Living as an immigrant is living like a plant in a very nice pot placed in a very nice house but still not rooted in the earth in which you were meant to be in the first place. Not under the same sky and moon, not breathing the same air even if the air was suffocatingly hot or unruly cold.
I was 16 when a fortune teller told me that I would live the majority of my life outside my birth country. At the time, I dismissed the fortune and laughed at the thought of living away from home. Now, thirty years later, I see that the fortune teller was right.
So over the years, I have not only been soul searching like most people of my own age but I have also been searching the earth for my tribe….one that truly only exists in my heart and memory, in my olfactory when all of a sudden I smell the rain hit the dirt on a summer afternoon.
Over the years, my coping mechanism has been to create and nurture my tribe where I go as if I had gypsy or nomadic blood in my veins. I have created this tribe through food that brings people of all colors, religions, beliefs and ages to my table. So much that I made this hobby into my profession.Now my tribe doesn’t consist of people from my country of origin but of a bunch of like-minded people from all four corners of the world. We make food together, we eat, we laugh, we cry, we joke and we share memories so close to each other that it seems we all lived in the same neighborhood.
I love my tribe, they go where I go if not physically but in spirit and they give me strength, fortitude and gratitude. They make me a stronger and better person, they give me faith in humanity, they lift me up. I no longer look at their passport to identify their country of origin but at their heart.
Do you agree with me? if so, you are part of my tribe