Tobago's food culture and social bonds

DR RITA PEMBERTON

Food has been an important agency of social cohesion since the post-Emancipation period in Tobago, when the food culture formed an integral part of the island’s culture.

The longstanding food culture practice was composed of five interdependent elements: agriculture, processing, food preparation, supporting vocational skills and recycling. The low wages that were paid to all classes of workers, the unaffordable prices and limited availability of imports and the high cost of living on the island, mandated a dependence on home food production and to make maximum use of all items as the means of survival.

Therefore, since the post emancipation years, Tobagonians were growing what they ate and eating what they grew.

The food culture was significant because it spawned a number of crafts which, while supporting the food industry, provided some individuals with employment and the means to establish businesses and created a strongly bonded and interrelated community.

In addition, in face of the current call for Tobagonians to become more involved in recycling, it is to be noted that this was commonly practised on the island as a part of its environmentally-friendly food culture.

The first and fundamental practice on the island was that food is home-grown. Agriculture in Tobago was heavily focused on food production for home consumption. The plants and animals which were essential to the food culture of Tobago were cultivated/raised at home.

The typical Tobago yard included some of the following plants: gumah, soosumber, roucou, dasheen, yam, breadfruit, pigeon peas, bananas (maugh faugh bauy, blogger, buck buck and fire bananas), plantains, cassava, sweet potatoes, ochroes, pumpkin, corn, avocadoes, breadnut (chataigne), lettuce, tomato, ginger, sorrel, French thyme, chive, coconut, lime, plants for tea (Rock sage, Christmas bush), medicinal plants and a range of mangoes, citrus and other fruit. All these were also cultivated in gardens at other locations and in the communities.

Also, animals were raised at home: chickens, cows, goats, pigs and sheep. In that sense every family maintained a food garden and so contributed to the island’s food production. The yard both fed and cured the family, or it served as the resident drugstore, with an array of herbal cures for almost every known ailment. But there were also farmers who in addition to the cultivation of cash crops, produced items of food for sale.

There were several food processing practices on the island. One of the most common was based on the First People culture of extracting the poisonous juice from the cassava. Once the liquid was removed, the starch as made into starch balls which were used to starch clothes and to make starch cakes.

The cassava flour was roasted in coppers acquired from the estates, and used to make cassava bread and farine and the flour also used to make dumplings, bakes and/or cakes.

Pork and fish were corned, and fish was also smoked or salted for future use.

Coconut oil, the most commonly used cooking oil, and roucou, used for colouring and flavouring food, were made in many homes.

The food culture also spawned skilled workmen who made and repaired all the food and kitchen implements. Chief among them were the tinsmiths, notable among whom were Joseph Bourne of Lambeau and Errol Frith of Roxborough.

They produced graters of varying sizes for various purposes, tin cups which were made by attaching handles to the milk tins; baking tins, shaped cake pans for weddings and special occasions; tin ovens; decorative items; sifters, pot covers with handles, milk jugs, watering cans and swizzle sticks, (wooden and metal for callalloo).

Joiners fashioned the trays used by the ladies who peddled pies, tart, coconut drops, currant rolls, sweet potato and corn pone, sweet bread, bene balls, mint sticks, nut cake and starch cake around their communities daily. Trays were essential items to take items to be baked to and from the oven, and for storage in the homes. Joiners also made the palettes (peel or pill) which were used to put bread in the dirt ovens and the mortar and pestles, which were essential items in traditional food preparation.

There were the skilled craftsmen who mixed and danced the dirt to build the dirt ovens, skilled boat builders such as Earnest Mc Dougall and Arthur Husbands and his grandson Galla (after whom Galla Street, Buccoo is named) of Buccoo, Beresford Campbell and the Nicholson brothers of Charlotteville, who crafted and repaired the boats used by fishermen on the island.

Each community possessed skilled men who slaughtered animals when required. These skilled persons provided services upon which the entire community depended.

Food was unifying because of the commonality of the food practices. Fish, pigeon peas and cassava, in one form or another, constituted the main food items. The general food practice was fish during the week (hence the importance of fishermen), soup on Saturdays and chicken and/or pork on Sunday.

The main meal was made up of which crop was in season. The main dishes were coo cou and callalloo, cassava cou cou, fish soup, fish broth, soosumber soup, black eye peas soup, roasted salt fish, smoked fish, corned fish, dasheen bush soup, corn soup; tripe soup, cowheel soup; baghee with ochroes, farine, farine soaked with coconut oil and served with salt fish; fried bake, roast bake, accra and float, jacks, jack fish fritters, black pudding; steamed cassava turned in black eye peas; All in One,(all provision together with bush dasheen bush or baghee), pelau or cook up, sanchoche, oil down; cassava bread, smoked fish, roast salt fish, curry pigeon peas; meat or fish in roucou flavoured coconut sauce; souse, conch, cowskin and pig foot; roast and boiled breadfruit, breadfruit chips, boiled chataigne, fire banana (which turns mauve when cooked and was not to be eaten in the sun), pound plantain, blugger or buck buck; curried crab, yard fowl eggs, chocolate tea.

Dumpling of various types – cornmeal, cassava or plain flour, was a staple. A Speyside special was “Tiperson” Cartwheel dumpling (ie they were big and hard) with pound plantain and smoked fish and roasted sweet potatoes.

Sweetmeats included a variety of tarts; paimie; potato pone; starch cake which was once the defining skill of first class baker; mint candy, and shaddock preserves. Children loved boiled and roasted corn, roast corn with coconut and Sam sam (chilli bibbi).

Recycling was a common practice in Tobago’s food culture in which nothing was wasted. Food peelings were used in the compost heaps into which banana suckers were planted, some bruised fruit and foods were fed to the pigs. Corn sticks were used to scrub shoes, coconut fibre was used to wash sapodillas, ashes from the fireside was used to scrub pots, the pitch oil tin was used for boiling ham.

Paint, powdered milk and butter tins were used to plant vegetables, seasonings. House plants and medicinal herbs. Coppers which were used to boil cane juice on the sugar estates were converted to coconut oil and cassava processing and all cans which entered the island were transformed into useful household items by adding handles or were flattened and repurposed.

The central feature of the food culture lay in the nature of the relationship that was forged among and between members of the community. Everyone depended on other members of the community for some essential service.

Those with gardens in distant locations relied for the services of those who owned donkeys to get their produce out. The corn mill and the dirt oven were utilised by members of the community, all awaited the return of the fishermen with the fresh catch and everybody depended on the tinsmith and joiners for the provision and/or repairs of essential items.

To crown it all, the people of Tobago ate similar food items daily, hence the food culture provided an essential social bond.