My friend Hannah Boyce says she can know someone’s personality based on their Cook Out tray order. Maria Gonzalez, a Mexican-American woman who’s hospitality cannot be rivaled, says food is how to best welcome people in and get to know them. She believes food allows the mouth to speak freely from the soul and ears to listen more intently. My freshman year of college, I took an english class called, Eat This! Food and Modern US Literature (ENGL285), and through this class I secondarily experienced the relationship between food and people throughout modern history and cultures. During the summer between my second year and third year of college, I went on an eight-week mission trip across North America, and it was the two weeks in Tijuana, Mexico that I personally saw how important food is to building relationships. Food is how to provide space to learn more about a person, and food is how community is best built.
Looking back into my own childhood, I remember my parents hosting people and events. I would peer into the fridge to see the special desserts my mama had made: peanut butter chocolate oatmeal cookies, strawberry cake balls, pineapple coconut cake, white chocolate bark or homemade fudge. People flocked into my home, and, as they indulged in dessert, they’d laugh, tell stories, and be intentional with one another. So, when I took ENGL285 my freshman year of college, I already had experiences to build upon. What I didn’t expect was to secondarily see how eating together was a way to give to each other. The characters in the literature we discussed were from stories written during the Antebellum period to the early 2000s, and readers could consistently see how these characters used food and conversation as gifts to friends and enemies. In My Ántonia, the ending scene is of Jim’s reunion with old friend Ántonia after twenty years apart, and Jim eats multiple meals with Ántonia along with her family. Each meal, Jim reconnected more with his childhood friend, and he grew more open and close to the family with every bite he took. Even in my work from class, I can see how naturally I placed food into a creative story about characters meeting for the first time. While my essay, Only One Pearl Earring, was meant to show the relationship between farming and food, seeing how I unknowingly made the characters gather together over tea and cake speaks to how the other works represented food as this gifting-and-receiving and builder of connection (Cape, 2020). As characters across different works continually ate and grew together, providing food for conversation and learning more from each other, I began to see how important eating together is to building stronger relationships with real people.
However, it was not until I went to Tijuana, Mexico that I grandly experienced this connection. Everything we did as a team and as a community of believers involved food and conversation. Three if not four times a day my mission team along with Juvenal's family and the local churches would cook and eat together. We’d rise early before dawn and go to bed just before midnight, all the while cooking, eating, and serving. At 5 a.m. we woke up to eat and cook. By 7 a.m. my team and the local churches would load up the vans with hot breakfast and drive to the border. From 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. migrants came to eat a free breakfast. Artifact 2 is a picture of fellow teammates and I serving pancakes and eggs to migrants on July 7, 2021. The local churches hosted bible studies for adults and a Vacation Bible School for children. After they had danced with us and attended their lesson, we would give the children bagged kool aid and chamoy hot sauce popcorn. Afterwards, we’d head back to Juvenal's to clean, make popcorn, have quiet time, take a siesta, lunch, and, occasionally, take an adventure- once to the beach and another time to eat street tacos. By 4 p.m. we loaded up the van and headed to a colonial, which is a group of neighborhoods. The local churches put on a Vacation Bible School for the children, and we’d feed them and their families dinner. We returned home around 8 p.m. and finished chores from the day. After hanging out with Juvenal's family and friends, my team and I started cooking breakfast for the next day. This was the schedule for ten out of the twelve days I spent in Tijuana. One of the other days was Sunday, and the only difference from a normal day was going to church and eating lunch together- all in a makeshift church on the side of the street.
However, since I spoke no Spanish and most of them spoke no english, connecting with the local church was difficult. It was the celebrating and laughing over food that bonded us and communicated the universal language of fondness and appreciation. We might not have understood each other through words, but eating and laughing together were all the words we needed. Diana, America, and Michelle were young girls about my age, and we first bonded by making and bagging popcorn while we snuck bites for ourselves. The food gave us time to connect and chances to aid each other in sneak eating popcorn. An older woman, Sylvia, was someone I found it very hard to connect with as she spoke absolutely no english and always steadily worked. It was while we were deboning twenty pounds of boiled chicken that we finally got to know each other. We used our laughs, facial expression, and hands to complain about how hot the chicken was or make chicken jokes. Showing her how to make my homemade chicken salad also increased our friendship. She received it like a gift, and in return I received her love and help. After that, I never had to wait for a clean spatula or a helping hand.
After being so immersed in this community of love and giving, I felt inspired to create that same community for others on campus. I wanted to provide a space for people to feel valued, free, and safe. Looking back, I see that I used food to foster this. I started doing what I had experienced my parents, story characters, and friends in Tijuana do: build community over food. I invited a girl I had met ten minutes prior into my residence hall, so I could make her a quesadilla and learn more about her. Every week for community group, I brought sweets for us to sit and eat together before diving into God’s Word. My residents became more open with me while I made dinner. They sat as I cooked. They talked as I listened, and we grew closer. Even tonight, some dear sisters in Christ and I are having a pasta night before we worship with the rest of Shandon College Ministry. On all these occasions, food allowed us to slow down and be intentional with each other. In giving food, we received conversation and attention.
It is amazing the impact certain classes and experiences have on my life, and I might never have known how much if I had not reflected on them.
I get it now.
Just as Proverbs 11:25 reads, “A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed,” the more I give to others in food, the more I will gain in their trust and friendship. The more I give people space to be seen and cared for, the more space is made to build community.
I am ready for pasta night.
Artifacts
Cape, R. (2020, January 30). Farm Mini Essay: Only One Pearl Earring. English 285. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bQN4iQaTmQAM0DaF98cEjPGkPQ0wMS2x4XuHJ50wuOI/edit?usp=sharing.
Artifact 2:
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