TFB - ESNC : Chakalaka Sessions

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 lunch 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, foremost, support TFB development and encourage critical and caring (academic) engagements with forced migrants.

These sessions will serve as an intimate and safe 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.

The Chakalaka Sessions seek to enable empathy and solidarity by involving the enjoyment around food. 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 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 delicious 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 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.

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 of culinary wisdoms among different forced migrant communities. Moreover, LGBTQI+ migrant, 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 know more about their experiences during the sessions. Through a holistic perspective that considers bodily, mental and spiritual layers, Mimi will humbly ask for comments on the cooking process, the stories 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, Mimi 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+ migrant, 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, to be generous with (culinary) wisdoms and to be solidarian by nourishing the soul and the body. The Chakalaka Sessions are an open invitation for LGBTQI+ migrant, refugees and asylum seekers to care for themselves and other through month-weathering and heart-warming African recipes.