black hands / black lands

when Ashley invited me to join her on a trip to St. Croix, i was ecstatic. she would be doing research for her PhD, investigating the mental, spiritual + communal health effects of urban growing. i was hoping to not only retreat from the cold, oppressive Philly winter, but to also use the opportunity to conduct food interviews around Crucian food culture + foodways. my plan was to interview Black chefs + home cooks as they stirred their pots + told their stories of food, home + legacies. however, the universe had a different plan. instead, i was reminded that before any morsel of food crosses our lips, is piled onto our plates, is seasoned in our pots, it is grown, somewhere. in a healthy + natural food environment this food is tended + nurtured by loving hands, by gentle + intentional hands.

our first interview was with Errol Chichester, the father of my dear friend Tahirah. though she’s lived in Philly for over ten years, she often talked of home + how her father was an avid grower + a practiced beekeeper, her family home always filled with the fresh fruits + herbs he grew. i was so excited to finally meet him + to see where Tahirah grew up. i was floored by their home. a backyard sprawling with fruit trees + bushes, small potted herbs, a whole mess of foods + plants that i couldn’t even begin to identify. so many things growing. for Errol “time is money” + he was knee deep in preparing his crops + plants for the Ag Fair, a looming two days away. so, he took us on a quick tour, rattling off names + agricultural terms, touching plants here + there, pulling ripe + not-quite-ripe fruits from stem for us to taste.

“all of the vacant spots you see, the trees got blown away [by hurricanes Maria + Irma],” Errol pointed out to us. yet, there was still so much to see + eat. “this section is mango; this section is avocado. in the back i’ve got guava …. this here is guava berry.” as he continued on, Errol also introduced us to “volunteer” plants; ones that just grew without his knowing or assistance. he expressed gratitude + joyful amusement at how these plants would surprise him, their fruits delighting his wife + grandchild. “+ this is rambutan, one of my favorites.” seen through my “American eyes”, rambutan is a funny looking fruit, reminding me of a kind of spiky sea urchin. we didn’t get to try any, but we were able to taste plenty of surinam cherries. it’s a small stone fruit, a deep red, round + wedged like tiny pumpkins, brimming with Vitamin C Tahirah assures us. they weren’t ripe + so the taste was more tangy than sweet, but ripe or not Ashley loved them, popping them eagerly into her mouth as we walked through the rest of the backyard.

“like we say, time is money,” Errol declared as he took us into the house to try some more fruits he had inside. he + Tahirah had a true myriad awaiting us in the kitchen. banana, star fruit, jojo (dehydrated + stewed with sugar, nutmeg + star anise), bell apple, sugar apple, passion fruit (which i proclaimed tasted sweeter, more addictive + satisfying than candy). then we tried one of favorite new fruit friends: “black sapote” or chocolate fruit. black sapote is of the persimmon family + looks it. where persimmons are orange, the sapote skin is green, browned when ripe. when broken open the flesh is smooth + dark, dark, perfect brown, almost black (hence the name). Errol fed us each a spoonful: “you make a drink + you can’t tell the difference between chocolate + chocolate fruit.” while Ashley chewed + hmm’d over the taste (“it’s so mild … it’s hard to describe,” she mused), i eagerly opened my mouth to the spoon: “oh, i’m ready for this!” somehow it reminded me of chocolate, avocado + banana all at once. “that’s a good description” Tahirah grinned + nodded at me. Errol explained that while usually he scooped out the chocolatey inside + tossed it in his blender he recently discovered that “the skin blends very nicely.”

as we indulged in the mingling of flavors, i asked Errol if these fruits were similar to those he would have eaten back home. while Tahirah is a true Crucian, born + raised, her mother is St. Lucian + her father from Grenada. though he hasn’t been back home in a few years, Errol + Ashley (who has been to Grenada eight times + used to go twice a year for Carnival + Christmas) immediately bonded over memories of playing Jab Jab + eating bright, acidic carambola (start fruit). “just the banana [+] the bell apple” + of course the carambola.

oh, + we hadn’t even seen the best part. we exited the kitchen, following Errol + Tahirah downhill. we rocked our rental car down the torn up + pot-holed roads. we think of Philly roads as bad, but Maria + Irma had done quite a number on St. Croix’s infrastructure. here in the hills many roads had yet to be repaired; Errol’s pick-up was much more equipped to navigate than our little Audi. about ten minutes of rocking later, we pulled up to Errol’s land. an acre packed with yet more trees, yet more vines, yet more bushes… + oh my gosh, so many fruits!

i was baffled to learn the difference between breadfruit + breadnut, tickled by the reminder that cashews indeed come from a fruit, confused by Errol’s lesson on polyembryonic versus monoembryonic mangoes, + intrigued by the many ways you can prepare golden apple or (in Jamaica) june plum: “you can make a beautiful juice out of it, you can eat it fresh, you can make jam, jellies, you can make preserves. some people do salt + pepper… when this is ripe it has a nice, sweet aroma,” Errol crooned. what truly thrilled me was being handed a Malay apple, what i knew as a Jamaican apple, one of my favorite food memories from my time in Jamaica, nearly ten years ago. Tahirah, a lifelong student of this grower’s education, voiced my own thoughts only having just realized the sheer amount of fruits that hold the word “apple” in their name.

what i was truly awed by was the aggressively sour taste of bilimbi, a cousin of carambola. Ashley reached the tree before i did, raising the little green orb that Errol offered to her mouth. she chewed + then smacked her lips, the very sound alerting me to its sour flavor. she mulled, “you know how when we were kids, we used to eat those terrible, processed sour candies. we could just eat this!” she held the bilimbi out to me + then giddily grabbed my phone to video the experience. listen. i am not a fan of bilimbi. it is deeply sour + after a few moments of pinched face, smacked lips, + plenty of sound effects (as Errol + Tahirah shared a hardy chuckle), i dropped the remainder of the fruit on the ground + cursed Ashley for the misleading comment about sour candies! “you said the candy - i was ready for - that’s not candy!” it was all sour with no forgiving sweetness offered. but it is certainly a comparable alternative to the brightly dyed gummies we grew up with. truly, i could appreciate how it might thrill the tongue of one who loves sour flavors. thankfully Errol followed up that tasting with the sweetest, juiciest, oh-my-gawd-good pomegranate seeds, which we all happily shared, munching, sucking + spitting naked seeds back to the ground. “pomegwana,” sang Tahirah to which her father explained, “pomegwana we say locally… this is a nice one.” + it was. god, it was luscious.

the tour continued with haste, as we had to rush back so Tahirah could begin her workday. banana, plantain plants that wanted harvesting, sour orange, which “makes the best juice in world, much better than orange juice”, a surprise of more chocolate fruit, young coconut palms, + soon to be picked pineapples. we ended with Errol handing us small pieces of pink strawberry guava. “these are quality guava. they melt in your mouth like butter. very aromatic, very sweet, very nice.” i bit into the flesh + realized that years of drinking “organic” guava juice at home had done nothing to prepare me for how deeply satisfying of a flavor it is. i also quickly realized that years of drinking guava juice had not prepared me at all for how to eat them. after slurping the flesh from the skin, i dropped it without thought on the grass in front of me. Errol noticing pointed + exclaimed, “that’s illegal!” to which i could only answer, “… what?” Errol was quick to inform me that the skin was also meant to be eaten. i had no other choice than to hastily grab it off the ground + stuff it into my mouth. indeed, the skin was pleasantly edible + i understood the severity, my almost-crime.

when i asked Errol the seemingly simple question, “what does food mean to you”, he seemed a bit taken aback. “i never thought about that” he said twice before slipping into contemplative silence. we all stood in silence + watched him ponder for a moment. “i think you actually stumped my father,” Tahirah finally said, smiling knowingly. when i asked her the exact same question just two weeks prior she too was stumped, proclaiming that despite our numerous conversations around food, that she had never truly considered its meaning. “well,” he finally said, “without food we are non-existent, so i would say sustenance. to me food is sustenance.” Ashley followed up with her own question asking how farming impacts mental health, spirituality, connection to the land + collective agency. to each point Errol nodded his head emphatically. “yes. yes. yes, yes, yes … for me - i’m a Rasta man + i don’t know which one comes first, if it's my love of planting or if it's being a Rasta man - i see one in the same. i see if you... love to plant you must have some love, some oneness, some .... " he trailed off. "unity," Tahirah offered. he grabbed it, "unity! you must be very humble [...] to me all of that is one. being humble, being kind, being ...." "giving," Tahirah tossed the word to her father again. "giving. yes, it's all one. i see... if you plant, for me, there's no need for violence + badness + that type of stuff. because it's one unity with nature, harmony, a harmonizing type situation. so, to me, when i come up here, i'm like in Nirvana." as Errol continued, he held both palms, stacked atop each other, over his heart, “farming is this” he proclaimed. 

back in the car, Ashley + i reflected on the interview. we both felt… a lot, a lot of things. mused over how much value there is in being able to grow your own food, to be able to provide for yourself + how seeing such a plethora + variety of fruits in the kitchen was an awe-worthy moment for us - and isn’t that something? how foreign it is to us to have that kind of access. “there’s so much power in that,” Ashley says resolutely, “+ that’s what i aspire to.” i thought about how Errol was taken aback by my question of what food meant to him. how he had “never thought about it”. it made me wonder if my revere of + obsession with food + its meaning is born from lack of proximity. real foods, the bounty that i had just witnessed sprawl + tumble across backyard + kitchen counter, it seems so distant. so removed from my reality. it is a goal, a please-don’t-be-a-mirage oasis that is always in sight + still so far. it is a deified concept in my life, worthy of my time, energy + art. but food is… just food. + its beautiful, another inspiring living thing that we bump shoulders + dance with. it is as simple + complex as everything else in this world, a tiny seed + an entire universe at the same time. it is sustenance in the most mundane + magical ways.

black hands / black lands
Errol’s recipe for sustenance