The Fruit Basket (TFB), in collaboration with the project Engaged Scholarships Narratives of Change, is honored to announce a new initiative: the Chakalaka Sessions. These are brunch gatherings where African meals will be cooked and served to bring together members of the LGBTQI+ migrant, refugee and asylum seeker community in Johannesburg. This is a co-created initiative that seeks to support TFB development and at the same time encourage critical and caring (academic) engagements with forced migrants.
The Chakalaka Sessions will serve as an intimate space of dialogue between TFB staff and community members. While TFB has facilitated several workshops on relevant topics, such as working skills and the documentation process, there has been less opportunities to have smaller interventions to listen to individual concerns and needs. That is why TFB is seeking to find new channels to approach community members as a way to strengthen both: the organisation’s progress through feedback from its own beneficiaries; and the organisation’s interpersonal relationships. In TFB’s mission to merge inclusion with empowerment, it aims to approach each individual with care and humanity. That is why this specific initiative will focus on nourishing respectful and sustainable relationships between TFB staff and community members.
As a way to facilitate the encounter with community members, the sessions will focus on food as an element of enjoyment that can enable empathy and solidarity. The initiative is mindful that food is not only part of daily survival, but at the same time, the recollection, preparation and the sharing of food is also a space for creativity, care and storytelling. In addition, cooking among those who are mobile is often related to a (re)creation of a sense of home. When people migrate, they bring their home culinary wisdoms with them, that are then fused with new recipes, ingredients and cooking techniques they find throughout their journeys. How people cook and share food is, therefore, an expression of both personal journeys and cultural heritage. By focusing on food, the sessions intend to open an exchange on people’s stories, that without ignoring hardship, will emphasize elements of creativity, resilience and joy entangled in African recipes.
In order to make the sessions a safe and enjoyable space, each encounter will have a small format. About eight people will be attending each lunch, this include five community members, two TFB staff organizers (Thomars, TFB director/founder; and Mimi Ocadiz, TFB volunteer and PhD candidate), and a community member who will assist with the cooking process. The sessions will be hosted at the Holy Trinity Church in Braamfontein, a well-known venue to the community. Lunch will take place on Saturdays around midday, so that it is safe for commensals to move to and from their homes. In addition, the cooking process and the food sharing will be facilitated by community members themselves, with the support of Mimi Ocadiz. A catering professional, who graduated from the previous TFB skill workshop, will be hired to help with the cooking process and will also join the lunch session. A different graduate will be hired each session to offer employment to as many community members as possible. In terms of the food selected, both the cooking support staff and the commensals will be approached by Thomars and Mimi with a short-list of cooking options they can choose from and/or adapt to their preference.
Chakala is one of the most popular dishes in South Africa. While there are many variations, it is mostly made of a healthy combination of beans, canned tomatoes, a mix of vegetables, curry and chili peppers. Chakalaka is said to have originated in the townships of Johannesburg, where the first Mozambican migrants brought with them chili peppers (or piri-piri), that were then combined with the curry of Indian communities and the beans from the British settlers. We choose this name because, besides being catchy, it is a dish that embodies how food contains in itself a history of mobility. This does not necessarily means we will serve chakalaka each session, however, we are always open to it.
The departing point for the cooking options will be the recipe book Loboko Ya Mama: African homemade recipes in times of pandemic (upcoming). This is a book where eight refugee women from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, currently living in Port Elizabeth, co-curated homemade recipes with the support of Mimi Ocadiz. The intention behind using their recipes is to cultivate an exchange among different forced migrant communities of culinary wisdoms, stories of resilience, and above all, a sense of enjoyment. Moreover, LGBTQI+ migrants, refugees and asylum seekers will be encouraged to bring modification, new ideas and new recipes as a way to stimulate a multidirectional exchange of culinary wisdom. Above all, food here is meant to work as a flexible bridge that recognizes and values differences, and the same that similarities can be drawn, all to create a sense of solidarity. To do so, each person involved in the project will be approached by Mimi Ocadiz to narrate their experiences during the sessions. Through a holistic perspective that considers bodily, mental and spiritual layers, Mimi will collect stories about the cooking process, the histories behind particular dishes and ingredients, and the overall experience of enjoying a meal together. These stories will be then co-curated between Mimi, TFB and community members in a blog series. In another matter, Thomars will also take notes on the feedback for TFB, which will be shared with the organisation’s board to plan future projects and developments.
In sum, the Chakalaka Sessions should be read as honest friends reunions. They will be cozy and intimate, yet well-managed and critical encounters for LGBTQI+ migrants, refugees and asylum seekers to meet each other in the name of joy. While hardship and challenges are a daily reality, so are the capacities of each community member to be creative and generous by nourishing the soul and the body. The Chakalaka Sessions are then an open invitation to care for themselves and other through month-weathering and heart-warming African recipes.