Growing up I was always a big fan of learning about geography, civilizations, cultures, and history. Given my keen interest in cultures, I had the opportunity to travel to more than 85 countries, including more than 200 cities for work and pleasure through the years. In fact, just out of interest, I chose human geography and history as part of my main interdisciplinary topics during my doctorate graduate studies at Dalhousie University.
I learned firsthand that the best way for an ultimate local experience is to immerse myself in any country’s culture, and that the best way to do that is to venture beyond the typical business or tourist attractions to genuinely learn about the true portrait of a country. This can be through learning about local customs, traditions, food, music and art. Music and food are two of the most popular and easily accessible ways to learn about a different culture.
Learning about another culture helped me to understand different perspectives within the world while expanding and better informing mine. It also helped me to recognize and respect different ways of life, and to dismiss any negative stereotypes or personal biases that may have existed before.
Cultural values are usually passed on from one generation to another, to safeguard the continuousness of traditions. As immigrants, we often use food as one of the ways we can preserve our homeland’s cultural identity. Usually, our traditions are tied to cultural events, celebrations, or key ceremonies that our ancestors created to reflect some beliefs, customs, and values. This allows traditions to be remembered through the years, regardless of where we are.
Another way for traditions to be remembered is by sharing our folk stories and music as it gives it people an insight into another culture, history and different ways of life. This can be directly connected to our history, a specific religious or spiritual practice or just general artistic expression that is reflective of nature and our home identity. You may have heard the expression, “Mom’s food always takes me home.”
I am fortunate that our multi-cultural and multi-generation household has quite the mixture of cultures – Egyptian, Russian, and Canadian – with four languages spoken daily in our family. We often have several celebrations in any given month that all of us commemorate. These celebrations could be related to a holiday, a religion or a tradition of one of our household’s multi-cultures and diverse heritage.
Cultures are influenced by food in numerous ways. This is also reflected in our food and musical tastes and choices. We get to enjoy traditional recipes that have been passed down through generations and are a source of pride to bring us together to express our cultural identities. I regularly get to enjoy some amazing cuisine and a wide variety of dishes that are full of exotic flavours and have several stories behind each one. These stories are often shared around our dinner table. Dishes come from the Middle East, Northeast Europe, the Baltic region, Russia and the Mediterranean and include koshari, borscht, dumplings, dressed herring, mulukhia, beef stroganov and mahshy, just to name a few.
We are very lucky that we have here in Halifax an annual event – the Mosaic International Film Festival – that allows us to enjoy world’s exotic flavours and stories. This international festival is our own unique homegrown international forum for storytelling, and a splendid celebration of diversity in Halifax – one of the fastest-growing cities in the country – and within Nova Scotia.
The fourth edition of the festival was under the theme Flavours of the World. It brought together filmmakers from 20 countries around the world who shared their stories, experiences and cultural identities through the art of film. Film screenings and celebrations took place at the ideal and very relevant location of the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21 in late March of this year. Don’t forget to mark your calendar for the next one.
