Start Each Morning Cooking Breakfast Together
Start Each Morning Cooking Breakfast Together
Porridge on Lake Issyk Kul
I open my eyes to darkness, save for a cookie cutter oval of sky. Pushing back the cloth flap I exit the yurt and walk down to the water. My legs ache; yesterday I had ridden a horse through hours of undulating plains towards a blue smudge on the horizon that slowly expanded into Lake Issyk Kul.
I had arrived in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan the week before in May 2012. The nonprofit I led funded youth activism around HIV and human rights, and had organized an advocacy workshop for our new grantees from Russia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan. The women in the workshop were fierce: many of them started using heroin as teenagers, had survived violence from police and boyfriends, and now ran grassroots organizations on tiny budgets. The group based in Bishkek stood out in particular. Its leader, Jamila, was a single mom with blue-black hair who wanted to support other young women who started using heroin, were kicked out of their homes and forced to live on the streets.
We spent several long days together, from the sterile hotel breakfast room with its chilled slices of meat and boiled eggs to dinners over fluffy rice paloo and kebabs. The women debated how much they could criticize government officials in their countries, and weighed the potential consequences of speaking out. They argued and took care of each other, wrapping up leftover food from the meeting to distribute to others.
On the last day, we visited a women’s shelter in Bishkek set in an unassuming house behind a large gate. Jamila and several of the meeting participants were currently living there, and she gave us a tour, showing off her bed and cradling her infant son. She spent the most time in the small kitchen, where she pointed out each item with pride: the stash of pots, the boxy fridge, a basket of potatoes, slender carrots. The shelter’s director told us that when money was tight (providing direct services was no longer an international donor priority), they couldn’t afford many food items but they kept the kitchen running, no matter what. “We start each morning cooking breakfast together,” she said.
After the training, my colleague and friend Selbi—a vivacious self-declared feminist activist from Kyrgyzstan—arranged for me and my boyfriend to travel to a yurt. She sorted the arrangements on the phone in rapid fire Russian, pausing only once to ask, “You like horses right?” The next day we drove in a car for several hours through a sun-baked countryside, spending the night in a small village. In the morning a man arrived at the guest house with two horses; we followed him silently into the brush, save for the staccato clack of hooves.
That morning on Lake Issyk Kul’s blue edge, I tentatively submerge my ankles into the water and shiver at its glacial chill. A bell suddenly rings out signaling breakfast. Inside a large tent, the friendly host has laid out freshly brewed tea and a giant container of Nescafe. She spoons milk-infused rice porridge into porcelain bowls dotted with blue flowers. There is also homemade bread accompanied by orange and plum jams. We eat quietly alongside her children, savoring the porridge that smells vaguely of cardamom and the holidays. I think of Jamila, and the other women I’d met from Bishkek, back in their communal kitchen where they are likely eating something similar, food a thread connecting our different lives.
Breakfast can be a routine and ordinary meal, but sometimes it can be a way of building solidarity among strangers sharing a home, the spark of activism against all odds.