Guest post: Allergies go global… Sri Lanka: Elakiri? No stūtiyi!
Time to try something new: I’ve been flirting with this idea for a while now. I know quite a few people who also have their own stories about dealing with allergens (increasingly so since launching this website!) and really like the idea of getting other people to post occasional content. The post that follows is written by Rachel – a friend of many years and the wife on one of my oldest school friends, Alex; also a dairy-avoider. They’ve just made the monumental decision to pack in their jobs (at least for the moment) and go travelling around the world for a few months. What started as a jokey conversation about airline food during a post Christmas wander across Port Meadow in Oxford quickly turned into a sincere suggestion to write up any allergy anecdotes from their travels. I hope you like it…
Allergen Dad
Alex was going to write a little guest blog for Allergendad but after we were chatting about it we realised that he’s not very good at speaking up for himself and asking if things are dairy free. I’m not sure why really, I think he’s embarrassed to cause a fuss. I tend to double and triple check when we order things on his behalf instead. So we thought I’d give my perspective on having a husband with an allergy.
I’m definitely on a selfish mission to make sure he doesn’t ingest any dairy. I hope you’ve never woken in the night thinking a nuclear plant has exploded nearby (would they even smell if they exploded?) but I have and trust me it is not something you want to experience.
We are currently on a four month trip starting in Sri Lanka then onto Japan, USA and Canada.
In Heathrow Airport we went to Spuntino a nice looking Italian/American burger and pizza place. It all looked great and the waitress went to get an iPad when we told her about about Alex’s dietary needs. It was quite clever, you select your allergy and it tells you want you can order. Which left us with hardly any options. So we hurriedly left.
Then we tried Strada, another Italian place. We asked for the allergen menu and the waiter said there should be one here but looking into an empty draw stated with a shrug “oh it’s not here”. Great! We are never going to eat anything! He then declared “we can do anything dairy free”. Alex orders brushetta with fresh tomato starter and a seafood linguine with a tomatoey sauce. “Perfect all dairy free” says our waiter. Two minutes later he tells us actually brushetta is brushed with milk before cooking so will give us gluten-free dairy-free bread instead. In the end it was a tasty meal with quite a large glass of red wine pre-flight
We flew with Sri Lankan Airlines and selected a vegan meal on booking as the only other option was a “low lactose meal”. Last time we chose that option on American Airlines Alex was given a cheese burger and on Air Mauritius given butter, croissant and cheese which made for a very hungry and grumpy husband. No thank you, not this time.
The food looked and tasted pretty good – vegetable chop suey, jelly, fruit. No snack though, that was a cheese fest. Breakfast was also went down a treat.
So all in all pretty positive but we have a few flights coming up so we’ll see how they go.
Going to another country we are always wary about communicating an allergy. One of my friends with a severe anaphylactic style peanut allergy took a picture of peanuts when she went to Thailand and she said most people tried to bring them peanuts when they showed them it.
I asked my Sri Lankan friend to record himself saying “I am allergic to milk” and also my uni friend to ask her brother in Japan to do the same in Japanese so we could play them if we weren’t being understood.
I’ve learnt two words in Singhalese, the first is “elakiri” which means cows milk. When we ask if there’s elakiri in the food they are first delighted we are trying to speak the language then worried we mean coconut milk as that’s in everything! Then usually assure us there is no cow’s milk in the food yet I remain sceptical. Generally things have looked quite obvious that there’s no milk. We hope. Alex is generally avoiding cakes and puddings, as usual. Poor him. We’ve been feasting on many many vegetable curries and roadside treats and haven’t had any problems.
We had done pretty well until the evening before climbing Adam’s Peak. A really important mountain in Buddhist history in Sri Lanka which involves 5000+ steep steps up in the middle of the night for sunrise. Something you definitely need to be feeling good for! We order pumpkin soup from our guesthouse hoping for a spicey coconuty flavour and instead get a very milk-flavoured non-pumpkin tasting “pumpkin” soup. When we ordered the lady assured us “no elakiri”. I double check whether there’s only coconut milk in there.
“Oh no. No coconut milk”
“So there’s elakiri?”
“No, no elakiri”
“Cream?”
“No, only powder”
“Milk powder!? Elakiri powder?”
“Oh. You can’t have that?”
“NO!!!”
I better walk in front of Alex up the mountain. Hopefully two spoons won’t cause too much trouble.
The other word I’ve learnt is “stūtiyi”
Stūtiyi for reading
Rachel xx
If you want to find out more about Rachel and Alex’s travels, they’re doing their own (non-allergy-focused) travel blog:
http://babajuntlyworldtour.blogspot.com/
It’s well worth a read if you want to go green-eyed with travel envy!
Let me know if you’ve enjoyed their guest post and I’ll badger them to do another when they get to Japan!
P.S. Having worked as a nuclear analyst, I’m pretty sure that if you can smell the consequences of a nuclear explosion then the smell is the least of your worries. However, you can (in theory) eat the fuel pellets of uranium-oxide that they use to power the majority of the UK’s nuclear power stations without any real risk to your health! (As long as you don’t get close to consuming a critical mass)!