Deterritorialized Youth by Dawn Chatty

Author:Dawn Chatty [Chatty, Dawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857458063
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Berghahn Books, Incorporated
Published: 2012-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

Food and Identity among Sahrawi Young Refugees

Among Sahrawi camp refugees three categories of food were found to be frequently used when discussing dietary habits.

The first is traditional food which consists of dishes and beverages considered to be typical of Sahrawi people both in the past (before the beginning of the conflict against Morocco) and in the present. These dishes are regarded as the food usually consumed by Sahrawi nomadic camel-herders. All the ingredients have long been available locally, with fluctuations mostly due to seasonality, weather conditions and viability of trade routes. Among Sahrawi refugees there are popular stories about certain traditional dishes as well as common ideas that link some traditional dishes and other food habits to certain tribes and sub-tribes. In addition, a number of traditional dishes are believed to have curative properties while most of them are regarded as nutritious and healthy (Appendix 3.2).

Secondly, there is food-aid which consists of commodities freely distributed among camp refugees as humanitarian aid, such as pasta, vegetable oil, sugar and canned beans and vegetables. Food-aid differs significantly from traditional food, although traditional and food-aid ingredients may be combined in dishes prepared and consumed by camp refugees (for example, the traditional camel meat and the spaghetti of food-aid). Among Sahrawi and other Moors certain food-aid items (such as Spanish canned sardines, Italian tins of lentils and ECHO-marked sugar) have become symbols of the Sahrawi refugees, of their life in the camps and their struggle for national independence. As a young refugee explained: ‘there are no Sahrawi refugees or soldiers who have not eaten the canned lentils of the camps’; then he added, joking: ‘with all the lentils that we ate…we must be all made of lentils by now’.

The third category is new food, largely a residual category, including food that is neither traditional nor food-aid. The availability of this food within the camps is relatively recent (starting from the early 1990s) and related to the end of the armed hostilities and the opening of shops within the camps. It includes items such as soft drinks, fruit yogurt, chocolate cream, flavoured sweets and biscuits as well as pizza, sandwiches and fried chicken.

Although the classification of certain food commodities under one group or another may be disputed at times (e.g. rice is traditional for many, but others see it as food-aid; eggs are traditional commodities but chicken categorization is less clear, although fried chicken is clearly regarded as new), the actual use of the three categories of food is accepted and common. Two features of this categorization need to be highlighted. First, the three categories are exhaustive and can accommodate all food items currently available in the camps. Secondly, there is a clear chronological relationship between these groupings. In particular, they are closely linked to and help represent successive historical periods that are socially important among camp refugees: traditional food is linked to the nomadic life of the past; food-aid represents the fight against the invaders from the hardship of exile; while new food represents

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