African & American Approaches to Food

My East African daughter, D, has been living with us for over two weeks now, and I've had the opportunity to observe her interactions with American food.

She's been having a very hard time with the high school lunches (I know, she's not the only one). But she particularly has trouble finding alternatives. Coming from a country where fresh fruit is available in abundance, the cafeteria's ubiquitous canned fruits are not inviting. Neither is the salad bar, because in her country, they don't often eat vegetables raw, and when they do prepare them as salads, they are usually sliced extremely thinly and mixed in with other foods. The granola and protein bars offered as alternatives are very sweet to her tastebuds. So far, soft white or wheat bread and bananas she brings from home are her best options at lunch time. We're still working on a better solution.

But the thing I've been pondering is the overall difference in the approach to eating. D doesn't really think about food until she gets hungry. At that point, she goes into the kitchen and looks for something to eat. To this point she's pretty much just like my American-raised kids. But there's a divergence here, as my kids look for food that is convenient and appeals to their sugar- and salt-craving palates. I make an effort to provide healthy-ish options, but in our house that means things like yogurt, canned soups, string cheese, wheat crackers, or nuts. These are foods that my kids can get into their stomachs as quickly, and with as little effort, as possible

D. follows a different process as she begins to prepare her meal or snack. This involves pulling out pans and bowls and cutting boards and knives, several different fresh vegetables, cooking oil, and a few spices or condiments. She prepares the vegetables by hand: she leaves the skins on way more often than we usually do, but when she does peel something, like carrots, she does it with a knife rather than a peeler. Then she dices the vegetables very small, all by hand, and usually sautes or boils them. Sometimes she adds a little bit of meat or beans, or scrambles eggs, and then usually serves this with a bread like chapati or over rice or potatoes.

She is an experienced cook at home, so these regular kitchen tasks don't take her very long; but overall, the time from hunger until eating is a lot longer than it is for my own children. It seems that for her, hunger is the cue to begin the food preparation process; and cooking serves to whet the appetite even more. She bases her decisions about what to make and how much to prepare around her own hunger signals at the time.

Whereas my approach to meal planning and preparing is to anticipate when the meal should be ready, and this is almost always based on our busy schedules rather than our personal hunger patterns. Then I work backward from that to decide when to begin to cook, which frequently ends up being at a time when no one in the house is actually hungry.

I think my American way turns meal preparation into more of a chore for me than a pleasure. Not being  hungry, I don't truly look forward to the eating of the meal I'm preparing. And, if our family ends up not being very hungry--perhaps because everyone had a satisfying lunch or a large snack that day--it doesn't matter, we eat anyway, because I've already prepared a three- or four-dish meal that is placed on the table before them.

I don't suppose it would be fair of me to extrapolate the behavior of one African young woman to the whole continent, but my observations do extend a little bit farther than that, and I'd love to hear from you if you have a different perspective.

First Week Over

We're just concluding our first week hosting our foreign exchange student, D, a lovely 16 year old woman from Tanzania. It's been a whirlwind for me; I can't even imagine what it's like for her. I lose track of all the differences she's experiencing and absorbing and adapting to here: new timezone, new country, new town, new bedroom, new climate, new family, new friends, new food, new chores, new rules, farmland instead of mountains, white instead of black, English instead of KiSwahili, dollars instead of shillings, classes instead of summer, cross-country instead of running....

But she is resilient, smart, adaptable, extroverted, and confident--all qualities that serve her well in her American adventure. Qualities that serve her well in life, as I've glimpsed this week when she has shared with me some things about her homeland. And in hearing about pervasive witchcraft, endemic exploitation, difficult work, religious tensions, crushing poverty--only once did I think: I don't know if I want to know these things. If I know them, if I know about the suffering and sin and pain experienced by people I now have a connection to--through D--then I'm responsible for my response to it.

And although I've read, and know intellectually, factually, about some of these problems, it feels more immediate and actionable to know this daughter of mine goes back there in a matter of months. And will be right there on the ground able to do something to make a difference to her nation. How to give thanks for the holy privilege of giving input into her life at this crucial age? And then, how to do it?