I went home. I enrolled in graduate school. I became a writer. Years after, I bought a honey-and-rose-colored house on a hillside in Tuscany, where I love to cook and entertain my friends. I grow roses. The view to the south falls away into olive and grape terraces, and a small tower anchors the distant hills. I must have baked Simca’s chocolate cake five hundred times.
DAVID MAS MASUMOTO is an organic farmer, newspaper columnist, and the author of six books, including Epitaph for a Peach, Wisdom of the Last Farmer, and the cookbook The Perfect Peach: Recipes and Stories from the Masumoto Family Farm. He grows certified organic peaches, nectarines, and raisins near Fresno, California.
THE BOYS OF SUMMER
David Mas Masumoto
Other than the occasional whiffs of aromas, little came over the wall. A large, 10-foot-high barrier separated our house from another world. I knew people were cooking on the other side; I could smell oil and fried food. Like a siren, a simmering scent infused with an earthy aroma drifted in the air. A pungent fragrance of sweat and smoke piqued my curiosity.
So when the soccer ball sailed over to our side, I was given an invitation to explore. Soccer balls flew everywhere in Brazil during that June in 1971. The year before, at the World Cup in Mexico, Brazil had assembled one of the greatest teams ever. Led by Pele, they won their third World Cup in commanding style. Brazil soared and remained soccer crazy.
That summer, I landed in Brazil as a naive sixteen-year-old high-school exchange student for a summer abroad. I had left our family farm near the small town of Del Rey, in the middle of California, nestled in the rich agricultural San Joaquin Valley.
I journeyed to Salvador, Brazil, and quickly felt lost. I knew a little Spanish, mainly a few bad words my school buddies in California had taught me, but I comprehended even less Portuguese. As a farm boy, I understood our peaches, nectarines and raisins but my knowledge helped little with passion fruit, mangos or coconuts. These Brazilian crops were foreign with amazingly fresh, yet alien, flavors.
However, I could play soccer and sweat with the best of them. As I retrieved the soccer ball, heads quickly popped over the top of the wall and peered down at me. The brown and black faces were signaling; they yelled and pointed, wanting me to toss the ball back. Instead, I unleashed a solid kick and the ball soared back over. The kids laughed with surprise. They immediately launched the ball back over the fence and howled even louder as we played a new game with the fence barrier as our net.
My Brazilian home was built on a gentle hill. Terraced levels of housing were neatly divided by streets that meandered on our side of the fence. My host family was considered upper class and wealthy. Brazil in the 1970s had no middle class. You were either rich or poor. Two servants helped in our kitchen and with housework.
A few kids started taunting me to kick harder. They called me ‘Japa’. They thought I was a Japanese Brazilian, probably from São Paulo, one of the largest and richest cities in Brazil. Like the Japanese who initially immigrated to America, Brazilian Japanese came as farm laborers to work on coffee plantations. They struggled, were classified as non-white, deemed unable to assimilate, and clung to their own ways.
My summer (their winter) was to be spent in Salvador, a large city in the state of Bahia, located in northeastern Brazil. This was once the colonial capital and the port of entry for African slaves. The climate was tropical, hot and humid, and Salvador carried the reputation of being slow and easygoing, with a negative connotation of being lazy. I understood some of this—it reminded me of my California hometown of Del Rey, a sleepy little town surrounded by farms, stigmatized with a culture of slowness, as if we were all dull farmers and stupid farm workers. And Bahia was also considered home to crazy characters.
One of the kids launched a monster soccer kick to my side. Sudden gusts of wind changed the trajectory of our game. The soccer ball sailed over my house and down the street—along with a fresh aroma of something cooking beyond the wall. I scampered down the road to retrieve the ball and discovered a place where the wall had crumbled, a gateway into another world. I followed the scent with soccer ball in hand.
A mud and dirt road served as a makeshift soccer field and part of the dividing line along with the fence. I discovered what had been hidden from me: the favela, the slums of Brazil.
Houses were piled on top of each other, stacked in random fashion. Older homes with deteriorating walls and a mildew gray color stood at the base of the sloping terrain. The homes seemed to grow like weeds along the steep hillside—a dense growth of vivid reds, off whites with occasional yellow and blue hues. Many structures appeared to be made of bricks with mortar sloppily oozing out the edges. The collection looked like a house of cards, tenuously stacked as high as possible before tumbling down.
The few streets were half dirt and rock, some asphalt. They wound up the grade, getting lost in the mass of homes. The favela looked like a river of the poor, following a gully down from the mountainside, trapped between ridges and embankments too steep for stable buildings, snaking down the natural terrain, then tumbling onto the lower plain but abruptly stopping, often at a wide road or barrier. I lived on the other side of those divides.
In the favela, people roamed the streets and walkways. They stood in wide windows that had no glass. They traveled with bicycles and in groups. Some hung laundry to dry, others carried cans of water and wooden crates. They moved in a slow dance, a daily progression of life, ants toiling to get by and survive.
Even though it was winter in June, the humidity combined with warmth (about 27°C or 80°F), creating a climate of skin. In the wealthy parts of Salvador, most people wore shorts and short sleeves; here in the favela, males were shirtless, women in tank tops. Shoes were optional for most; others wore light slippers or sandals. I must have looked like a true foreigner with a light shirt, jeans, tennis shoes and socks.
The air was filled with the aroma of people—a mix of sweat and sewage, of mud and the morning rains. But I could also smell food. Out of an open window, smoke wandered out and filled the street with the scent of spices, grilled meat and vegetables. I could breathe in shrimp and garlic, rice and beans. Walk past another door and my eyes were greeted by ripe mango and papaya. Although it was afternoon, morning coffee lingered in one doorway along with the stale scent of last night’s beer. I had imagined that the poor in foreign countries used open fires, but here most had small gas burners or electric hot plates. (Later I learned that in Brazilian slums free electrical hookups were tolerated.)
Bahian food was being prepared. Many homes were frying acarajé. I had eaten this deep-fried bread-like staple made from black-eyed peas at my host family’s table. Their black servants knew this dish well and were happy that I liked their food, especially when served with shrimp or tomatoes. I had seen street vendors, black women in crisp white dresses and headscarves, set up sidewalk stands where they molded the food and fried them for sale. My family insinuated that acarajé was poor people’s food but they wanted me to taste Bahia. Now that I was walking in the favela, I was consuming it all.
I peeked into one kitchen and saw a black kettle simmering with a stew of beans, big beans and some rice, all colored a very bright orange-red. I would learn that the color came from a palm oil called dende. It had arrived along with the African slaves hundreds of years earlier, transplanting a food culture to this place. I couldn’t quite understand why with such a hot and humid climate, they served heavy stews and deep-fried foods. But many things in the favela were confusing and yet made sense. This was the place of the poor, just a few feet away from my house and yet a world apart.
Was it any different than my California farm home, where undocumented alien Mexicans worked the fields, hiding from authorities, part of the invisible army of hands behind our peaches and nectarines? Our workers, for their lonche morning break, brought out little gas burners to heat stew and warm tortillas. Even in our blazing 100-degree summer harvest days, a stew with beans and rice fueled these laborers.
> Like their Brazilian counterparts, my Japanese grandparents had immigrated to toil in the fields, a wave of silent workers, allowed into a country to fill a labor void. Perhaps I had more in common with the poor of both America and this favela than I had ever imagined.
At some point the worn soccer ball was returned to the Brazilian kids from the other side of the wall. Most were younger than me, shirtless, barefoot, dark and tanned, curly black hair with huge grins. They now called me ‘Americano’ and understood I was different. A few crowded around, asking me something I could not translate. Others didn’t care, they had their ball back.
Nearby, I first heard the tinkle of small bells. They were attached to an old, dingy cart with large bicycle-like front wheels that supported a metal ice box, once painted green and yellow.
‘Picoléeeee, Pi-co-léee!’ shouted the vendor, a man in his thirties with dark, weathered skin. Then he whistled, a high-pitched breathy signal that the popsicle man had arrived.
Picolé was a frozen treat on a stick, either fruit-or dairy-based. Strawberry, passion fruit, mango or coconut-flavored juices were used, sometimes with pieces of fruit suspended in the ice pop. Vanilla and chocolate were the typical flavors of ice-cream-like bars. The refreshing delight was held by the flat stick protruding from one end. The wooden handle was wider than the American popsicle stick and fit the hands of the young, the old, and even foreigners.
In Brazil, I experienced my first street food. Back in California, no vendor walked the rural roads by our farm. No carts or ice-cream trucks stopped for a break on a steamy day. Until my arrival in Salvador, I had zero experience of the anticipation when you first heard the tinkling bell or familiar cry of a vendor who brought relief from daily life.
The picolé man had stopped. He looked tired, weary from a day of walking the streets, hawking his goods. Water was dripping from the rusting corners of the aging metal box; inside the block of ice was melting.
A small group of boys crowded around the picolé man. They spoke in a rapid exchange. The vendor then reached deep into his box as the boys congregated, arms reaching inward. One boy pointed at me, the man looked up and grinned at the foreigner.
Then a boy, about ten, with a heaping headful of hair, brought a picolé to me. He quickly stripped off the wax-paper wrapping, letting it fall to the ground, then extended his arm in my direction, offering me the treat.
As I reached for it, I wondered: who was my new friend? Did he pay for the ice pop, my reward for returning the soccer ball? Only a few other kids had a picolé; most watched with open mouths.
I guessed the yellow bar might be mango flavor, something I had never tasted in California. The juices were already dripping down the sides. The surface glistened in the bright sun. Smiles surrounded me.
Then I noticed the ants. They were suspended in the frozen liquid along one side. There, the ice bar was slightly flatter, with a smooth surface. About ten creatures were captured in that space, their final movements locked in ice.
Once I saw photos in a magazine of the big-ass ants of Brazil. The article explained that they were protein, a delicacy, and huge, up to an inch in length. During the rainy season, when the ants swarmed, people ran around waving sheets, knocking them out of the air, grabbing the bodies and ripping off heads, plunking the remaining body parts into a jar. Later, they’d fry them in butter or oven-roast the morsels. I was fixated by the story.
My picolé ants were not that big. They looked like normal ants except they were in a popsicle.
I looked up and a bunch of the kids were watching me. I froze, not sure what to do. Did I insult these boys and toss the half-melted-bottom-of-the-cart leftover? Or did someone buy this for me, an act of kindness poor people often display—those with the least sometimes give the most.
I thought of my elementary school in Del Rey. Poor kids often brought odd foods from home. Once I took some leftover sushi with nori from home and my Mexican school buddies went wild—some hated it, others made fun of me, a few thought it was cool. I thought the same of their menudo, fried pork rinds, and chapulines, or grasshoppers.
So I ate my picolé. The kids went back to their soccer. I watched for a few minutes—they were way too fast, too talented, too experienced for me. I then quietly slipped back through the wall to my side.
A few weeks later I departed Brazil. But before I left, I took the bus by myself (my host family worried, fearing I’d get lost) to downtown Salvador and spent the day walking, buying street food, and watching the people of Bahia on the beach and in a park. I thought about the favela and the poor in America, especially in our farming valley of California. It took traveling to a foreign country to discover home.
I bought more picolé, without ants. I sat in a park and witnessed two men fighting and dancing—my initial exposure to capoeira, which I later learned was a martial art form blending dance, music and the history of African slaves and their struggle for identity. The two men were sweating, sometimes accidentally striking each other; occasionally they paused, drank cachaça (Brazilian rum), then fought more. Crazy. Like people warned me about Bahia.
That summer, I returned to our family farm and our struggle with the politics of the unionization of farm workers. The United Farm Workers were fighting for rights, the air was toxic with anger and protest. Our small farm was visited by pickets and organizers. I was confused and young: since when was eating a political act? It was and still is.
My dad was crushed; our family were once farm workers—my father tried to be fair and understood the hard, physical work firsthand. He couldn’t understand why the public was demonizing farmers. He felt we were all poor.
That summer I changed in a slight but significant way. The meals in Bahia, the aromas of the favela, and the picolé with ants all helped me realize food had meaning. We were farmers and our peaches were more than just peaches. Food embodied story, which included the poor. Culture was wrapped in a meal or snack. No longer was food simply food.
KAUI HART HEMMINGS’ first novel, The Descendants, was published in 22 countries and made into an Oscar-winning film. Her next novel, The Possibilities, will be out in 2014. Follow her travels at http://instagram.com/kauihart/ and https://www.facebook.com/KauiHartHemmings.
A COFFEE CEREMONY
Kaui Hart Hemmings
I drank coffee every morning, usually at the kitchen table while checking my email. I’d drink it while walking around the house, herding the family toward their various checkpoints—breakfast, teeth, backpack, lunch—before work and school in Honolulu, Hawaii. Then I’d sit down again with my coffee. Laptop open. Morning news on. I almost always drank alone.
My solo java routine was interrupted when we went to Addis Ababa to finalize the adoption of our son. We had already travelled there less than a month ago, but this time we’d be able to bring him home.
There’s a lot to do in Addis, a city perched on a plateau, bustling with students, markets, buses and goats. We visited Haile Selassie’s former palace, the museum that housed the infamous Lucy. We trekked down Bole Road, explored the nightlife, but it’s hard to be a tourist when you’re staying in a guesthouse with adoptive parents and children, some of whom have no one coming for them. Our sightseeing had more to do with wanting to know a place, store it somehow for future hunger.
There was a lot of down time, time in which we couldn’t go too far, time filled with coffee.
It’s ritual here, a way to gather, and it’s frequently drawn out for long periods of time. In coffee shops it seems people would sit and drink and talk for hours, never hunched over a laptop, rarely alone.
Coffee is woven into the society, into the history of Ethiopia, its origin. I learn that the growing and picking process of the beans involves over 12 million Ethiopians and produces over two-thirds of the country’s earnings, and I have to say that when I get back to the US I am bereft. I’m not a coffee snob, but the richness of it, the depth, is unfindable, or I just haven’t taken the time.
Time. That
’s what this is really about. Taking the time to realize what you’re doing, what you’re drinking.
‘It’s like their happy hour,’ I said to my husband, who rarely drinks coffee at home, but did so regularly here.
‘At all hours,’ he said.
We watched people laugh and talk, similar to the way you do with friends in bars, discussing your day, your problems, the large and mundane stuff of life, chatter fueled by the buzz.
Every day, at least twice a day, we went to the Daily Cup, walking through the dusty streets. We’d go with another couple who had adopted a child from Rwanda, and we’d sit and talk and drink, trying to know a place, through its food and rituals and local clientele. We were cafe flies. We were outsiders, bewildered, far from home, trying our best to mingle.
On our last day before the thirty-two-hour flight home, we were introduced to the coffee ceremony, when I realized that coffee could get even slower.
It’s a common practice, not necessarily done on special occasions, but at our guesthouse, the staff were doing the ceremony as a way to say goodbye.
My seven-year-old daughter and I sat in the living room, watching the women who work at the guesthouse roasting the beans over a small charcoal stove. The smoke mixed with the burning incense, making it seem like something sumptuous and earthy was on fire. The two women were attentive to it, jostling and stirring, whisking away.
‘We get the oil out,’ she said. ‘And then we—’ She made a motion with her wrist that I took for grinding by hand, then stirred and shook the husks away. When the coffee beans turned black she ground them by pestle and a long-handled mortar.
My daughter was bored—she was here for the popcorn that is always served with the coffee. I told her boredom was good for her. We watched the grinding and then the stirring into the clay coffee pot.
‘Jebena,’ the younger woman said, tapping the pot, which was round at the bottom with a straw lid.
A Fork In The Road: Tales of Food, Pleasure and Discovery On The Road (Lonely Planet Travel Literature) Page 20