Emigrant Sensibility in
the Age of Globalization (12):
Remembering the Country
of Eternal Spring ③
By Luna
Published: November 4,
2015
Translated by Marilyn
Hook
Editor’s
note: Vacation, business travel, migrant labor, language study, study abroad,
international marriage, immigration—many of us have such experiences of
crossing national borders, and there are many immigrants living in our country.
Ilda examines the emigrant sensibility we will need in order to live equally
and peacefully in the age of globalization. This series is supported by the
Korea Press Foundation’s Press Promotion Fund.
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| The “Campaign to Outlaw Genetically-Modified Seeds,” started mainly by foreigners in Xela, is now in its third year © Luna |
Making nixtamal, Guatemalan traditional food
In my last year in
Guatemala, I cooked for people many times. I wanted to make meals for the
people who had done so much for me. It was nearly impossible to find in Xela
the ingredients required by the Korean food recipes I found online, but finding
substitutes was a task more fun than difficult.
I even had a party on
special days. On Chuseok [Korean Thanksgiving], I ground rice in the blender to
make stuffed rice cakes; on the winter solstice, I made red bean porridge; on
Seolnal [Lunar New Year’s Day], I made dumpling soup instead of rice-cake soup.
I also used the blender to make red pepper power for cabbage kimchi; I made
anyone who visited me taste it. Most of my guests liked the food I made.
Although of course, there were many times when I had to serve whatever it was—bibimbap
or bulgogi and rice, kimbap or mung-bean pancakes—with tortillas.
Because I shared the
house with several other people, it wasn’t uncommon to hold large parties
together in which we had 10, 20, or more people over. We often had parties in
which people cooked together and shared the food. One of the scenes from Xela
that I miss is when we would make a campfire in the large front yard, or even
without a campfire, when we would gather together to enjoy food from several
countries or of unknown origin, laughing and chatting and running back and
forth from the kitchen.
The foreigners in Xela
depended on and supported each other in this kind of way. Most of them had come
to Xela to courageously attempt a new life, whether it be for a few months or a
several years. They brought with them assets—both visible and invisible—that
they had been storing up, and were using creativity to cultivate a new home.
When faced with sudden changes, they naturally knew how to roll with them, as
if riding waves. Because we had friends to gather with like this, to eat with
and talk with, we were able to momentarily forget our fear and loneliness.
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| Making nixtamal, a traditional Guatemalan food © Luna |
If you ask me what the
highlight of my cooking was, I would say it was nixtamal. Nixtamal is a paste
made by boiling dried corn over a wood fire, letting it cool, and then grinding
it. For a long time I wished to make—not just assist in making—this food that
the average Guatemalan wouldn’t even tackle, and in my last year I finally
found a neighbor with the same goal. We made tens of tamales by filling corn
leaves with nixtamal and cooking them over a wood fire, and then gave them as
gifts to our Guatemalan and foreign friends.
Koreans don’t even acknowledge their neighbors
Coming back to Korea
after 6 years away, I was shocked at how the number of coffee shops had
increased exponentially. I was even more surprised when I sat in one of the
coffee shops and tasted a cup of Guatemalan coffee. It’s true that Guatemalans
drink a lot of coffee, but there is no coffee there that has such a refined,
elegant flavor. Most of the highest-quality coffee beans, which indigenous
people cultivate, are exported abroad.
“I don’t criticize your
life in Korea, as long as you’re happy. But how long do you plan to keep the
chocolate that Angel gave you and the tortillas from Mexico?!”
It’s been 6 months since
I started living with Ben, an English man who made nixtamal with me in
Guatemala 2 years ago. Ben has said that he can’t understand why Koreans who
live in the same building won’t even make eye contact with their neighbors, let
alone hug or shake hands with them.
“If the building’s owner
would just allow access to the roof, a lot of communal activities would be
possible, and we could invite people to eat. And we could grow a few
vegetables...”
It seems like it would
be hard for him to live in Korea for a long time. He bikes one hour to work,
from Hongik University [subway] Station to Hwajeong Station, and back every
day, but when I take him to Namdaemun Market, he yawns and says he is bored. As
someone who has no interest in buying things and spending money, and whose
partner is always working on her laptop, life in Seoul must be tough on him.
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| Foreigners in Xela support and rely on each other © Luna |
I want to experience the wisdom and light of the land where
I was born
Returning to Korea after
entering the strange land of my 40s, I found that I had missed out on an
important part of growing up. I had grown in a positive direction while I was
having a variety of experiences in Guatemala, and I thought this was something that
I couldn’t have done in Korea. I’m pretty sure of that.
What I had overlooked
was that there are rites of passage that people can only undergo in the land
where they were born. Also, that there are psychological issues that can only
be resolved in that certain place where you grew up. As if they had been
waiting for me in a freezer for the past 6 years, my unresolved issues rose up
from within, threatening to overwhelm me, within days of my return to Korea.
The most distressing of
the things I am fighting to accept haven’t changed in 6 years are none other
than my own old habits. Things I had wanted to fix, had wanted to overcome, and
had mistakenly thought that I had fixed and overcome through my trip—I still
struggle with them now. Inexplicable anger and envy, psychological dependency,
an urge to run away, depression, etc. These cause serious difficulties not just
for my work but also for my life with my partner, who has come from a faraway
country to be with me.
“Luna, if you quit your
job, what would you want to do first?”
“Get up early. Get up
and do something, anything. I just want to voluntarily get up early.”
That’s what I said. When
I lived in Guatemala, I rose with the sun. I was under no pressure to do so, I
just didn’t want to miss a moment of the dazzling sunlight. So the fact that
getting up in the morning is so hard now makes me wonder if I haven’t lost
something.
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| Mayans say that people were created from corn © Luna |
Sometimes in my dreams,
I see faces from Guatemala and Xela that I miss. My friend Lupe, a painter,
wrote in a Facebook message that some helpful force must be bringing me to that
place in order to give me strength. I don’t want to go back there as if I were
running away from here. I want to complete the tasks I have here. Angel said he
was glad to hear that I think that way. It’s natural that a life that had been
tossed aside for 6 years would be difficult to resume.
And later, I want to
experience the age-old wisdom and light of the land where I was born, like I
had absorbed the age-old wisdom and light of Guatemala. This was my hope when I
left Guatemala.
“As your trip continues,
I feel for some reason like you have always been travelling. The Luna that I
met in this place also seemed like someone who was travelling.” (A message I
received from a friend in Korea, while I was in Xela)
*Original article:
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