Oh My God Moment

Whenever I've had the chance to talk to refugees and immigrants at length, we get around to talking about food. It's an easy topic that avoids present worries, politics, religion, or other controversies. Yet food is meaningful and almost everyone has an interest in American food, shopping, sources for their native foods, names of foods, methods of preparation, and the like. With additional conversations it leads to foods their kids eat, what they eat now, what brought them to the US, how were they finding life, what were their biggest challenges.

The Oh My God moment happens when someone pushes to the very limits her English language abilities in an attempt to convey the memory of a missed food to me, the listener. During this time the describer invariably gives a lead-up, explaining the food, the recipe, the dish consists of this or that and was eaten long ago or just the other day. Then the smile comes across her face and the eyeballs roll — the OMG moment. As if to say, It's so, so good, words just can't describe it! How I wish, wish, wish you could understand what I mean.

And of course, I know exactly what they mean, because in that moment they've just transcended all the worries and problems the English language presents to them, all the obstacles they've encountered living in a cramped apartment, every frustration they've ever experienced trying to get a medical form translated or telephone bill decoded.

At that point I know I've found someone worthy of the DATS MashUp cooking collaboration.

Shaping the Project, Choosing the Collaborators

Many people make such a project like this possible.

Although the public event itself only lasts an hour or two, there are thousands of small exchanges of ideas and words and hundreds of hours of effort. Behind every refugee is a family and a complex relationship with supporting local, state and federal agencies. There may be sponsors or a host or a supporting refugee assistance agency. There may be a church, temple or mosque and a community to meet and understand. There are neighborhoods, homes and apartment complexes to visit.

There is a history to understand, the individual newcomer's story and the story of his country. Sometimes it is the story of our country — the US — and its involvement in Vietnam, Iraq and other places.

Reaching out and discovering these stories are preconditions to the public presentation.

MashUp is Born

Guilford County, NC is the largest refugee resettlement county in the state but you wouldn't know it from a visit here. Refugees and immigrants have contributed many things to the region but this would not be clear to the average newspaper reader and certainly not to average citizen who is inclined to have either a negative view or to be vaguely unaware of facts even if she is broadly tolerant of newcomers.

Food diversity is the most obvious impact of newcomers. There are more restaurants, ethnic stores and food markets that sell foods and ingredients from all over the world than there has ever been in the past.

MashUp came from the notion that behind food diversity is people diversity.