What do these foods have in com­mon–soup, cup­cakes roti, cakes, sweet­bread, pas­tries, bread, muffins, piz­za, pies, pat­ties, pelau, cook­ies, ice cream, lasagna, black cake, ac­cra, phoulo­rie, punch and wine? Be­lieve it or not, pa­trons at the re­cent food fes­ti­val in Diego Mar­tin found out that the foods can con­tain pi­geon peas for a de­light­ful­ly sa­vory ef­fect.

Diego Mar­tin res­onat­ed with the rich in­dige­nous sounds of string in­stru­ments, flutes, and drums on March 30 dur­ing the open­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the first Pi­geon Peas Fes­ti­val held in T&T.

The in­au­gur­al fes­ti­val was all about pi­geon peas and fea­tured the launch of a com­mem­o­ra­tive cook book and CD spon­sored by blink-bmo­bile. A re­lease said the cook­book con­tains 78 pages of recipes in­cor­po­rat­ing pi­geon peas to add an ex­cit­ing and unique flavour to the dish­es.

The many vis­i­tors to the event held at the St John's Church Parish Hall were able to sam­ple and buy dish­es made from the recipes in the book and many ex­pressed their de­light at the de­li­cious dish­es made with pi­geon peas.

Vi­nood Radge Coomar, ex­ec­u­tive vice pres­i­dent, Res­i­den­tial Ser­vices and De­liv­ery at blink-bmo­bile con­grat­u­lat­ed the Up­per Ceme­tery Street res­i­dents on a suc­cess­ful first fes­ti­val and said, "We are proud to be a spon­sor of this in­no­v­a­tive in­au­gur­al fes­ti­val as it sup­ports the en­tre­pre­neur­ial ac­tiv­i­ties of the Diego Mar­tin res­i­dents.

"We are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing sup­port to the growth of na­tion­al projects which pro­mote en­tre­pre­neur­ship and en­cour­age the de­vel­op­ment of our youth. We wish con­tin­ued suc­cess for this im­por­tant project and look for­ward to next year's Pi­geon Peas Fes­ti­val."

Those in at­ten­dance were able to fur­ther im­merse them­selves in a world of pi­geon peas as they lis­tened to the songs on the com­mem­o­ra­tive CD at the fes­ti­val. The first song is a spe­cial trib­ute to the fes­ti­val and is ap­pro­pri­ate­ly ti­tled Pi­geon Peas.

The sec­ond is an in­dige­nous song ti­tled Chi­ra­pac by the Yu­yaric Kay­na Group, in­dige­nous peo­ple of the Kechawa Tribe of Ecuador. On­ly 100 copies of the com­mem­o­ra­tive recipe book were print­ed and are avail­able, along with the CD, from Up­per Ceme­tery Street Res­i­dents As­so­ci­a­tion (UC­SRA) com­mit­tee mem­bers.

A reg­u­lar edi­tion will soon be avail­able in book­stores. At­ten­dees were al­so treat­ed to a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion of a Har­vest Dance by the Yu­yaric Kay­na Group, as well as an oral pre­sen­ta­tion about pi­geon peas in the form of spo­ken word by Ayana Joseph, a mem­ber of UC­SRA which host­ed the fes­ti­val.

UC­SRA chair­man Myr­tle Joseph ex­plained this was part of a rich agri­cul­tur­al tra­di­tion among their an­ces­tors. "Some peo­ple with­in the Up­per Ceme­tery Street com­mu­ni­ty still plant pi­geon peas on the hills above Up­per Ceme­tery Street.

"The fes­ti­val to­day is the first part of a larg­er project that we call Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Through Agri­cul­ture and Tourism. The ob­jec­tive of this fes­ti­val is to use our tra­di­tion, our as­set, and turn it in­to an eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty that will gen­er­ate em­ploy­ment and in­come to the Diego Mar­tin res­i­dents."

Joseph not­ed that re­search has shown that there was no fes­ti­val of this kind in T&T. "The ob­jec­tive of the fes­ti­val was al­so to cre­ate aware­ness of the in­come earn­ing po­ten­tial of pi­geon peas and en­cour­age more of the Diego Mar­tin res­i­dents to be­come in­volved in plant­i­ng and sell­ing pi­geon peas and its prod­ucts."

Joseph ex­plained that the agri­cul­tur­al land used by the UC­SRA res­i­dents stretch­es back to Ch­aguara­mas. The sec­ond part of the project is to be­gin to pre­pare the land for the re­plant­i­ng of pi­geon peas. The project al­so en­com­pass­es a re­for­esta­tion project us­ing fruit and dif­fer­ent trees to re­store the land and pre­vent fur­ther ero­sion and land slip­page.

Last­ly, the res­i­dents aim to re­pair the ac­cess road to the land. Joseph could not con­tain her joy at the suc­cess of the Pi­geon Peas Fes­ti­val and said "We put a lot of hard work in­to it and the turnout was ex­cel­lent. We are so ex­cit­ed and elat­ed. This is the first year and we know it will grow. Hope­ful­ly next year it will be even big­ger." Joseph said.

Ster­ling Bel­grove, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Rose Foun­da­tion de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress. The Rose Foun­da­tion pro­vides sup­port and ser­vices geared to­ward re­duc­ing the lev­el of pover­ty by em­pow­er­ing com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to be­come self-re­liant and strength­en­ing the ca­pac­i­ties of re­spec­tive com­mu­ni­ty groups and or­gan­i­sa­tions.

The Rose Foun­da­tion pro­vid­ed the men­tor­ship, tech­ni­cal sup­port and train­ing to the UC­SRA to bring the idea of the Pi­geon Peas Fes­ti­val to fruition. Bel­grove said, "We feel very ex­hil­a­rat­ed be­cause we have been ar­tic­u­lat­ing that every sin­gle per­son in an econ­o­my can make a con­tri­bu­tion. In every com­mu­ni­ty we do five-year com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ment plan which will har­ness and lever­age the tra­di­tions, cul­tures, val­ues and her­itage of the com­mu­ni­ty. The Pi­geon Peas Fes­ti­val came out of the five-year plan for Diego Mar­tin."

The recipe book in­cludes a mono­graph to the pi­geon pea writ­ten by Bel­grove and out­lines the orig­i­nal his­to­ry and cross-cul­tur­al jour­ney of the pi­geon peas from the east­ern part of In­dia to Africa, the Caribbean and the rest of the world. It al­so in­cludes eco­nom­ic da­ta show­ing the im­por­tance of pi­geon peas to an eco­nom­ic so­ci­ety and shows that T&T ranks among the top 20 pi­geon peas pro­duc­ers in the world (FAO­STAT 2006).

Ex­press­ing his grat­i­tude to­ward the blink-bmo­bile Foun­da­tion Bel­grove said, "We re­al­ly like to thank bmo­bile for step­ping up and pro­vid­ing this very crit­i­cal sup­port. We were able to print the com­mem­o­ra­tive edi­tion of the recipe book and the CDs be­cause of their spon­sor­ship."