Why am I doing that?

By Lina Chambon

Today I am excited to tell you about one of those projects that gave me a new perspective on academic assignments and how fun they can be to do. During the last week of June, Morgan and I presented our cookbook to the class and they could read from our faces how proud we were of this final product. 

 

But let me bring you back to the very beginning. 

When I heard in class that we could come up with any project to convey our lived experience in Kosovo, I immediately thought about food. Back in May, AUC TEDX welcomed Giles Duley, a war photographer and writer who more recently, decided to become a chef. While traveling for work, Duley went to Afghanistan where he suffered injuries to his arm and leg, which had to be amputated. It was this talk by him that ended with a standing ovation and loud applause from the public. Heavily moving. 

He reminded all of us why food brings people together. Food is not only a fuel for our body, but more than that. For instance, food is what makes me less anxious, what makes a space feel more like home, it’s what I do to show affection to my loved ones. In this sense, food is definitely my love language. I love cooking and sharing a good meal with my friends, it often makes us laugh, dance, and sing. This is what Duley tried to say, food creates a bond around people that is vey special and unique.

For this reason, he chose to never take pictures of a family or ask questions about their stories, if he hadn't shared a meal with them beforehand.

For us too, it was challenging to ask people about their identity or personal experiences, therefore we decided to deepen our understanding and learn through the stories that people would tell us around food. 

Although we left Amsterdam with a completely different idea, the process of making this cookbook was very spontaneous. Before leaving for Kosovo, we thought about conducting semi-structured interviews with very specific questions concerning people’s favorite dishes, the memories tied to it and what this represented for them. But for most of our encounters and conversations, we often ended up asking spontaneous questions, bouncing on what people were sharing with us. 

I will tell you a little bit more about our interview with Marco. It taught us a lot. 

On the day we had dinner at the Ethno house, in Gracanica, a place with more meat imaginable heaped onto a single plate, we met Marco, who told us to come back the next morning, at the beginning of his working shift when he would be less busy.

So we came back the next day and had this long and interesting conversation. He started by telling us that meat was his favorite food, which made us think about how to include that in a cookbook… But slowly, with a lot of curiosity from us, he explained what kind of meat he prefers, how they smoke it, what cooking «under the bell» meant (explained in our cookbook), but above all, he was proud to say that the meat here was fresh! The freshness of food is an aspect that Marco, as well as many other people we encountered, mentioned. Philippe, an inspiring man who works for the UN, also said that many households in Kosovo have gardens and very often cook from the vegetables they grow. In the Ethno house, this restaurant where minorities work together, even if they don’t always speak the same language, all ingredients are fresh. Marco confirmed that all vegetables were either from their greenhouse or surrounding gardens, the cheese was purchased from the nearby Serbian Orthodox Church and the meat from the closest village. 

And just like it happened for a lot of people we interviewed or talked about food with, Marco ended up talking about his life story, his family, his home. He told us about his wife and children, and his love for his land, because this is what food makes us talk about. Food is tied to so many memories, connects you with people, and food brings a feeling of home. 

 

This feeling is the one Morgan and I also felt on the edge of every evening when to we brought together each day's ideas, inspiration and stories that we had gathered during the day for our cookbook.

This project have been enriching and eye opening for me. With just the will to understand, I learned so much about the people of Kosovo, as well as about myself, my own identity. This cookbook called on our creativity and allowed me to take a step back and ask myself: Why am I doing that? Although the answer to this question is reserved for my personal journal, this cookbook gave us the space to reflect on our experiences in Kosovo and think further ahead about our motivations and aspirations. 

Finally, it has really sparked something in me, a desire to create, understand differently and convey.

 

This is our story; in her blogpost, Morgan shared theirs.