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“There is a tremendous difference between living in a place and belonging to it and feeling your destiny is irrevocably bound up in the life and destiny of that place.”
- Founding Father Right Excellent Norman Manley, Jamaica.
The book Mixing Memory and Desire: How History Shaped the Foods of the Caribbean is an attempt to help us understand our history so that we all have a sense of belonging here.
This book is not about fine dining, nor is it a cookbook filled with recipes. It demonstrates how our food reflects our character.
It speaks to our history without pretending to be a history book. It is not in the class of ‘public history’ that seems present all around us, and which seeks to divide us.
Academic life and articles have become more entrenched in a world where the proponents write and speak to each other. They leave the factual historical facts to be butchered and mangled by faux historians who seek their own ends.
Lee Johnson is not a historian, but he had the good sense to know what he did not know.
Lee had a formidable cadre of helpers to guide his journey in collecting the facts and contextualising them. His longtime friend and distinguished literary critic, Professor Emeritus Ken Ramchand, put him in touch with Dr Brinsley Samaroo, a public historian, who unfortunately passed away before the book was finished.
Uniting the people of T&T was a cause dear to Prof Samaroo’s heart. Then, Lee’s wife, Tina, who is a London-based editor in the academic field, suggested he reach out to The UWI Professor Emerita Dr Bridget Brereton, the doyenne of West Indian history.
JoAnne Ferreira and Professor Emerita Patricia Mohammed, both eminent scholars in their own right, gave him contacts and personal insights. With the help of such distinguished persons, Lee would have found it difficult to stray from the factual reality of life through the years.
His daughter has marketing intellect, and she filled in the gaps that Johnson’s career did not help him in the publication game.
Johnson is a longtime advertising guru. He was the McCanns’ worldwide account director on ExxonMobil’s business and also worked on large retail accounts. Because of that knowledge, he knew he needed to ensure that the reader he wished to target would be comfortable with the book. He corralled two friends as guinea pigs to test the readability of the book.
The result? Brereton writes: “Johnson writes in an engaging, highly readable style, finding humour even in the darkest subjects and avoiding anything preachy or didactic.”
One of the issues that jumped out because of its relevance today is the poor diets of the enslaved people and the perpetual fear of a rebellion among the planter class. Johnson quotes two sources that testify that the daily food allowance provided for the enslaved fieldworker was short by 450 calories for the heavy work they did in the fields.
A visiting priest opined that no nation feeds their enslaved as poorly as the English. This state of affairs led to random acts of violence.
The scary part is Bob Marley’s assessment: “Them belly full, but we hungry/ a hungry mob is an angry mob.” This outcome is not far from what we are experiencing today.
History shows us that the imposition of increasingly harsher penalties cannot quench such uprisings.
The second matter worthy of our consideration is the way that our trade model is fully integrated with places outside of our control. The model leaves us in dire circumstances. When there was an unfavourable confluence of events, famine was the result.
Johnson quotes a gentleman named William Dickson from Barbados. In 1814, he wrote: “The famine had begun. The poor of the land, both white and black, were dropping down in the streets, or silently pining and expiring in their cottages.”
But such circumstances did not lead to increased farming. Johnson’s cryptic comment rings true today: “They talked the talk, gave speeches and wrote pamphlets, but they did not walk the walk.”
How eerie is that?
“The price of sugar went up, but so too had their overheads. So, they simply carried on… depending on imported food for sustenance.”
Sounds familiar? So, what did they do? Import products of lesser quality—nowadays, they will still be sold for high prices.
A third issue that emerges from Johnson’s detailed account of the assimilation of the parade of new entrants to the region and country is the disparaging of each succeeding cohort.
“Lazy” was a standard label to bestow. Johnson notes that the British divide-and-rule strategy of playing the Afro-Caribbean and Indo-Caribbean communities off against each other was a smashing success.
(Courtesy Embau Moheni/ NJAC.)
It is a lesson that some of our politicians have internalised and now use as a lever to separate us.
Johnson tells a tale that is based on chronology. He starts with the First Peoples and traces the development up to the middle of the 20th Century. Detailed notes and citations accompany the book chapters.
Great care is evidenced in the appendix and glossary. It is an unusual feature of the book that ought to endear it to those who are serious about knowing the food and plant groups introduced into the region by the immigrants.
The easy language of the book does not prepare you for the depth of the bibliography compiled by the author.
Here is a glimpse of the foods we now eat that were bequeathed to us by our forefathers. This review cannot do justice to the range of foods covered by the book. Their history is breathtaking.
The book has twenty-four chapters, each well written.
(via eat ah food TT.)
The French who came to the colony of Trinidad brought two food innovations. In the 1880s, John Rapsey (Rapsey Street and Ellerslie Park in Maraval) re-created an old bread recipe, which involved leavening a dough roll with an extract of the male hop flower, which gave it an unusual crust and size.
Voila! The local version of the baguette, hops.
The French also enhanced the callaloo. They jazzed up the basic dish with okra, coconut milk, and other ingredients, plus pig’s tail. Creole food was being re-interpreted through French intervention. So, when we have our Sunday callaloo, we need to thank our African ancestors and our French Creoles.
The Chinese arrived under the auspices of the British government with very detailed terms of indenture. That exercise did not go well. The Chinese shifted their focus to becoming shopkeepers and then restaurateurs. Food was the bridge between the Creoles and the Chinese.
The Chinese introduced quick stir-frying, steaming, and roasting. When you feel like eating something different, where do you go? To a Chinese restaurant.
Then came the East Indians from a land where life was becoming increasingly challenging. The journey was almost twenty weeks at sea.
Johnson reports a fascinating legend about the beginnings of buss-up-shut. The story identifies an anonymous cook who had the idea to bring oversized tawas, which were reportedly three feet across.
The ship’s oars were used to flip the dough and beat it into super-sized paratha bread, which was then torn into clumps of hot, tasty fried flatbread.
Equally important were the produce brought over in the jajaji bandal: a range of dhals, spices, and new varieties of plants, such as mangoes, guavas, cucumber, and hibiscus.
The simple flatbread recipe morphed in the new country. We now have saada, usually accompanied by a choka, for breakfast and aloo roti and phulowrie.
Of course, the ultimate street food, doubles, which Johnson claims is derived from a Punjabi recipe called chole bhature. Johnson does not forget to identify the first roti shop, essentially a box cart with a stove and a coal pot.
Johnson elevates the role of doubles and roti to represent an Afro-Indian handshake. This lens is used to appreciate the welcome of the various foods by the previously enslaved population and their descendants, as well as the French Creoles and others.
(via We Trini Food.)
May we rise above those who would divide us. Let us enjoy the communal feasts possible through the adoption of our wide range of food possibilities.
Look for Mixing Memory and Desire wherever good books are sold and have a virtual feast. It is an easy read that makes the journey light.
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