Lunch at IMAP: Notes on Learning about Food Sovereignty Through Sharing
Everyday of the week, as Chase and I get on the back of a pick-up truck to our placement at the Instituto Mesoamericana de Permacultura (IMAP), we know that our 1pm lunch will be all about sharing. I landed in Guatemala on August 2nd and other than having the opportunity to be in a Spanish speaking country again, I was most excited about the food. I expected to be amazed by the frijoles and maiz. By the chuchitos you can get on market days and by any new kind of fruit I can get my North American hands on. What I didn’t expect was for the culture around food to teach me so much.
At IMAP, from 1 to 2pm the entire team sits together, opens their containers, places some of their lunch on their lid, and everyone digs in. Some pollo campero, some chuchitos, some patín, frijoles and lots of tortillas. Sitting around a table over the same meal is special. We all know that. But sitting around and sharing our food, all coming from different homes and made by different hands creates a sense of closeness with your coworkers that I have only felt on a handful of teams back home in Toronto. It helps us learn about each other and our quirks. What some of us love and what others hate and what we share in common. Some hate spice and others bring chili peppers separately to put on their food. In a way it's an act of care that those at IMAP do for one another. One lunch for example, our compañera ran to get a bag of avocados and proclaimed “ok guys take one each.” Other days, people bring peaches from their gardens, or fruits from the market to share.
In a place like IMAP, that prioritizes food sovereignty for the surrounding Maya Kaqchikel communities, our lunch sharing is indicative of a larger philosophy of sharing, health, and community building. The food grown at IMAP, using the milpa system and following the moon cycles (of which I’m still learning about) goes directly to families in San Lucas Toliman and to neighbouring communities like Pachitulul. Amaranth is used in a kids nutrition program where native plants are brought back into the ecosystem and used to fight child malnutrition. Everything grown at IMAP, in some form, goes back to the people who call this place home. Even the seeds that are saved after harvest are stored in a seed library for local growers to use. Or the land right by the lake, which has plots reserved for local women from Pachitulul to use and grow traditional foods and plants for their own families.
Every time we share our lunches together around the table, each one of us takes the lids off our tupperwares to use a plate to share. I think about the lack of sharing in so many aspects of our society. I think about how much people forget to offer what one has for someone who might not. And I think about what's been lost to the rise of individualism around the world. Strong communities and peoples are built from solidarity and sharing. When no one looks out for another, shares food, recipes, medicines, and seeds, we lose networks of care that are key to our wellbeing. Food sovereignty or food security isn’t just about making food available to those who need it, but rather about creating new sustainable and accessible food systems. Where native seeds that have fed people since time immemorial are brought back into the ecosystem to not just the people but the earth as well.
