard to see because it's reflected in the glass.
To the right are vines.
Behind them are mountains.
There aren't many trees on the mountains, but there's a lot of grass.

We take a bus and head to another place.
Outside the window, fields and mountains stretch out.
However, the mountains and fields are often blackened and burned.
So there are no trees, only small, grass-like plants.

- Ah, this is Africa.
And they've deliberately set fires to burn the trees,
to create slash-and-burn fields for farming.

- A wide field and low hills connect.
We pass a building.
It's a school. The exterior walls of this building are also blackened and burned. The kids, probably done with school, came running to our car.

There was a police car over there, old and worn.
It looked like it'd been in an accident.
As our car passed, the police car followed.
It raced beside us, almost like it was in a race.
Oh, the police seemed to be guiding us somewhere.
It seemed like they were escorting us.

We stopped in front of a building.
Upstream from the building was a parking lot.
A wide stream flowed, leading to that side of the parking lot.

The bus carrying us backed up.
The floor was cement, but water was flowing.
Instinctively, I looked out the rear window.
And then I saw a large object in the middle of the stream.

"Hey, look at that!" I shouted. The others in the bus looked up at my voice.
There was a huge metal bucket, three to five stories high.
And inside it was a white rice cake the size of a telephone pole. Garaetteok is made with many different ingredients.
It's intended to be a giant rice cake soup.

An iron bucket stands by a stream, ankle-deep.
Clear and clear water flows.
In front of the bucket, a man is working on something with a long pole, leaning against the ground.
And next to him is a small storage building.

To the left of the iron bucket, Nak-eun Mountain is shaped like the letter "ㄱ."
A shallow stream flows around it, winding beneath it.
In the distance, low mountains are visible.

I approach and watch closely.
A young, sturdy man is inserting a long log into a square hole in the ground,
and working hard.
He then pours freshly steamed glutinous rice into it,
making rice cakes. It's a laborious process.
As he gradually moves the long log and pound,
the rice cakes gradually rise from the ground.

Ah, I'm curious about this, so I move close to him and watch. He placed a rectangular wooden structure behind him into the ground.
He then continued to pound it with a stick, gradually lifting the rice cake from beneath the ground.
I thought, "The entrance to the rice cake is cemented, so what if some cement dust gets in?"

"This looks good, let's take a picture."

Someone said.
"Take it like this."
He told me to do it alone for now.

He pressed the stick to make the rice cake long.
I held onto the support behind me and practically floated in the air,
"Okay, I'll hold this and stay awake."

He made it. Then, a group approached from the left and joined us in making the rice cake.

Right next to us, a photographer was diligently taking pictures.
I focused my attention on the rice cake mill.
While I was doing that,
my daughter passed between us.
There were a lot of them. She looks like she's in middle school or high school.

She's wearing a red checkered top,
and the collar is very large.

It looks like the collar was intentionally turned up.

My daughter walks past us as we take pictures.