II Milky Way

"Yes, we have milk, but it isn't good to drink, it's only good for putting in your coffee", the smiling flight attendant seemed determined to protect me from what he seemed to think would be an unpleasant experience, but I continued to gently ask until he reluctantly handed me a small box of milk saying, "You won't like it."

I pulled a small glass jar out of my purse and opened the plastic bag inside of it. Carefully, I plopped the gooey yellowish-white globs into the jar and poured the milk over them.  As I replaced the jar in my purse, I wondered if the quiet lady sitting next to me might think I was concocting some explosives, but she didn't ask, so I didn't tell.

Several hours later, on a different flight, I had to drink the yeasty-smelling fermented milk and replace it with a new little box of fresh milk, but I did manage to get the kefir grains all the way to Bogota alive and functioning where I put them in Ben's fridge.

Now I just had to find some large glass jars to ferment them in and I would be able to leave a healing food remedy for Ben's chronic illness
and his cousin's possible Crohn's disease.  This proved to be much more difficult than one would expect.  It seems that in Colombia there are no large glass jars.  I guess if one needs a large amount of, say, pickles, or mayonnaise, one has to buy a lot of small jars of it.

I decided instead to buy some glass pitchers, but could only find many, many styles of clear plastic ones.  It seemed that to get one glass pitcher it was necessary to buy a whole set of 12 or so drinking glasses.  This didn't seem workable since I needed several pitchers and these sets are expensive.  What to do?  I decided to look for glass vases.

I started pounding the pavement, looking desperately for some kind of glass or ceramic containers.  At one point I considered buying some fish bowls, but decided it would be too hard to pour the fermented concoction out of them.  In one day alone, I walked 61 city blocks, dodging bicycles, and doggedly resisting the colorful and no-doubt tasty tropical fruit cut and served by street vendors who obviously have no place to wash their hands.

In the end I found the perfect little glass pitchers with plastic lids at a pretty decent price.  The friendly young man just placed them into plastic bags with no padding of any kind, but I managed to get all four of them home to Ben's house in one piece by hailing a taxi.

I was now ready to actually start fermenting some milk, but after a few days I realized that the temperature in Bogota was just too cold.  The whole city is like a huge refrigerator.  There is no heat in the homes, in fact, when the sun is shining it tends to be colder indoors than it is outside.  I knew that sunlight would kill the culture bacteria, so I finally hit upon a plan to place the pitcher in the sun covered with a towel, thus getting the warmth from the sun without the disinfecting light.  Ah, the sweetness of success!