Food is my Mother Tongue

 

I introduced my family to a catchy, and oh so annoying children's song so they could learn to greet my family in South Africa. They sang it endlessly for three solid weeks. Even after we moved from a Sotho area to a Zulu one where the greetings changed. They sing it to this day at the slightest provocation.

“Thobela. Thobela. Thobela. Le ki. Le ki. Le ki. Regona recaralina. Regona recaralina.” I can still hear them in my head. But I can’t blame them. My aptitude for SeSotho was less than marginal on my best days so I didn’t have much else (language-wise) to teach them.

Despite my near obsession with travel, language is not one of my super powers. I learn the basics of course. Hello, goodbye, thank you. Such simple gestures, despite being basic decency, go so far in conveying goodwill on my part and receiving it from others. But unlike my friend who speaks seven languages fluently (and at least three additional one passably) or the average South African adult living in my old village who speak at least three, and my original host-dad who spoke all 11 official South African languages, I’m mostly a stereotypical monolingual American. A little Spanish to get by...not much more.

I do speak food though.

I don’t mean I know the names of things. Although I do my best to be familiar with dishes and the regions they are from, key ingredients and local variations on a theme. But when I say I speak food I really mean I am all in and want to try local food the way the folks in that place eat it.

Many people look up tourist hot-spots or historical monuments when they go someplace new. I research local delicacies. What do you eat and how do you eat it?

In Japan that involved discovering many folks take their plum wine with ice or water. In Vietnam I ended up eating strawberries with chili salt and nuoc cham (in Dalat) and toasting “yo” every time the family that invited me into their home for a party, filled my shot glass with local brew. I amused my village in South Africa when I first arrived because at a community function where everyone was eating with their hands they handed me a spoon (for some reason everyone in my village assumed Americans eat everything with spoons) and I instead followed their lead and dug in with my hand.

It doesn’t mean I love everything I'm offered, just that more times than not, I’m gonna eat what you give me and I gonna look for what you (person in a place I’m not from) eat.

Of course that bleeds over into my cooking. Experiencing a taste of something different often leaves me wanting more of it. But depending on where you are in America, you may not find what you are looking for.

I’m lucky, Houston is one of the most diverse places in America. I can find most things here without much effort. But even so, sometimes you have to know where to look. Pre-COVID my sister took me to a Vietnamese buffet spot. Fresh from my trip to Vietnam at the time I was expecting the usual fare. Instead I found dishes I had in the Mekong Delta- dishes I’d never seen on Vietnamese menus (in America) before. I was glee-filled, immediately transported back to buying fresh fruit from a floating market and watching the sun sink into the river at dusk.

I’ve loved dim sum for decades now. Ever since friends in Dallas introduced it to me. I’m pretty adept and can handle my own with a crush of carts and the soft tofu lady drilling daggers into me hoping I’ll capitulate and order some. But once I went with a friend of a friend. Luther, had lived in China for some years. So when the carts came around with something he wanted and he was offered the top steaming basket he smiled and shook his head no and pointed at the one below it. The next round of food he repeated this. By the third round there was no reason, the server smiled at him knowingly and reached for a lower (hotter) basket and placed it on our table with a knowing smile. Luther spoke food.

Like greeting someone in their mother tongue instead of expecting them to greet you in yours, knowing and loving someone’s food is a way to convey not only that “I see you” but that “I honor you and yours” too.