A collection of recipes brings cultures closer together
In the end food is what brings people together.
When Selena Herrera, a Holmes County native and Hiland High School graduate, left the United States to work at the Eleonas Refugee Camp with Project Elea in Athens, Greece, she knew nothing about the culture of the people she would be working with, let alone the food.
In the camp she met refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Iran and more whose varying cultures opened a world of the brightest tastes. Most days invites for a spot of chai tea piled up like autumn leaves, and she found herself invited to tables with mysterious smells and previously unknown flavors.
Hospitality thrives even in the direst of circumstances.
“The relationship we have with the residents of the camp was always based, since the beginning, on body language," said Francisco Gentico, a coordinator at Project Elea, "that is until they learned some English and we learned some Farsi, Arabic, Urdu and French. A universal way they always used for thanking us for the work we did in camp was food: a tea, a falafel, rice, a yogurt.”
The idea to share the recipes the camp residents prepared was sparked.
“People come with nothing from their own country. When they cross the Mediterranean, they are not allowed to bring baggage because the smugglers need to maximize the use of the space," Gentico said, "so they travel with their own memories and culture. And their culture is represented in their music and their food. I think the first word we all heard when we started volunteering was chai.”
"Chai" in Arabic and Farsi means tea.
Gentico said what better way than a cookbook to tie up the ragged ends of uprooted lives, perilous journeys and lives lived in a refugee camp. Stories, foods, anecdotes and love, it would be a broad base of cultures and foods compiled into one book.
The first moment Herrera realized food transcends a multitude of circumstances is in the following recollection. While working in the camp for the first time, she recalls a conflict she had with a family. As the tense conversation ended and eye contact was being held, what she thought would be an unsettled parting of ways turned into a warm invitation to their home with the question, “Chai?” As years of invitation for cups of chai have come and gone, she understood the power of a cup of tea has the ability to reconcile disputes and honor relationships.
“Based on this, one day we thought that we needed to share what they brought with them — their culture and their life experiences — to show people that migration can enrich us and our culture and that the universal language of food is a good way to break the borders between locals and migrants. Because when we eat, we are all the same,” Gentico said.
For Herrera as well as Krista Hochstetler, another Holmes countian serving in the camp, the idea of a cookbook was an exciting one. Herrera, who has served there upward of one year, and Hochstetler, who has served for nine months, dove headlong into this new project.
Their job was to go from house to house or rather container to container because the camp residents live in storage containers provided by the Greek government. They sat on rugs, spread out for meals, and test-tasted food prepared by people from different cultures who by now had become family.
Eggplant, chicken, well-seasoned rice dishes, a bit of cake, they tried to represent as many cultural communities as they could — as there are so many different ones that live in the camp — and to include a variety in what recipes they wanted to offer.
They ended up with 14 different countries being included, including vegetarian and vegan recipes.
“A big piece of me is in this book,” Herrera said. “It’s about love and welcoming and hospitality. You can’t enter a refugee home without them offering you food and chai. In tragedy they can control their love and hospitality even though their situation and the choices they’ve had to make might be awful.”
When the camp residents found out their recipes would be gathered into book form, they were excited. Leaving your own country for an unknown future is a hard decision to make in the best of times, and in the worst of times it is life-altering.
Food is a centering force. The recognized motions of kneading bread or folding fresh veggies together into a cherished recipe is a balm to an off-center journey. This refugee camp, settled and formed in an industrial part of Athens, has become home for now to the 2,000 residents who live there. Keeping their culture alive through food is integral.
“Food is their way of keeping their culture when they travel. I love to see them cooking, sharpening their knives, making their bread or a barbecue,” Gentico said. “If you focus only on them cooking or eating, you forget you are in a refugee camp in Greece, and you feel like you’ve been transported to the Middle East or Africa, depending on who is cooking. Food and music are their culture, and they won't change it, no matter where they are or live.”
As the recipe-gathering and taste-testing came to an end, the entire project was placed in the hands of competent people. “We had the amazing collaboration of María Angeles Torres, a food stylist and photographer from Barcelona,” Gentico said. “When all information was gathered, Simone Plassard, our field coordinator and designer, took the pile of recipes, stories and photos and put them into this beautiful book. Without them it couldn’t have been done.”
For Herrera, who plans on furthering her work with refugees, the culmination of the project is an emotional one. “For my home community to have this book is unreal,” she said. “To have these recipes come to life for my friends and family at home realizes the collision that has been happening inside my heart since the first day I stepped inside the refugee camp.”
Herrera said she recalls each face that prepared her food, hugged her with opens arms, and made a space for her to sit and sup in the small places they call home. And she is overwhelmed.
“They can take away everything you have but not who you are,” Gentico said. “The refugees, all of them, are part of a very welcoming culture where food is the way to show love and to take care of your guests and family.”
All proceeds made from this cookbook go toward the work of Project Elea, working for the community of Eleonas Refugee Camp.
Find them on the web at www.projectelea.org/ as well as Facebook and Instagram. You can find the cookbook, "Recipes Welcome: The refugee recipes that borders couldn't stop," for purchase on Amazon.