In City Heights, mothers teach their Americanized daughters cultural ways while blending in some personal time
12:01 a.m.March 30, 2013Updated1:05 p.m.March 29, 2013
SAN DIEGO
—
For many daughters, the kitchen contains their mother’s secrets. In the
tumult of pots and pans, the pinches of sugar and salt, reside recipes
perfected over time without cookbooks — experience and intuition the
only guides.
For several East African daughters in City Heights, a neighborhood that
is a major West Coast portal for refugees, the opportunity to cook twice
a month as a group with their mothers is a chance to steep themselves
in Somali, Ethiopian and Eritrean culinary traditions, passed down
through generations.
“We have a common goal: to learn from each other,” said Ayan Sheikh, a
recent graduate of California State University Bakersfield and a nurse,
who missed the cooking group so much at school that she asked her aunt
to post the sessions on YouTube.
The gatherings started two years ago with 10 mothers and daughters;
today, there are more than 30 regulars. The group has multiple goals:
helping daughters growing up in the United States to understand their
heritage while encouraging mothers to adapt healthy versions of American
favorites such as quiche and pizza.
“Mothers were saying, ‘I’m losing my daughter; she’s not eating my
food,’” said Sahra Abdi, founder of United Women of East Africa, which
sponsors the classes and provides mental health services and leadership
skills for refugee women. “And the daughters were saying, ‘We see food
on the table, and we don’t know how to make it.’”
For young women such as Sheikh, who was born in Mogadishu, Somalia, and
whose family lived in Kenya, Yemen, Atlanta and Ohio before settling in
San Diego, the mother-daughter kinship is more important than achieving
the perfect sambusa (similar to the savory Indian turnovers called
samosas).
“When you’re in the kitchen, you talk about everything,” Sheikh said. In
the kitchen’s culinary whirlwind, conversations can turn quickly from
the benefits of a wooden spoon to who has a cold and whose wedding is
coming up.
The lingua franca is English rather than Somali, Amharic or Tigrinya. In
this relaxed setting, women feel more comfortable sharing concerns,
whether it is anxiety about seeing a doctor or how to read a
prescription.
“In the kitchen,” Abdi said, “we can tell them, ‘Hang in there,’ or, ‘This happened to me.’”
City Heights, where residents speak more than 30 languages and 80
dialects, is one of the densest and most diverse communities in the
state.
Since the end of the Vietnam War, it has been a magnet for refugees
fleeing brutal conflicts, including Somalians, Eritreans, Sudanese,
Somali Bantus, Kurds and ethnic Albanians from Kosovo.
It is the unofficial capital of San Diego’s East African diaspora, home
to three major mosques, Islamic after-school programs and halal markets
(foods adhering to Muslim dietary practices). But the neighborhood also
has four times more fast-food restaurants near schools than other San
Diego neighborhoods, and some of the highest concentrations of crime and
poverty in the region, according to the Mid-City Community Advocacy
Network.
Perhaps predictably, East African families have begun to experience
chronic diseases like hypertension and diabetes. In Africa, notes
Michelle Zive, a dietitian and executive director of the Network for a
Healthy California, daily life involved intense physical activity. In
the U.S., children from East African families are leading more sedentary
lives, particularly young women, whose exercise options are limited by
modesty issues.
Over huge pots of Ethiopian lentils spiced with hot berbere, women are
addressing health challenges together, modifying the quantities of sugar
and oil in some — though not all — traditional dishes. “The young girls
are eating Cheetos,” said Amina Sheik Mohamed, a Network for a Healthy
California regional director and cooking group leader. “Some of the
ladies were getting high blood pressure and getting sick.”
The group’s mission includes transforming supermarket staples such as
bottled spaghetti sauce to be healthier and more culturally attuned
(just add potatoes, cooked spinach and hot sauce).
Adina Batnitzky, a sociologist at the University of San Diego, recently
did a focus group on nutrition patterns among East African women with
Theresa Sinicrope Talley, a marine biologist with the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography. They found a diet heavy on halal meat and
lacking in fresh fish and seafood, which are plentiful back home but
hard to find in halal stores.
Many women said they had never laid eyes on the Pacific Ocean, only
miles away. In Africa, there were no free- zers or processed foods, they
observed, and families would eat every meal together rather than “at
their own time and place,” as one woman put it.
Such strong social ties, as evidenced by the cooking group, are a major health asset, Batnitzky said.
“It’s about connection,” explained Abdi, the mother of two. “When you’re
around other women, you feel valued and supported. You get a lot of
positive vibes.”
Those vibes were on display one recent Saturday, as more than two dozen
women in kaleidoscopic headscarves gathered at a member’s house in Lemon
Grove.
In the kitchen, Halimo Farah flipped sabayad in an iron skillet,
demonstrating how the naan-like snack gets brown and puffy. Saffron
tilapia grilled on the patio as little brothers zigzagged around on
scooters. A group of daughters sat around a huge bowl, mixing cream
cheese and coconut for sambusas, stuffed triangles made this day with
tortillas.
“It’s like folding origami with food inside,” said 10-year-old Mona Adam.
The completed dishes were laid out ceremoniously on a long carpet:
injera, the spongy sour Ethiopian flatbread; mesir wat, the Ethiopian
red lentil stew; sweet and savory sambusas; pilafs; sabayad; mushmush;
and a traditional silver bowl and pitcher for washing hands.
Mona compared the Saturdays to “having Thanksgiving every day” before joining the girls in hand-clapping games.
Beholding the feast, which never includes alcohol, Abdi reflected on the moment.
“We don’t have happy hours,” she said. “But this is a happy hour for us.”
Patricia Leigh Brown is a contributor to the Center for Investigative Reporting in Berkeley, a media partner of U-T San Diego. http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/mar/30/tp-east-african-cooking-group-mixes-in-old/
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