Multiculturalism as a diet
I AM EVERYTHING, AND I AM NOTHING.I AM ALL THOSE CULTURES I’VE LIVED IN, AND AT THE SAME TIME – I’M NOT EVEN A CULTURE I WAS BORN IN.
…sticky heat and sticky rice. Hot chili. Bubble-tea. Buddha. Buddha. Buddha. Rice. Don't lose your face. Don't make them lose their faces. Save the face. Don't lose it. Don't. Smile, nod, be quiet. Oops, I failed.
Sometimes I think that at the late stage of my life, I’ll go crazy. Sometimes I think, that I am everything, and I am nothing. That I am all those cultures I’ve lived in, and at the same time – I’m not even a culture I was born in.
It would be so easy: just to be a Ukrainian. To listen to Ukrainian music, to dream about moving to the capital, to have beautiful traditional clothes in my wardrobe, to like Ukrainian cuisine and to be happily living there. I simplify of course, but you’ve got the idea.
Yet, something went wrong. When I was a little girl, I asked my parents to call me Manuella instead of Nika (I watched too much of Mexican soap operas). Later on, I started to learn by heart the songs of an Argentinian teens-band and Spanish has become a language I prefer to express the deepest emotions of mine. After a bit, I got involved into salsa dancing. That time I felt like it was me only when I was dancing; and when I was not – it wasn’t me.
First time I went abroad when I was 17. To live in a small German village with the peers from different European countries seemed to me as the greatest adventure of my short life.
After that I went to study to Berlin thanks to Erasmus Mundus – the most famous European students exchange program. Erasmus is special. In a good way, it affects everybody who once becomes its participant. I was continuing hanging out with people from all around the world experiencing one of the most multicultural cities of our planet. One day I found a very authentic Cuban bar in the center of the city. That was it. After trying some real Cuban rum, it was already impossible to stop.
And then, it was New York. It happened to me. Just at the beginning of my early twenties, the important age of personal development, I decided to taste the famous melting pot. I was eating it with my hands. Licking my fingers and dirtying my t-shirt. Sometimes New York was getting stuck in my throat, and I couldn’t swallow it. Sometimes every piece of it seemed to me to be a piece of a holy feast. In New York, of course, all kinds of things happened. The dates with a Cuban fencer, a Greek boss, an American affair, some Mexican dramas, an orthodox Jewish neighborhood - Midwood, a Jamaican taxi-driver, a cuisine of Lebanon, Puerto Rico and jazz of New Orleans, a radical polish homemate, an Italian landlord and the New York subway of course… And meanwhile I was drinking some Turkish tea and reading the books of a famous Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk – I was sure, actually, I supposed to live in Istanbul.
When I was done with my American feast, I decided to get back to a familiar cuisine and went travelling through Latin America in its Central American variation. I was eating fried bananas along with rice and beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and it was never enough. I named my cat after a Salvadorian corn flat bread – Pupusa; I can give a lecture about the historical reasons and modern situation of the Central American gangs; I distinguish different regional accents and in my wardrobe, there’s an huipil – a traditional garment worn by indigenous Guatemalan women; I was fighting with Nicaraguan men because of their attitude towards women and I was sleeping in a hovel in Honduras with a pig by my side listening to the shooting of the local gangsters.
After getting full of my beloved Latin America, I decided to try some exotic dish. “I’d like to try some Asia. Do you have it on your menu?”. In my gut, there were no bacteria to digest the Asian culture. But gut microflora can be changed.
- “We have Vietnam and Thailand on the menu today.”
- “I’ll have it, thanks!”
Coldness, quietness, discipline. Sticky heat and sticky rice. Hot chili. Bubble-tea. Buddha. Buddha. Buddha. Rice. Don't lose your face. Don't make them lose their faces. Save the face. Don't lose it. Don't. Smile, nod, be quiet. Oops, I failed.
At first, I was having nausea, but little by little I got used to it. I learned how to be quiet, to smile humbly, how to greet with nodding and having palms in a praying position. I eat rice having a spoon in my right hand and a fork in a left one; I cook with the chopsticks; I almost don’t cry eating something spicy; I don’t get frightened when I cross a busy Asian road; I don’t get disgusted when I see fried insects and there are 900 Thai adolescents that stop being on their phones when I talk to them. However, I’m still the only one in my little town who insults people on the road – I continue having troubles with digesting the Asian way of driving. It makes me furious.
And when the night comes…I chat about life with a French. And it’s not my stomach but my brain that gets upset with all the nonsense and complicity of French grammar. My speech organs that are not used to the baguettes and crrrrrroissants sometimes get cramps. I try to understand French jokes about the Belgians, and I translate French poetry (or more often some French rap, honestly). Answering the question “How are you?” I say, “I’ve got the peach” ( “Avoir la pêche” is a French idiom that means “to be full of beans”). Peaches are my favorite fruit; how do the French know?
People I meet almost never can say where I am from. I’ve also started having some difficulties with answering this question. Sometimes I think that at the late stage of my life, I’ll go crazy. Sometimes I think, that I am everything, and I am nothing. That I am all those cultures I’ve lived in, and at the same time – I’m not even a culture I was born in.
