A Colombian film crew visited T&T from June 16 to 24 as part of their Afrodiaspora Cuisine Investigation Project to investigate and explore connections across the African diaspora through food.
Researcher Igor Correa, chef/researcher Rey Guerrero, Lina Guerrero, and producer Claudia Peláez worked with T&T’s Idakeda Group (Idakeda), a cultural organisation that focuses on empowering through culture, heritage and the arts.
Miss Universe 1977 Janelle “Penny” Commissiong was a specially invited participant in the local leg of the project which was spearheaded by Idakeda’s managing director Dara E Healy.
The crew’s itinerary included spiritual African legacy tours of some Port-of-Spain sites and the Ile Isokan (House of Unity) in lower Santa Cruz led by Baba Ogunbowale, where they sampled food customarily served at spiritual events.
The Colombian team also conducted a series of interviews with residents and had pointed conversations with Renée Francois, programme officer at the Emancipation Support Committee and Makeda Smenkhkare.
There was also a session of identifying, discussing, prepping, cooking and eating African retention foods in the kitchen of one of T&T’s classically-trained executive chefs, Chef Finbar (Barry Finbar Bartholomew).
Correa explained: “We are in Trinidad because food represents history. Food connects people and in Colombia, we have found that African food is one of the links that can conserve heritage in countries.
“For instance, in Colombia, we are very proud of coffee, but many people are not aware that coffee is from Africa, so our objective is to try and find out what transpires in the Caribbean.
“What’s the link between the enslaved people that were brought here? They gave us their heritage, they gave us what they had at the time, and now, how are they being used? We are using it in food, and products. We cook, we eat, but we don’t know what’s behind it.”
Guerrero interjected: “The fruit five finger, star fruit that’s called carambola in Africa.”
Foods sampled included coo, a derivative of African fufu and callaloo, a culinary legacy of enslaved Africans who adapted traditional West African recipes using local ingredients such as dasheen bush. Its other key ingredient, ochro (okra), was brought to the Caribbean from East Africa, but T&T’s callaloo is unique given its added coconut milk, and saltfish or pigtail, derivatives from Africans.
Healy explained: “Owing to T&T’s colonial history and the unfortunate tradition of minimising and trivialising almost all things African, the word African becomes difficult to mention, so it’s reduced to saying creole.
“We easily identify the origins of other foods, yet for African foods we say creole. That’s part of the challenge of building self-esteem in the African community. The languaging behind what we do needs to be rectified. Many people do not know that a lot of the foods we eat are of African origin.
“The team reported that they found many similarities with T&T’s cooking techniques, the use of seasonings, and flavours everywhere they went, so clearly, the traditions have remained strong, with foods of African retention.”