The Power of Food

Tomorrow I find out where I will spend the next two years of my life. Our permanent site announcements are tomorrow, and us trainees have been anxiously counting down the days and guessing at the possibilities for awhile now. Saturday we meet with our counterpart teachers - the Armenian teachers we will be paired with for the next two years. It's an incredibly exciting and nerve-wrecking week. Perhaps in acknowledgement of that, the Peace Corps scheduled an afternoon off for us today. It was a beautiful thing.

Today started normal. We had a four hour language lesson starting at 8:30am. Since we just learned what feels like 20 new verb tenses (realistically, it was like three), we toned back a bit and went over some new cooking vocabulary. I can now give an entire recipe in Armenian, which is exactly what we did in class to practice our new vocab. We were told to pick anything we liked to make, write down the recipe, and then tell it to our classmates in Armenian.

So I was sitting there thinking about all of the delicious foods that I want to make while I am here. I haven't been allowed to really touch the stove at my house or even wash a single dish. This isn't out of a desire to limit or belittle me. Instead, my current host family is determined to treat me as a guest until I leave, and cooking and cleaning are always seen as labor. Let me tell you, when you're not allowed to do something, labor turns into a privilege very quickly. Needless to say, I've been missing cooking quite a bit and about a zillion comfort foods jumped into my head. However, there was one spectrum of flavors that has been noticeably absent in my diet which used to be a staple for me. I'm betting my brother, and SamCan(who is basically my sister), back home could guess in a heartbeat... Mexican food and anything spicy.

Back to the recipe assignment, I pick fajitas. I used to make them about once every other week at home and the craving was strong. I described the fajitas as best I could in Armenian, and my teacher, who is a total foodie, got about as excited as I did. Then I realize two things - 1. Most of these ingredients are available in Armenia, and 2. My wonderfully loving and giving parents just sent me a super amazing care package with Salsa Picante (hot sauce!!!) in it. A beautiful plan for my free afternoon was born.

During our next language lesson break, I casually mention to the group that I have an entirely delicious plan but need use of a host family's kitchen. Of course, my bright ball of sunshine friend, Lauren, immediately calls her host mom to ask. Her mom says yes, I tell my foodie LCF's that they are invited if I can pull this together, I get a few other trainees interested in the plan, and I (mostly) patiently wait for language lessons to be over.

Fast forward a couple hours, myself, Lauren, and C (another trainee), are determined to put this plan into action. First, we need to gather ingredients. Our little village has four separate khanoots (stores), but my host mom quickly informs me there are no bell peppers in any of them. C needed to go to the nearest town anyway (somewhat larger than our little village), so we decide to walk. It was a beautifully sunny day, so the three of us head out with out favorite village pup, Max, in tow on our 4km walk.

While in the town, we hit up a few different places. We get some spices from a store filled only with bulk spices that you can buy in any quantity. We get fresh produce from a couple different roadside farm stands. We eat some incredibly delicious fresh strawberries, and finally we make it to the biggest store in the town. We are able to pick up the rest of our list of grocery items (totally got lucky!), but not before we helped a 2-year-old celebrate her birthday party in the grocery store. DJ, fresh homemade Armenian pizza, Armenian Disney princess, and party games included. After that, it was time to trek back home.

Lauren, C, and I decided to only talk in Armenian the entire walk back. It was amazing and some much needed practice for all of us. We get back and find a few other trainees on our way through our village, so they join us. We started our adventure at about 1:30, and it was about 5:30 by the time we made it back to Lauren's kitchen, so it was time to get to work. We made some tea and coffee first, because here, that's a necessity before anything.

Then next couple of hours was a magnificent mixture of good company, food prep, Latin music, breaking gender norms (all of the male trainees with us were outside chopping vegetables), and just being free. There were several parts that seemed a little sketchy at times. Some of our chicken defrosted a bit weird. Homemade salsa proved a bit tricky. Our bell pepper stash was a little low and our hot pepper stash was a little high. Lauren's host family kept wanting to help despite our insistence that we were having fun (again, cooking = labor idea, but they are truly excellent humans). Anyway, we were having a blast, but would it actually make tasty food... meh. Who knows.

Around 7:30, our LCF's show up and the food is just about done. This is normal dinner time here. All of a sudden, everything had just wondrously come together, and it smelled DELICIOUS. We all ate, and the happiness was just emanating from the group. I can't properly describe the magic of the moment. Us Americans had a familiar taste of home. Our LCF's, who work so incredibly hard for all of us, who take care of us in so many ways, and who we all absolutely adore, were having a really good time and also loved the food. Lauren's host family even tried everything and appeared pleasantly surprised at how much they enjoyed it. There was a constant exchange of both English and Armenian. We were constantly passing food around. There was laughter, love, and just general contentment in abundance.

Afterwards, everyone helped clean up. Again, this doesn't usually happen here. Lauren's host family tried several times to get us to stop helping. Earlier though, I thanked Lauren's host mom sincerely for letting us use her kitchen and bombard her house, to which she had said, "Our home is your home. Our kitchen is your kitchen." So through the protests from Lauren's host mom about everyone helping clean, I simply replied, "Your home is our home, and we all clean in our own homes." It was a surprisingly successful cross-cultural exchange, and the best part is, we were all allowed to help. It was one more beautiful addition to a perfect evening.

I was unable to contain my pure joy and happiness at how everything went. I've inherited from my parents a simple and sincere pleasure in creating a meal that many others can enjoy. (For those of you who know my parents, you know the deep truth of this.) The other trainees fed off of my happiness, and something as simple as a meal from home created a night of love and family. We all realized at the end of the night that we hadn't thought about the nerve-wrecking events of tomorrow for hours. I personally hadn't thought about it since the idea of fajitas was first brought up. Food is definitely a powerful motivator.

Now, I am going into tomorrow with a strong memory of love. Even if we are across the country from each other, I have a deeper connection with each and every person I was with today. There is so much closeness you can feel with people merely from sharing one strong, positive memory with each other. I'm not really nervous for tomorrow anymore. Instead, I'm excited for what's next and ready to face it with the wonderful humans around me. All thanks to a spontaneous idea, the help of good friends, and some magical fajitas.

Tonight, I am wishing for all of you to create a new strong memory of love. In the words of two random Armenian women Lauren and I met today -

Մարդ և մարդ շատ կարևոր է։ (Mard yev mard shat karevor eh.)
Literally - Person and person is very important. In other words - Connect with someone. It matters.

Emily