Story by Joshua Elie. Photos (including of cheese pie, above) courtesy of the writer.
So, I found this beautiful woman online named Jo, and she came to my home for a date. Lunch was great, dinner was great, she spent the night, (yes, I have a guest bedroom), and I told her she could stay for as long as she liked. We had a wonderful month together. The second month … not so good (no dancing in the kitchen), so we split on very good terms.
A couple of years later, her ex-husband’s mother hired me to go to Africa with her to help get Jo’s kids back into the U.S., though my part was merely to be a travel companion. This was the only information I was given. What I found out later was, where we were going it was not safe for a woman to walk alone. Now, the Seychelles ⸺ islands off the east coast of Africa, near Somalia and Tanzania ⸺ do not extradite, so the worst of the worst on the planet go there to hide.
You may have heard about Somali pirates holding Americans for ransom. Well, the water between Somalia and the Seychelles is their “hunting ground.” Real pirates are not cute, like Captain Jack Sparrow. Real pirates are accurately depicted in the biographical movie “Captain Phillips”. Perhaps Tom Hanks, who starred in the movie, was able to show the culture so well because his sister lives in the Seychelles. I had breakfast with her one morning. Those two seem to have nothing in common, other than identical eyes.
Here is another tidbit of information that Jo’s former mother-in-law left out: The kids were stolen. What Jo’s ex-husband would do is pass himself off as a pastor until he had access to the church’s bank account, clean it out, then move on to the next town. He did this all over the world, until he got caught in Texas. He was given a choice: prison in Texas or banished to the Seychelles, where he had dual citizenship, with the stipulation to never return to the U.S.
During their marriage, Jo wanted kids, so her ex stole a little girl from the Philippines and a little boy from Russia and told Jo that he adopted them for her. Now, his father was exceedingly rich and made sure the children would be well taken care of, financially, before he died. Jo’s ex had that money coming in plus his inheritance, both of which he would lose if he gave up the kids.
As it turned out, all was OK with the kids; they stayed in Seychelles. Not so OK for me, however. The food was all curry ⸺ from the time I left Washington, D.C. until I landed back in Boston. I couldn’t even get a hamburger or a pizza that wasn’t coated with curry, and the only sauce they had was chili. Their chili sauce is nothing like ours. They have chili pepper trees everywhere and basically grind up the peppers and mix them with a kind of mayonnaise.
Between the stress, the food and the heat, I barely escaped with my life.
On my way home, I had a 24-hour layover in Qatar, a peninsula off Saudi Arabia. (A word to the wise: If you are ever in the Middle East, don’t ask for the closest beer store. Depending on the country, drinking alcohol in public is a crime punishable by heavy fines and lengthy jail sentences.)
From there, it was a 16-hour flight to Boston and, with the earth being round, we flew over the North Pole, then south, right over Michigan. (I was really thinking about finding a parachute and jumping.) Then, I landed in Boston’s Logan International Airport. I would have kissed the ground if I’d had the time, but I had to get through customs, find a place to change from tropical clothes into winter clothes, then head to St. Louis. Overnight there, I turned on the news to find that I had caught the last plane to the U.S. An Islamic militant group (either Taliban, ISIS, or one of the others) “liberated” the Doha (Qatar) airport shortly after my plane took off.
Next, it was on to Chicago O’Hare International Airport, where I was picked up by a friend. She took me to her place in Battle Creek, where I was stuck for another week. It really is a lovely town, though she had the only kitchen I have ever been in where I found nothing to work with. Her cupboards were full of nothing but junk food, like chips and gas station-style sweets.
Dancing in the kitchen
Finally, she drove me home in just enough time to be able to cook a holiday feast with my mother. Mom and I put on some upbeat Christmas music and danced all over the kitchen, cooking and baking for Christmas eve and day. There is nothing sweeter than being home for the holidays.
Elie’s Cheese Pie
Cream Cheese Filling:
8-oz package warm cream cheese
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 egg, beaten
Mix all ingredients well.
Graham Cracker Crust:
8” pie tin
4.8-oz package graham crackers, crushed until fine. (A box has 3 packages.)
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 stick melted butter
Mix dry ingredients, then cut in butter with a fork until evenly dispersed. Scoop into the pie tin and smooth out with a plastic measuring cup. Put the filling into the crust, smooth out and refrigerate overnight. Top with preserves, like Smucker’s. Blueberry is the house favorite.
Joshua Elie is a musician and retired building contractor. He now enjoys life as a homesteader.
