What Afghan Refugees Teach Us About Food Resilience

Movie recommendation - Escape from Kabul

my email to send podcast guest recommendations: hannah@hannahatthegardens.com

my social media handle to direct message me or see pictures of my time with my Afghan friends: @Hannahatthegardens

Transcript

0:01

Hey there. On today's episode of the Global Stewardship Podcast, we're gonna be talking about what Afghan refugees can teach the world, especially in terms of food and farming. On the Global Stewardship Podcast, there are stories posted here every single week of stewardship in the farming world around the world. So today I'm sharing what I've learned during my four plus years of living and working alongside Afghan refugees.

Audio Only - All Participants: 0:28

These people are family to me, have spent hundreds and hundreds of days with them, uh, for the first couple of years that they were here in the us. Spent literally every day with them. They spent holidays with us, birthday celebrations with us, and we know them on very deep and intimate levels. And during those early days of our friendships and relationships, I just learned so many things about hospitality and food and a lot of lessons that I apply on my farm from them. And so was excited to have thought to share this today. If you need some background about. Afghanistan and refugees. I'm about to go into that, but it's uh, definitely some pretty sad stuff. So if you're not in the mood or head space to listen to some of that, maybe skip forward several minutes. But just a little background. The US completed their military withdrawal out of Afghanistan on August 30th in 2021. So they'd been in there for 20 years. The evacuation effort was called Operation Allies Refuge, and over 123,000 people where airlifted out of Afghanistan, between August 14th and August 30th, 2021. So. This is kind of where my time with Afghan refugees started. But I have been working with refugees since I was in high school, actually in 2018. I spent a summer living in Louisville, Kentucky, Louisville, or Louisville. Depends who you're from how you say it. But I spent a summer there working for Refuge International, working with Syrian refugees, refugees from Nepal, different countries in Africa. And my passion for it skyrocketed. So when I heard about all that was happening in Afghanistan, my family and I just jumped at the ready to get to be a part of helping these people. There was significant chaos at the airport where people were being evacuated from. And in the show notes, I'm gonna share a name of a movie documentary that I highly recommend if you want to learn more about what happened. It's, it's a good one. And it's, uh, you'll probably cry. You'll cry for sure, but there was a ton of chaos at the airport. Thousands of Afghans flooded the tarmac and. Especially on the later flights, people were clinging to the airplanes, scaling fences, the instances of people falling off the planes. Uh, there were just so many videos and eyewitnesses of these people who were just desperate, Afghans clinging to US military aircraft during takeoff, just so desperate to find freedom. And according to the US Air Force, there were human remains that were found in several wheel wells, landing gear of the cargo planes after departure. So just those images themselves are some of the most chilling symbols of the panic and desperation of these people in those final days. That evacuation in 2021 was one of the largest non-combatant airlifts ever. But yeah, it was deeply chaotic and not everyone who helped the US made it out so in our instances with the families that were close with, we've, we've worked with several families who came to the US after this evacuation, but for the families that we are closest with and work with on a daily basis. The ones who we have had relationships with since 20 21, 20 22, the longest, they made it out on those planes. But then we also have a family who we only met more recently, within the last couple of years. They lived on the farm for a year. Actually, they only just made it to the US within the past couple of years. And so they were in that group of people who did not make it out on the planes. And for many of those people, the journey, the story is just so crazy. They had to travel through many, many countries travel on the back of animals through Central and South America. So the stories are pretty wild. The refugee crisis is massive and ongoing. And even after the pullout of the US military, millions remain displaced or in refugee status. So you may be wondering who qualified to be evacuated American citizens, US citizens and their family members were evacuated as well as other lawful permanent residents. So green card holders. But then there were also so many Afghans who worked with the US Military coalition forces. So many of the evacuees were applicants for what is called the SIV program, special Immigrant Visa program. They were interpreters, translators, and other locals who provided assistance to the US military. We have relationships with several people who were interpreters, but then other people who just partnered with the US and fought alongside the US military, whether it was on the ground with machinery and equipment, or in one instance we have a father who was a commando working with Special Ops Green Berets, really, really high up and, just didn't get necessarily the treatment or the care that somebody should, when they helped our military that intimately. But not only do the men or women who, mostly men who helped our military, not only were they able to be evacuated, but also their spouses and children, and then some other vulnerable Afghans, whether it was journalists and media workers or female leaders in civil society figures. Those people, some of them were also able to qualify for evacuation out of the country. But the airlift was genuinely just so constrained by how many people could physically get to the airport, get processed in board planes. It was not easy. The US military obviously had to balance the evacuation speed with extreme security screening and processing. Not only that, but the SIV application process is notoriously complex. Applications need to prove employment. They need to improve their risk of persecution if they were to stay in Afghanistan, so they had to prove that they were genuinely going to be killed or tortured, et cetera, if they were to have stayed, and they had to have their cases approved at multiple levels. So if people's visa paperwork wasn't finalized or wasn't super clear, they didn't have every single detail that they needed. They were considered ineligible for some flights, which makes sense. But it was very, very difficult for people to finish all that they needed to, to be selected and prioritized And unfortunately, since we pulled out of Afghanistan, thousands of people have been murdered, tortured by the Taliban, and many killings go unreported if you look up numbers. And I've certainly tried. Nobody has any clue, you know, the only people who are reporting that are some of the United Nations or NGO people left in the country. It's pretty crazy from just my experience with the families who we have relationship here in the US. A lot of them, their extended families back home are still in hiding or being persecuted for their relationship to somebody who worked alongside the US military, um, or have been killed. So it is just pretty mind blowing stuff. All that to say we have been so blessed by our time with our friends from Afghanistan. And basically what happens is the US when they did this evacuation, this isn't how it happens for all refugees, but it's what happened in this particular instance. All of them were dropped off at major US military bases. And so some of them may have been dropped off in Wisconsin or Arizona, just huge bases. And then from there, they spend several months and then kind of get relocated to bigger cities that have nonprofits that are wanting to help them or take them in. And so we have a nonprofit or a Catholic Charities organization, not that I'm affiliated with in any way, but they're outside of Charlotte. And so Charlotte, North Carolina, which is just right above the border from where my farm is, they. We're relocating a lot of refugees to Charlotte, but unfortunately because these people are just brought here and basically dumped with no help or no education, no guidance, unless somebody takes them under their wing, a lot of people just kind of scrounge and don't exactly know what to do. And so in one instance, there was a family of nine going on 11. They were living in a hotel, a single bedroom hotel, and just hadn't enrolled in school in months and hadn't found jobs and just had no idea what to do, how to get around, didn't have a car, any progress towards getting a driver's license or anything that you need in the us. And they knew nothing about our culture or our language. Nobody was teaching them those things. And so that was kind of our first family that we got connected with. And then many more after that. But when the US brings them in, there's no kind of program or really anything set up to actually help these people integrate into daily life, which is obviously what you want to do when you're welcoming people into your country and you don't want them to just be a drag on society. Not that there would ever be a drag, but you know, a financial burden on the country. It's our goal to see them thrive and successful and, feel self-empowered. We got to be a really, intimate part of their life, teaching them English and tutoring all of their kids, getting them enrolled in school, driver's license, all their legal paperwork, which would be just so, it was so difficult to navigate we even partnered with lawyers and professionals in these realms, and it's still so hard for us to navigate. Things like immigration. So it would be impossible if they had done this all alone, which is what many refugees are left to do. So I always say, even if you aren't in agreement with the US and our refugee policies, it's kind of like that's a mute point. This is me totally being, uh, totally honest, unfiltered on this episode today. But it doesn't really matter if you're not in agreement about the policies, because regardless, it's happening. And regardless, all of these people are or have been welcomed into the US and then just dropped here. So regardless of how you feel about the policies, they're here. Like for me, the policies, you know, it's not even part of the conversation because they're here and they need help. So we love to help them and get to be a part of their life and. We have so many perks of those relationships, just so much joy and laughter, getting to watch children grow up. They're like siblings and children to me in many ways. Our family photos have a bunch of little Afghan children in them, and it's just a huge part of my heart and my life, and one of the perks of those relationships is food, especially middle Eastern countries. I've found that so many of the refugees that I've gotten to be friends with and who have allowed me into their life have taught me so much about food and hospitality and flavor, and wanted to share some of those things with you today. Some background on Afghanistan in particular that I think will help people understand what I've learned about food is that Afghanistan's terrain is wildly diverse. It's far more diverse than people realize. I pictured. Desert hills, but it's not all barren mountains. Afghanistan's terrain contains pockets of lush, fertile valleys, alpine meadows, vast deserts and everything in between. If you've ever worked with refugees, you may be able to relate to this, but you kind of fall in love with a place when you work with refugees. But it's interesting because you fall in love with the place as it was before the crisis or political turmoil. So when I visualize Afghanistan, I visualize a peaceful version years ago. It's like you're falling in love with something that in our lifetime will probably not come back or ever be restored. When I picture Afghanistan, I picture these valleys. They actually get a lot of rainfall, have fast running rivers, and can be shockingly lush when compared to the rest of the country. There are these areas that are. Really perfect for crop growing and for agriculture. But then there's also, of course, extremely high mountain peaks for backpacking and trekking, which I love to do and have talked about on the show before. But there are regions of the country that grow citrus and olives, pomegranates. There's sugar cane and rice also. Vegetables year round. There's definitely parts of the country that look like South Carolina where I live, or southern Georgia. Alabama farmland, especially areas with orchard or rice patties. There are areas that were desert or are desert until irrigation is brought in. There's, it's a hot, dry climate, but since they have strong irrigation from rivers and these ancient canal systems, there are parts of Afghanistan that are famous for grapes, mulberries, melons, almonds, pistachios, Pomegranate scene in Afghanistan is just wild. Pomegranates are my favorite food, my favorite fruit. Fun fact. And to learn that all of my Afghan friends cherish pomegranates as well, was really cool. And something interesting was the first few months that they're here in the US sometimes we're able to help them get some food donations from different food pantries or grocery stores. And oftentimes so many people don't take the pomegranates. And so there have been many times where they have gotten a box of like 30 pomegranates. And when you think I pay five,$6 sometimes at the store for those things, it's like hundreds of dollars of pomegranates sometimes that they just get dropped off at their door. It's amazing, but it's really culturally appropriate for them because they just love them. So in those parts of Afghanistan. With irrigation. The farmland does look surprisingly similar to the California Central Valley, and I didn't know this when first beginning our relationships. I didn't know much about Afghanistan. Something that I try to do when I first get introduced to a new culture through refugee work is do all that I can to understand their culture, their social cues. Many things are different. Uh, in Afghanistan. One is thumbs up is like the middle finger for many people. Um, and Africa in Uganda, when I lived in Uganda, a lot of times you don't make direct eye contact with people, especially someone of the other gender because it can be seen as threatening. And so those are things that you always wanna take into consideration. But I did not necessarily think to consider food. Diet. It actually took several years of working with refugees to start considering food and ingredients. And you'd think as a farmer that that would've been forefront of my mind with all this work and traveling for food and farming, like it's just so crazy that I was missing that. But I learned over time that for my Afghan friends, so many of the foods that they prepare on a regular daily basis in the foods that they cherish culturally are the same foods that many people in the South have cultural ties and significance to. One of them would be okra, and I'll chat about that in a minute, but just wanted to go through kind of a list of what they eat and why I think that these are interesting ingredients. The first is eggplant. It's one of the most cherished Afghan vegetables. Eggplant grows so well. In many parts of the US, but so many people don't know how to cook it, including myself. I'm always trying to figure out new recipes that aren't bitter, my Afghan friends cook so much eggplant. They love eggplant. They cook it so well. It is just a delight. It is delicious. They cook a lot of spinach dishes that are iconic. They love soft, deeply cooked greens like spinach, cilantro. They cannot get enough cilantro. They buy huge bundles of fresh cilantro. I have a ton that I'm drying out right now in my underneath my mantle that I'm gonna bring to'em to have dried cilantro in the off season. They eat a lot of fresh cucumbers too. They adore crisp cucumbers. They eat them with bread and yogurt just sliced into medallions and eaten as a side dish just with salt on them. And tomatoes with onions, they eat onions raw as well. But those cucumbers are often made into a drink. It's a yogurt, tomato, cucumber, sometimes mint or sometimes cilantro drink, and you just drink it. It's also made into a dip that is eaten on a daily basis as well. And then, yes, I mentioned okra. Okra is a huge deal. It's especially loved in the east and south of Afghanistan. So I've found that some of our families, depending on where they're from, do love okra and some aren't as familiar with it. Just like here in the US different parts of every country have different cultural practices and traditions, but I adore the way that some of my Afghan friends cook okra. They cook it in a way that avoids the sliminess, it keeps it tender. They stew it with tomatoes, garlic, onions, sometimes pair it with cilantro grow. I think that was one of the biggest shockers to me because being in the south okra is such a huge cultural thing here. And I guess I did know that, you know, some cultures in India, different parts of India, cook a lot of okra because it, it does grow well in the heat and produces abundantly. But I was not expecting that from Afghanistan. But it cooks beautifully with Afghan flavors and feels so hearty and comforting. It does have a similar cultural vibe to okra and the American South. It's summery, it's deeply enjoyed, it's tied to home cooking, and in many ways it reminds my Afghan friends of home when they're far away. And many times we'll just have conversations and it, it ebbs and flows, but there will certainly be seasons or days where they are just really feeling being away from home and being away from their families. And so there are some foods like okra and the cucumber dips that do make them feel like they're, you know, reminded of home. I think a misconception that a lot of people think about refugees is that they don't miss home or that they just wanna be here and that, they should just be grateful for their life here. And of course that's, that's a fair perspective. But I think that it really misses the reality of what they have gone through. Like I said, I'm going to definitely link a documentary that I highly suggest that you watch, just because I honestly would get too emotional explaining some of the things that people have had to go through, especially these people who are so near and dear to my heart who are still emotionally traumatized and recovering from what they experienced. But it doesn't capture the whole picture when we just assume that they're so stoked for their new American life, and they're living the American dream, and there you have all these newfound freedoms. It misses the fact that they're in a completely reversed culture from what they grew up in. And there's many challenges that come with that. Misses the reality that they in many cases will never see any family again. That's really, that's really hard. Like regardless, just imagine yourself in that situation and not if you're super wanderlust and you've chosen to live a nomadic life. They did not choose to be put in the middle of political and military turmoil. there is a lot, a lot of trauma that comes along with what these people have seen, children who have seen people murdered in front of their eyes at very young ages who, to be honest, have not nearly begun to recover from that trauma in full. It's just really hefty. So I think that it was really important for me to learn this lesson of understanding which Afghan dishes carry stories of hope for them. And once I did learn about the okra I kind of had this passion lit under me for understanding their food culture. I was on a journey to find the right ingredients and help them be able to cook things that did feel and taste like home. It is really hard to create authentic dishes from around the world in the us even here, being near Big Al markets, or like in Charlotte, we have Super G Mart. Many big cities have something like Super G Mart where it's just a giant global food store. They certainly have a lot of vegetables that are from different places around the world. But as far as spices and the specific type of rice, those kind of things are really difficult, if not, in many cases, impossible to find because they're not exported here. And especially from places like Afghanistan, the Taliban, they're not necessarily shipping overseas something that is only found in a very tiny region of Afghanistan. So I wanted to share, and I just now thought about this, but I, I have to share this story, the, maybe the second day I ever knew, the first Afghan mom that we welcomed here, and just the one I've always been closest with. The very second day I had taken her to a halal market and we did a bunch of grocery shopping. That was such a cool experience to see what she picked off the shelves and try to understand why she knew absolutely zero English at that point. And we get back to her home. We had bought several different varieties of rice, and the very first thing that she did, like almost a ravenous kind of action motion, she ran into the kitchen, ripped open the bags of rice, like didn't even bother to get scissors or knife, just ripped it open, like just absolutely ravenous to figure out if she had gotten the right kind of rice. Because she had gone so long, she'd been living in a military base on the other side of the US for several, several months. She'd gone like nearly probably half a year without eating her traditional food, and she was, it was really important to her because I eat rice almost every single meal, every single day. A lot of rice. It was really important to her to know if she got the right one. She shoved a handful of rice in her mouth, raw rice, uncooked straight outta the bag. She didn't even swirl it around. She just, she let it touch her tongue and spew it all over the kitchen like it was the wrong kind of rice. I'm just wondering, to you who is listening, if you put a handful of raw rice in your mouth right now, would you be able to differentiate it from a different kind of raw rice? I just thought that was so crazy. She was able to differentiate them immediately and then she proceeded to do so with the rest of the rice varieties and bags that she got. The one that she spewed across the room was obviously not the correct type of rice, and so she graciously let me, well, she just wanted nothing to do with it, but she graciously let me take it home and I cooked it like any other rice and didn't taste any difference whatsoever. But she knows rice so intricately and intimately that she was able to do that, and I will never, ever forget that. I thought that was just so cool, but so crazy also,'cause I did not know this woman at the time and knowing her now, it's not even remotely surprising'cause she does things like that. But it was crazy. But those first several weeks of my time with her family and then every other family that we've welcomed since then. You see this beautiful transformation in their hearts, like their souls. You can physically see their souls lifting when they're able to finally cook their cultural food the way that their mom cooked it, you know, for the first time in their own kitchen. We, for a lot of these families, there are church, different church houses in the city that they stay in for the first year of integrating and hopefully saving up money to start paying rent somewhere else or buying a house. We have a family, two families now who are paying off a mortgage on a home, which is so huge. What refugees can do that without genuinely if you don't know English, which they didn't. A lot of these families didn't. Some did because they were interpreters, but these specific ones I'm thinking of didn't know English. How would they have ever even ever bought a house much less than four years of being in the us. It is crucial that people come alongside and walk alongside them just to help them out. Like it's just the reality that they genuinely do need somebody to just kind of coach them along, help them get the translation services, help them get to English classes, help their kids get enrolled in school, and once somebody just helps them do those things and they're able to learn the basic cultural parts of living here, get a driver's license so they can get a job, learn English so they can get a job, life changes significantly. It's so important to partner alongside these people and help them just get on their feet. But it's so beautiful to see them when they're first here, getting settled in a place and are able to cook the food that they have cooked their whole life and experience their whole life. It's like this instant feeling of comfort in home. I'm sure you could imagine if you went through a tragedy, it's uh, not even remotely comparable but many times that I've lived overseas for a long, long stints. I'm always craving some certain kind of food when I come home. And that feeling of just like peace, like, ugh, I finally have this food I've been missing. Could you even imagine how much more compounded that feeling would feel if you had been through tragedy and had been displaced in homeless, a refugee for months, if not years of your life? It's pretty unfathomable. So after my experience with my first mom friend, every time we welcomed another family after that, I knew what foods to look for in the halal markets in the grocery stores and was able to come prepared. So the very first day that they stepped foot in their new home, there was exactly what I knew they would wanna be. I knew to do more research if they were from a different region of Afghanistan, but a lot of times it's generally the same kind of main staples. And I will never forget, there was one family who arrived and I went to the Super G Mart up in Charlotte, and I got them these huge white daon radishes because I had seen that those had been eaten raw and cooked by some of our other moms. And I had huge white daon radishes there ready for them when they arrived. Huge, huge, long Armenian cucumbers, like the three foot long cucumbers that I now grow so that I can share them with my Afghan friends. But I had those ready for them. And the moment these families stepped in the door, the first thing is running to these foods that they had been missing for so long and just eating raw radishes straight off the, the two foot long radish, three foot long cucumber. And again, in this way that is just like such a deep hunger. But it's obviously not, it's not, they're not necessarily hungry, hungry in the sense of food hungry, but like this soul hunger for something that feels safe and familiar. And to get to be a part of that and facilitate that is a really just, I can't even begin to explain how much of a blessing that that is in a life changing moment for me. That that has been many of my experiences with these families have taught me a lot about stewardship and also just the Afghan spirit of perseverance has been crazy to witness. They have a lot of resilience through food. Afghans keep traditions alive despite this ongoing crisis, Many, many people have obviously been displaced outside of Afghanistan, although few have made it to the us. Very many are in different countries around the world because they're seeking refuge. They're persecuted if they were to be back in Afghanistan, and some are still in hiding back in the country. But many people have had to find unique ways to pass down recipes orally and families scattered by war. So thankfully, some families, although it has taken months, if not years, to reconnect with family, with new phone numbers and find each other and the online interwebs somehow many families are able to share recipes over the phone as much as they're able. A lot of home cooks have to recreate flavors with extremely limited ingredients, but have done so and have figured out how to do so. It's always beautiful to see a family who's been here for months, if not years now finally figure out the perfect mix of spices to create something that tastes similar to something back home, and food just becomes a form of resistance and identity preservation for these people. I've also learned a lot about farming in hard places, although a lot of the families that we work with were not farmers, farmers and that that was their full-time occupation. Many countries around the world, people just know where their food comes from, or have parents who are farmers or farm kind of culturally like just have chickens. Most people around the world have chickens. Actually, I don't know that that's true, but. I have done a lot of research on chicken ownership before, and let's just be so real that the us, our chicken culture is nothing like the rest of the world. Many people, like many cities around the world, just have chickens walking around, running around, so it's a little different here, especially when you live in like an HOA, that doesn't even let you have chickens. It's a whole different culture than chickens just walking down city streets. But I've learned quite a bit about what Afghan farmers know that the world forgets. There's an art of small plot farming in Afghanistan, even amidst harsh climates. That's very impressive. Their dry land agriculture techniques are from centuries and centuries Before regenerative agriculture was ever a trendy, mainstream term, they have. Crop diversity and micro climates that can teach us a lot about how we grow and what we grow. It's interesting that in the US many of us are growing the exact same fruits and vegetables regardless of the region or the states that we're in. And they do have a lot of specialty produce and growing practices depending on the exact location that they're in within Afghanistan. And that's something we can certainly learn from to allow ourselves to get more interesting and unique with the things that we grow. The way that elders read the land without technology is also so beautiful. And it's a story that's told over and over again many places around the globe, elders, farmers. Know the land very intimately. They're so aware and in tune of with what's happening on the ground beneath their feet that they don't need the technology or the chat GPT that we do. I think many Americans can relate to the fact that a lot of this knowledge is going extinct in our country because our grandparents or our great grandparents stopped farming. And I feel inspired that our generation is going to be the ones that restart, kickstart this journey back to understanding our roots and understanding agriculture and in a new way, maybe a better way of how to approach it with the land in mind and with communities in mind. Another huge, huge, huge lesson that I have learned from my friends from Afghanistan is hospitality lessons. Afghans serve guests, even during scarcity. They serve guests regardless of what's happening in their day-to-day lives, regardless of how much they have or what they have to share. They have open door policies like many Americans could not even begin to imagine. Afghan hospitality is legendary. They will feed strangers even if they barely have enough food for themselves. There's a cultural belief that a guest is a blessing and they have a tradition of sharing not only a lot of food, but the best food with their guests. This generosity reinforces community resilience through trauma, and part of this hospitality ritual is tea. Tea is a slow ritual for people from many countries in the Middle East. Many refugee families I've worked with, even from places like Syria really value tea as this ritual for hospitality. Everything stops for tea. For Afghanistan, there's green tea that's served by people from the north Black tea, from people from the south and east. A lesson that hospitality is not about excess or about how much you have all the lavish things you can do or decorate for your guests. It's just about presence and time. When you go to someone's home from Afghanistan, they're going to sit you down and you're going to be served tea, and you're going to be expected to sit there for a really long time and talk for a really long time if they can talk with you. And it's really just about connection and being there with them until the tea gets cold, which it never gets cold. They always have tea on demand all the time. You cannot walk into an Afghan house and find cold tea or tea that's not heated up. It's always there, ready to go, hoping that there's a guest coming, at least in my experience. Um, and I think that. I think that families wouldn't continue that if they didn't have communities here. So let me clarify. Like if there are refugees from Afghanistan in your area, maybe they don't have hot tea ready because they don't have people who come and visit them, which is heartbreaking because that is normal in their culture. They're communal warming cultures that are used to having these open door policies. But if no one's coming through the door, I wonder if maybe those practices are being lost by those families. But in this instance, because we have so many people in my inner circle of people in friends, church going, folks, we have so many people that pour into them and love these people as our own family. They have the open door policy, it's revived. They're able to keep up these traditions and so they always have hot tea ready'cause they know somebody's gonna stop by. And I think that's amazing. I have implemented that in my own home. Not the tea necessarily, but the open door policy for sure. Everyone knows that they're welcome at any time of the day or, and if they don't, they really should. Another ingredient or dish that is deeply respected in Afghan culture is bread. Afghan non is treated with a level of respect. It's considered a gift from God to many people, they see wasting bread as deeply disrespectful and for the most part, non bread is used in place of utensils. So it it, that kind of shows how central it is to their food and their everyday way of life. I'll get into the utensils or the lack of rather thing in a second, but just more on bread is that there's actually sometimes a belief to not step on bread, and bread is considered sacred, so you shouldn't abuse it, step on it. But when bread falls, some families actually pick it up, kiss it, touch it to their forehead, and then place it somewhere safe. Not all families do this, but it is a cultural practice that a lot of people do. It's just a staple. It's a cultural cornerstone. It's the humble centerpiece of every meal. For Afghans, for the most part, there's a huge economic and social importance to bread in Afghanistan. Something I specifically find interesting about bread is that for one of our families who speaks Phu, many don't. It's a just a family from a unique region. In posh two, the word for bread or like a piece of a loaf is marai. M-A-R-R-A-I would be how we spell it. That's also the same word that they use for food. The reason I find this so fascinating is because it literally means food. Like the literal meaning is bread, but the cultural meaning is food sustenance like a full filling meal in general. So to me with my Christian perspective, like meaning that Jesus is the bread, the manna of life, like full sustenance for your soul, for everything. That's also the same way that they use the word bread. It's a meaning of like breaking bread means eating together, and Mariah can also refer to the staple that sustains life in many contexts, especially rural or traditional ones. In Afghanistan, it can be used. To mean food broadly, as in like, did you eat? So when somebody asks if you've had Mirai, they don't mean bread. They asked, did you eat? And I just thought that had so much, so many parallels to the way that I consider the word bread in a Christian context. God fed the Israelites bread. Jesus came to fulfill in the New Testament as the bread of life. And we oftentimes use that word bread in that same way, which is really powerful. I've learned so many lessons about food and hospitality and farming from my Afghan friends. Another would be women's communal cooking. Women really do cherish and appreciate their roles in the kitchen. Obviously there are many things about Afghan culture that I don't agree with or align with and don't necessarily support. But I do think that there's a beautiful importance in gender roles and that women who just love to genuinely, deeply serve their families through cooking just the most amazing, nourishing, tasty food. And especially in these instances where people have been through so much trauma, their role, like so many times. It actually is kind of gross to me so many times in the US when we are saying like, oh, women, women don't need to be in the kitchen. We're like, we're too modern, too forward thinking we're we're better than just the kitchen life. We kind of say it. In some contexts, like it's a lesser than role. And it's not like that is only our culture that has been trying to teach us that and who has removed us from the home. Don't get me started. But it is such a reminder that there is so much power in being that person for your family or for other people, and they cherish it and they know that they have the greatest responsibility in the home. The the father can make some money. Sure. So can they, but that responsibility of nourishing your family both on a physical, like yes, feeding them level, but nourishing them in the same way that I was talking about before, and they see that and they know that that's valuable. And I'm not sure that I can put it into words how I've seen it and experienced it, but it is powerful to watch them. Embrace that role and know how empowering it is. And it's something that I wish that every American could witness and see, especially American women. There's also this communal cooking that many women do from Afghanistan. So in the few cases where we have been able to reunite some families with like their cousins or their sister-in-law, or their older family members, or maybe just other women that speak the same language in Afghanistan, it's cool to see how they come together to cook for weddings or gatherings. Big events, big celebrations. They do Ramadan and eat and all the different Muslim holidays and the way that they've come together and prepare food, not just in a like, okay, I'm obligated to bring a dish kind of way, but this passionate, communal, working together, strengthening communities way. There's an example. We do a farm to table dinner every year that I talked about a couple weeks ago on the show. And a few years back it was Afghan themed. And we actually had the women, they made the money from the ticket sales. These Afghan women cook the food, prepare all the dishes, and then we had all of the guests, Americans eat with their hands, eat with bread instead of utensils like people from Afghanistan do. And the women got to share about their culture with a very large long table full of South Carolinians and well, and also people from far away. I think the furthest person drove like six hours, which was crazy mind blowing to me. And watching them work, weaving a masterpiece of a meal together, working together seamlessly. Effortlessly. Truly. It's like, wow, they have done this many times. They've done this their whole life, working together to put on amazing meals to feed giant masses of people. They were totally unfazed when I told them the number of people that we're attending. We have usually in between like 50 and a hundred people who come to these meals. They just kind of were like, oh, okay. Easy. You know, they're used to feeding very many people, very large families. Well, considering that one of the families is 11 themselves, that's, yeah, they can do it. Some other things that are interesting are the way that children learn to cook from a very young age. A lot of this, unfortunately, is because the families are so large. So usually the oldest daughter or second oldest daughter, third oldest daughter, if it's a huge family, have to take on the responsibility of basically being the second, third, fourth moms in the home because there's just so much to be done. And so of course, part of it comes with like that sadness of not really seeing them get to live out a full childhood. I think in many of these cases, these girls unfortunately haven't had much of a childhood at all, apart from a couple cultural American things they've got to do with us. But they know how to cook full dishes from a really young age. I was pretty shocked to see when some of our families first got here, very young girls, elementary school aged girls could prepare food that. Certainly, definitely a college aged US male or female, probably can't. They're just really resilient young kids and I am so honored to get, to be a part of raising them and teaching them about culture here and just getting to watch them grow up is really, really special and beautiful. And if you ever have the opportunity to get to be a part of someone's life like this, 10 outta 10 recommend, there's honestly not much that's more fulfilling besides raising your own kids, maybe. Another lesson, and I think maybe the more important one to kind of leave you with is just that people eat and celebrate differently. For our Afghan families, they eat with their hands. Many of the children didn't know how to use a fork until a couple years into living in the US and they learned because of things that they were maybe served at school or so that they could, you know, participate. They kind of thought it was cool, like getting to learn a bit about our culture, but also so they didn't get made fun of at school. Different things like that, but they eat with their hands culturally, or pick up their food with bread sometimes. But just because people eat different things or eat differently doesn't really warrant looking at them differently. And for the adults listening, I'm sure you're thinking. That's fair. Like why would you make fun of someone for what they eat or the way they eat? But growing up in the public school system, that was something that was so common. I shared recently, I dated a guy from Nepal all throughout high school. And the amount of people who made fun of him because of what he ate, how he ate it was really disheartening. And of course it's just petty teenagers trying to feel more comfortable by making fun of somebody else. He was on the more popular side of his class and was still really treated pretty horribly at lunchtime. There's so much we can learn from other people who are from different places, whether it's my friends from China, I used to do so much work with students from China. There used to be my English partners teaching them English, whether it was them pulling out chopsticks at a burger joint, that was a funny one. It's a big, beautiful global world out there, and as we integrate cultures into each other and it kind of slowly is becoming a giant melting pot. Well not melting pot. I actually don't like the term melting pot at all, because we don't melt. That insinuates that we are all becoming the same thing. I think that we should strive to have our communities beautiful, showing signs of all the different cultures of people who live there. This might not be something that every American agrees with, but I think there is so much beauty in the different stories and cultures from around the world, and so we should maybe strive to be more like a pizza, like with a bunch of different toppings rather than a big melting pot. I would like to hear your thoughts. I am sure I'm going to think of things that I should have mentioned and I should have said, so I may come back to this conversation at some point.

47:24

And here I am five minutes later adding something else. One of the more important things that I totally forgot to mention, so on our farm we've been raising laying hins chickens for eggs for. Since the beginning, since even before I lived here, my mom had started them and coming to visit on holidays, I just loved that she had laying hens. We would raise chickens like baby chicks and end up with roosters and didn't necessarily know what to do with them. But our Afghan refugees really taught us how to cherish rooster meat and how to cook it really well. Make it taste absolutely delicious. So many Americans will tell you that it's too. Chewy that it's too gamey. They'll complain about it in one way or another, but we have absolutely learned to love it. So we went from only desiring hins for eggs to now we totally just welcome. Whether it's roosters or hins, we don't even care. When we incubate, we incubate a lot more now than we used to just buy baby female chicks. We now just incubate our own chicks and raise all of them up to full mature age, and we process the boy chickens. For meat and save the girls for eggs. But it was our Afghan refugees that originally taught us how to do this, why to do this. If you're a farmer, you might already know all of this and do all of this. But it was a moment where it hit home for me to be grateful for what we have on the farm and to. Make the most of our opportunities to feed our family with the land that we have here. It all started out by hosting our refugees on the farm like we do so many times and one of the fathers being home from work that day and just coincidentally walked by a chicken coop full of roosters and. Put one in a cat carrier and took it home and they processed it. So just always learning from them about farming and food and hospitality, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity to do so. I am now off to actually go visit one of the families. I have been talking about two twin babies, a boy and a girl were born last week.

Audio Only - All Participants: 49:50

They're like five pounds each. They're the most precious little things, and I have been cooking so much food for them. I bring them a lot of extra produce throughout the year and a few years back I brought a giant basket of turnip roots, like purple top turnips that I don't know how to cook very well. I'm not a huge fan'cause they're just like spicy, earthy potatoes if you've never tried them. They're like kind of like radishes in that way And I was surprised to come back the next day and get to try this delicious turnip soup. And so I've tried to replicate it. It's nothing like the one that I have been cooked before, unfortunately. But I think it's still good. And because a lot of these akian moms are used to things that are so flavorful and spiced, you can't just get away with American flavored food. And so I, I've been trying Afghan recipes and I think they've been coming out really good. They will politely eat them, but I'm not exactly sure that they don't throw the, throw it away when I leave. Just kidding. I'm, I'm sure they cherish it, but I'm excited and that's where I'm headed now. I hope you have a beautiful week. And if you would like to go and learn more about the Afghan refugee crisis, mainly the pullout out of Afghanistan in 2021, I am gonna link that movie link in the podcast description or the, the name of the movie. And I do highly recommend it, but make sure you're certainly in the right head space to watch it. And I've been doing some pretty fascinating interviews with farmers, food system leaders, thinkers from around the world over the past couple of weeks. So we'll be rolling those out over the next couple weeks and would love. Recommendations though, if you do have one, have somebody or a story that would be interesting to add to this show, please reach out to my email, my direct messages. I would greatly appreciate it so I can keep doing this. All right, I think that's it. I appreciate you and hope you have a fantastic week.