Peace Corps's Shifting Sides: You Are What You Eat

There’s a sort of meaningless banality to the expression “You are what you eat.” It seems to have a ubiquitous presence throughout our lives, as if it were philosophical words of wisdom (like “I think therefore I am” or “To thy own self be true”), and yet, it is hard to remember an occasion when it has been used meaningfully. It is a phrase that carries on in time without much apparent significance. But as Peace Corps volunteers charged with a certain mission to “help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans,” I think we are being afforded a great opportunity to (re)instill meaning into that trite expression.

Growing up in America, I can hardly recall a time when I seriously considered the significance of the food I ate—the variety of options offered to me, the instant availability of things I wanted, the effort that went into their preparation and the impact they had on me mentally, physically, emotionally and socially. As a Peace Corps volunteer, particularly in a country where food is scarce for many, I am reminded about the significance of food almost constantly.

Surely, most volunteers have something of a similar experience upon arriving in country. Between the stress of adapting to an unfamiliar land and waking from the night’s rest a healthy hour before the sun rises, many volunteers seem plagued by a nearly constant hunger (several-times-daily trips to the Okahandja Spar notwithstanding). For many, I know, the host family experience also leaves something of a void in the otherwise American appetite. And hopefully, the least any volunteer gains from these trials of nourishment is an appreciation for the wealth of our food culture stateside and a realization of the great extent to which Americans, ourselves included, have long taken it for granted.

But it is not much of a revelation to say Americans take for granted that which is plentiful. We enjoy rich foods and indulge in empty calories—indeed we are what we eat: spoiled by our goods, but empty as to their meaning. So we would not be getting much from our two years here if we walked away with only some knowledge we could easily attain after a few weeks.

Recently, a friend (and fellow volunteer) commented that a particular lunch delicacy—namely, pasta with ketchup and mayonnaise—served to me regularly by my host family was “disgusting.” Certainly, to any American food sensibility this is disgusting. Yet, as someone that still considers myself deeply American, I am here to tell you that it is not disgusting.

For several months, for more than a few lunches each week. I was served this. I ate it, and I looked forward to eating it. I am not Namibian; pasta with ketchup and mayonnaise is not my cultural prerogative. I looked forward to eating it because it was one of the more flavorful things served to me, and my host family was proud to serve it. It was one of the nicest things in this American’s weekly diet. It is not disgusting. That meal may be little more than a spread of empty calories, but for the people here, many of whom rely on porridge for the majority of their nourishment, those empty calories carry greater meaning than almost any meal I ate in the states. Therein lies a profound difference in the culture of food between here and America: many in Namibia have nothing more to eat than porridge, and yet they take pride in serving and sharing it with anyone that so much as knocks on their door. It is a food culture seen at its best in the image of two hungry children grabbing on separate ends of one of those small balls of empty calories called fat cakes and pulling it apart, happy to share what little there is between them. It is not disgusting. To them, it is a luxury that even many Peace Corps volunteers take for granted. It is not mere cultural insensitivity to call another’s luxury disgusting. It is vanity.

And it is symptomatic of a greater problem in the process of global development: we in the western world need to view how people in the developing world live as suffering. That is why their food is “disgusting,” because they are suffering. But does anyone think to ask the people that only eat porridge everyday if they see their livelihood as that of suffering? Or do we just place these labels on what people do and what they eat to somehow invest more meaning in that which we will nevertheless take for granted? To insist that they must desire that which we enjoy in America, lest our work here have no purpose?

We must stop this kind of cultural assessment, because we eat here too. We may be guests in this country, but we eat here same as any Namibian native. We are what they eat, and that is not disgusting. So, we should instead be fully engaged in reevaluating the meaning of the role food plays in our lives. If we can bring one thing in that vain back to America, it ought to be a rich sense of meaning and purpose to our food in both an individual and social context. If we can invest even half as much meaning into our bounties as people here do in their empty calories, then we will have provided the most valuable form of cross-cultural exchange we can offer Americans. And then we can be proud to be that which we eat.