Internationalmatt's Blog

Diverse Cultures come together- Friendships formed through food

I teach an English class at an Elementary School for parents of the children. My class has three distinct cultures that have many contrasts and differences. The three groups are Hispanic women who are Mostly Catholic, Iraqi women who are Muslim, and Ukrainian women who are Pentecostal and Orthodox. They differ in culture, religion, and language. Some have higher levels of English than others and fro the most part had not had much interaction with each other before the class began. We will be meeting together for a long time, so I wanted to see some community build in the class. We had a lunch on December 18th and each student brought food from their culture.

Hispanic food at our luncheon

Dohlma from Iraq

We followed some principles that I set out to avoid possible problems. One principle was to respect and understand any cultural differences regarding dietary restrictions. I asked my Iraqi students if it would be okay if I bought Halal chicken for the Hispanic women to use to cook their food. Some Muslims eat only Halal meat. For those not familiar with Halal think of Kosher and you get a bit of the idea. I explained to the other women that for our Iraqi friends only Halal meat can be used. They had a meeting with school liaisons who helped them to understand the issues concerning Halal meat. My Hispanic women understood and agreed to use the chicken from the Arabic store that I planned to buy.

Another principle was to make it a cooperative group project with the thought that if we worked on something together it would help to build friendships. To accomplish this the women wrote recipes for the food they made. The recipes will be shared with the school staff and within the class. Another benefit of the recipes is that it allows the women to share their culture with future generations who probably will not be fluent in the language of my students. Writing the recipes also helped them to learn some English words used for cooking, so it turned the luncheon into an ongoing English lesson.

the salad that surprised the women

The lunch went very well and it was interesting to see how the women discovered even little things from each culture. One of my Iraqi students made a salad using cucumber, onion, tomato and cilantro. The Hispanic women were pleasantly surprised to find out that women from Iraq use cilantro. The Iraqi women tried some of the food the Hispanic women made using the Halal chicken and even went back for more. They all liked the dessert one of the Ukrainian women made. They talked and shared culture and friendships were formed through sharing food. When we came back from our break last week they were talking with each other and when we split into groups by English level they were helping each other. I will ask them today if I can post their recipes with pictures.

January 11, 2010 Posted by internationalmatt | Cross Cultural, Cultural Ambassdors, Experiences of international friends, food, Hispanic friends, International Friendships, Internationals, Mexico, Middle East friends, Muslims, Mutlicultural, Ukrainian friends | 2 Comments