The Invention of Watusi

It is a generally accepted fact that fireworks were invented in China. From there, it made its way to Europe, America and to my next-door neighbor, who obviously imports it in large quantities through his military connections. Every New Year, he lays down a monster called sawa which is the length of a small airport landing strip.

This sawa is decorated by a chain of little explosives that could probably turn the tide for a revolution in a small republic, which probably explains the lack of ammunition for our troops in Mindanao. When the sawa goes off, the neighborhood runs for cover and I need to cover my ears so my eardrums don’t burst. And, as the debris falls on our roof, I imagine them to be pieces of hundred peso bills – because that’s what it is, anyway: burning money.

Anyway, to go back to our point: the subject of fireworks is one of those rare areas where we outdo the Chinese in celebration. We only have to recall a TV commercial that is probably unique to our country and goes this way. A bare hand is displayed against a black background while a child sings the song “Sampung mga daliri…”.

As the song continues, the fingers on the hand explode, one by one. Then the commercial delivers a message about not being stupid during New Year’s eve. Well, it doesn’t really say that. It only warns the viewer to avoid firecrackers. I still think it would have been more effective to take the direct approach and instead say “Go ahead, stupid: light a cracker, lose a finger.” Would have been more fun, too.

Now where was I? Ah yes, the invention of firecrackers – as most inventions go – was an accident brought about by a cook. Said cook purportedly mixed three common kitchen items: charcoal, salt peter and sulphur, and lit the mixture, thereby simultaneously discovering a new way to entertain and to kill, and probably also cooking the first Chinese flambe in unrecorded history.

What is not usually revealed is that this alleged Chinese cook -- judging from the disaster with which he was involved and the unfortunate fact that he forgot to patent his invention – the alleged cook was most probably Filipino, and a native of Bocaue at that. I really have no proof of this, except for the fact that where there’s the smoke of an international disaster like sinking ships, war hostages, Tasadays and Seiko Films, there’s bound to turn up a Filipino, scratching his or her head with a sheepish grin, as if apologizing for the mishap and saying, “Let’s get on with our lives”.

I am hoping that some day somewhere, some archeologist or scavenger will dig up a secret historical diary from a certain Ben Tamban, one of the first Filipino seamen who subsequently earned the reputation for being one of the first to jump ship, thereby also becoming one of the first undocumented overseas workers in the world. I enclose a sample entry from this imaginary diary.

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Day 1. A wonderful day. My shipmates often scoffed at my dreams of building an empire out of cooking – opening up not just one small “eatery”, but “branches” of them everywhere in the world. This requires that my eateries be easily recognizable everywhere, so I shall imprint upon them a “brand” name like Jolly Ben’s. All of these shops shall offer the same menu of siomai, siopao and balut and everyone will immediately associate the menu with Jolly Ben’s. But first, I must learn the secrets of Chinese cooking.

Day 7. Found work at Ma Chan Ting’s Dumpling and Tea House. The owner of the shop, Ma Chan, assigned to me a very important task -- stoking the flames in the stove that heats up the pot that boils the water that makes the oolong. To keep myself amused, I experiment with various substances that are abundant in the stove and chimney. My workplace is rich with soot and crystalline substances that I need to investigate further (Editor’s note: the soot turns out to be activated charcoal and the crystals are the potassium nitrate or salt peter that later figure in Tamban’s later experiments). I amuse myself by sprinkling the soot over the flames – this creates tiny sparks that dance in the air. I am learning a lot about fire and am confident that soon, I shall be promoted.

Here we skip the ramblings of Tamban’s various experiements, his rise in status from cooking tea to cooking beef wanton noodles, and move right to the next milestone towards the invention of fireworks.

Day 22. Promotion at last! After singeing my eyebrows and blackening my nostrils for weeks, Ma Chan noticed my prowess with fire and promoted me to the more important position of grinding the grain to produce the flour that is then used to create the wrapping for the dumpling. I try grinding clockwise and anticlockwise, making careful notes about the differences in the results.

Note to self: What is cooking? Is it just placing all ingredients in a pot and then placing the pot on a flame? Is fire really needed? And does it have to be applied at the bottom of the pot? What if we placed it on ice? Or what if we placed a flame also on top? Hmmmm…

Quickly, our adept kitchen assistant rises in rank and soon becomes an assistant to the cook.

Day 42. More ideas are beginning to seize my mind and I cannot escape. I cannot escape! I am getting distracted from my real work! For instance, while grilling some chicken, it occurred to me that instead of roasting the thigh, why not directly apply fire on it? Why don’t I let the chicken burn directly? Imagine the implications! No more cooking pans. People can save up on their cooking expenses!

Day 57. Breakthrough! My experiments are paying off, so to speak. Today I tried a different way to cook Qingdao spare ribs -- by sprinkling soot on the ribs and setting them on fire. I am glad to say that the pork burned well. Sadly, it burned too well and tasted like soot. There must be a better way. I must go back to the chopping board.

Day 61. Disaster! My kitchen colleagues played a trick on me by emptying the salt shaker and substituting it with salt peter. Then they replaced the pepper with soot. I was trying to cook a variation of a recipe from India, involving a spice called curry. I found the result too spicy, so I thought of sweetening the recipe by adding a paste from finely ground peanuts (Editor’s note: here, Ben Tamban unwittingly invents curry-curry, or as we now call it, kare-kare).

But something was amiss. A foul smell was emanating from the spices. I learned too late that the offending odor was from the sulphur that my prankster colleagues had substituted for the curry powder. In an attempt to assay the origin of the odor, I tried to sniff at the concoction. A dim-witted move, since I sneezed and sprayed the mixture into the flames, causing a spectacle that would have wowed the kitchen staff, had the word “wow” been invented then.

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Epilogue: Later that day, the entire kitchen staff was brought to the hospital due to food poisoning. It seems they tried the food that was cooking in the pot that accidentally got sprinkled with the first gunpowder.

Ben Tamban was arrested for attempting to poison his co-workers. One of the surviving co-workers recalled the ingredients that formed the gunpowder and started manufacturing and selling it by building a myth on it concerning evil spirits and how they get annoyed by loud and sparkling things.

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By Ruben D. Canlas Jr.