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The Food Journey
Central to our culture, our history and our well-being, food can provide a multidisciplinary, as well as a multisensory approach to understanding the world. Georgina Morris (Geography, 2018) and Rachael Chan (Geography, 2018) embarked on a unique alimentary voyage.
On 28 February 2020, Mansfield’s undergraduate geographers filed, with much anticipation, into a small seminar room at the Geography department which was draped in African wax prints and multicoloured chiffon. We were handed a blindfold and received
a squeeze of lemon with which we were instructed to cleanse our hands and palates. ‘For the sweetness of
the journey...’, we were told while
we sucked the lemon. An appetising, spiced fragrance welcomed us as
we were seated on chairs arranged back-to-back, in a semi-circle. The room was hushed. With little further explanation, the ‘Food Journey’ began.
The Food Journey is an immersive, multisensory experience created by
Mama D Ujuaje, founder of Community Centred Knowledge, and seeks to question
what food is and how it is experienced, disrupting its cultural history. Throughout the Journey, a powerful spoken-word performance accompanied by a pre- recorded soundscape provided a shifting auditory dimension to a voyage through the history of food. With our hands open in our laps, food was placed regularly into our palms and, occasionally, offered into our mouths directly.
‘ Large metallic chains brushed against our
legs and an angry man bellowed above sounds of ocean waves.’
Large metallic chains brushed against our legs and an angry man bellowed above sounds of ocean waves. We were travelling out of Africa towards the plantations of
the Americas, where we mourned plantain that had been replaced by banana. We found ourselves part of this story, as Mama reflected on the trauma that humans inflicted on the land. In the last two minutes, the bland tastes of popcorn from a bag and juice from a carton were jarring and almost obscene when compared to the delicious jollof rice we savoured at the journey’s beginning. The sweetness was gone.
That afternoon, we were offered a rare chance to slow down and reflect on the
ways we perceived food ontologically
and epistemologically. The act of eating is universal, yet there is arguably an infinite diversity in what and how we eat that can be understood through historical material forces.
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