SAN­DRA L BLOOD

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.”