Posted by Fleet Captain Ghubari Koraia (Captain) in Holosuite Two- A Dinner

Posted by Commander Luka (Executive Officer) in Holosuite Two- A Dinner

Posted by Fleet Captain Ghubari Koraia (Captain) in Holosuite Two- A Dinner
Posted by… suppressed (2) by the Post Ghost! 👻

(snip)

Ghubari chuckled. “I’ll live, I’m sure. But it’s up to you. I’m happy cooking, either way, and there are still things you can do to help. But we’re also here to get to know each other, so feel free to drag out all those building questions I’m sure you’ve been gathering throughout the day.” She went back to chopping the last of the very pungent onion. Tossing the onion along with some other aromatics into a deep skillet, it immediately began to sizzle in the hot oil. “Why don’t you see if you can find a beverage you would like. It’s the holodeck, so you can have it replicate whatever you like. For me, I wouldn’t mind a glass of red wine while I cook,” she said. She was relaxed enough to almost wink, but Koraia was focused on her cooking and making sure the items in the pan didn’t stick.

Fl. Captain Koraia, CO

Luka nodded. “I’ll stay back this time. Maybe sometime I can host a meal and make you some food from my world - hair included,” she chuckled lightly. She glanced around, spotted a chair, grabbed the chair, and dragged it over to the nearest spot to the kitchen without actually entering the kitchen. She sat down on the chair and crossed her ankles, then closed her eyes and inhaled the scents of the cooking meal. “Ooh, you sure know how to make a smelly meal,” she commented, then her eyes shot open. “I mean that in a good way!”

The captain chuckled. “I’m glad. It’s going to get better, trust me. This is the quicker version, but I figured three hours to wait for dinner might be pushing it.”

Luka inhaled the scent of the room again. “I’ve got a bigger nose than your kind of people,” she gestured slightly towards Ghubari. “Humanoids. My race have a deeper emphasis on scent than most. In all honesty, our vision is less than perfect. But enough about me,” she grinned. “You gave me permission to ask about you. To start off, I suppose the most obvious question is what are you cooking? After that, what’s this simulation, the setting? I’m assuming that it’s not just a randomly chosen venue.”

Luka, XO

“Indeed,” Ghubari replied with a smile. “I’m making you my one truly infallible recipe- banana beef curry, a staple in my mother’s house growing up. You’ll have to warn me pretty soon if you can’t handle too much heat or else I’m afraid it’ll all be for me.” After she temporarily scraped the aromatics into a bowl, she moved about the kitchen and grabbed a plate of cubed beef, dumping it into the hot pan to brown.

“I can handle spice,” Luka said with a small chuckle. “My Ne’ta’le,” she paused, realizing that Ghubari wouldn’t understand the grammar or language of her last word, then began again with the English word, “My mother’s spicy U’mak meat stew was to die for… I remember coming home from class to the smell of meat and beans cooking in that big pot of hers… and arguing with my older siblings as to who got the last pieces…”

As the beef cooked, she began gathering and measuring spices loosely into a small clear bowl. Red, a muddy yellow, brown, black, the white of salt. A bright mix that would inform the deep flavour of the dish soon enough. “So.. here, well, this house doesn’t actually exist, but the place I put it does. It is the kind of place I’d have if I ever wanted to live back home, which I can’t imagine I ever will.” Ghubari was easily able to talk and work and it wasn’t hard to imagine this scene on a larger scale in her home village. “This program is my Tanzania program. It’s a recreation of the small village high up on the Makonde Plateau in Western Tanzania, which is a region in East Africa on Earth. I won’t assume you memorized the geography, but that’s enough for you to be able to find it should you look it up. This village is where I grew up. It’s called Kitangari. Middle of nowhere, isolated from technology and most everything a modern life affords you. But my mother’s tribe believes that to be a feature,” she said with a slight grin.

Fl. Captain Koraia, CO

She quietly watched the cooking process and listened to Ghubari’s words. “Growing up separated from technology… How old were you when you first encountered the world outside of that village? Was it jarring? Or did you always know that there was more, because of your mixed heritage?” she stopped slightly, then added. “Even spices can’t hide the smell of non-human on you. Sorry if it’s intruding, I can’t help my sense of smell,” she grinned sheepishly.

Luka, XO

Koraia smiled. “It probably also doesn’t help that my husband is Betazoid too. But yes, I’m only part Human. My father is Napean. I was… five or six before I started asking about my father. My mother raised me in our village on her own by choice.” Stirring the beef, the colour was coming along nicely, so she dumped the onions and garlic back into the pot and gave it a good stir. “When I learned who my father was, I understood why I was different than others in our tribe. That he was a starship captain with Starfleet, living in space. We didn’t have modern technology in the homes, but there were lots of books, so I read and read and read. Everything I could get my hands on really. ” Ghubari paused, trying to find the right words to explain the situation. “The Makonde don’t pretend the technology doesn’t exist, they just choose not to use it. There are emergency communication devices though, as a precaution, but only rarely would you have seen any sort of hover vehicle.”

“But to more answer your question, I was twelve when I left the tribe to go to boarding school in Dar Es Salaam. I could not learn the things I wanted to learn there and I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable as an empath in a tribe who believed I was possessed by malevolent spirits,” she said with a wink. And old hurt, but one that had finally healed in recent years. She gazed intently at Luka. “I knew, even then, that I wanted to join Starfleet. And I was willing to do anything and everything to make it happen, even if it meant leaving home and my mother behind and going to the big city with all the people and the markets and the different smells.” Ghubari smiled deeply. “I love it though. Every bit of it. Was it jarring? At first, but it felt… right. The mix of everything felt more homely than anything and I knew that I was meant to be in places where things were variable, where nothing ever stayed the same. I wanted to touch the stars and understand my father and his life in them. And along the way I realized that as much as I joined Starfleet to find out about him, I became an officer to find out about myself. As we do as we serve.” She dumped the spices into the pot and gave it a good stir, sending out a myriad of intensely heady scents. The earthiness of the cumin mixed the rich heat and hint of sweetness in the ground chilli which then was buoyed by the black pepper, salt and mellow astringent earthiness of the golden hued turmeric. It was a not a stretch to understand that the scent of Ghubari herself came, in part, from the depth of the spices in the food she likely ate regularly.

Fl. Captain Koraia, CO

Luka listened quietly, periodically closing her eyes and inhaling the scent of the cooking food. “Mmm, that smells really good. Speaking of the food, when will it be ready. Not to seem impatient, of course, but all those spices and cooking meat smells are making me very hungry.” she commented. “Did you ever get to know your father? Or at least meet him?” she asked, tapping her toes on the ground a few times. The comments about the tribe thinking she was possessed, Luka passed by on commenting on.

“Speaking of Starfleet, I’d like to know more about this ship if I can. The public records on the Athena in past years are rather scant, I must admit. What kind of a ship is it? What kind of an environment do you foster among the ship and crew? It’s an oddly classified ship for one with so many civilians,” she reflected. “I’ve only met you and the CMO so far, since the CNS seems to be unwell at the moment, but I’m planning to meet each of the senior staff at some point in the near future.”

“It seems unfair that you’re doing all this sharing and I’m just sitting here soaking in information about you,” Luka added with a small chuckle. “If you happen to have any burning questions about me, feel free to interrupt my torrent of questions and force me to answer a few.”

Luka, XO