Many meats make good soup (part one)

Sometime last November I was sitting in the Ark internet café, near the office, having just been outed as a pianist to Edmund, the rather-amazing director of music at Providence Baptist Church, who is himself an awesome pianist/singer/choir-director/musical jack-of-all-trades. So I was protesting to Edmund that they couldn’t possibly need my piano chops (sorry bad pun) when they have such a great mix of musicians already, and how I’m more of a classical than a gospel musician anyway… and he responded, “Many meats make good soup.”

I just about fell off of my chair. I think my amazement was misinterpreted as confusion, because Edmund went to great lengths to explain that the saying is … not really talking about soup. But about diversity. Reminding us that diversity is a strength, brings a richness to things – foods, viewpoints, people, cultures. That moment really stuck with me, I think because it speaks to a bunch of interconnected things I’ve been mulling over and reflecting on since I arrived in Liberia, over three months ago.

To begin with, in order to fully appreciate this saying, you need to have a grasp on Liberian cuisine, and specifically, what makes a good Liberian “soup” (casting aside your traditional notion of soup for the moment.) Liberian soup is basically a bunch of assorted meat in a sauce. The sauces are kind of amazing and yummy (especially when Sis. Hawah is seasoning them, though Gerlah our cook is also a master of the cook stove) and the dozen or so soups that range through our kitchen include cassava leaf, potato greens, palm butter, fried okra, pumpkin and peanut. We usually have pumpkin soup on Sundays – Kemah chops and slivers a pumpkin on Saturday, and Sis. Hawah cooks it up and seasons it to perfection on Sunday morning before and after we’ve all traipsed (dressed to the nines) to and from church.

So, you’ve got your basic sauce there, but then you add meat, and I think this piece is what distinguishes Liberian cooking. Everything goes in the pot, the more carnivorian diversity the better. In one pot, at one meal, the meats in a one soup could range from cassava fish to goat to junah (crawfish) to crab to pork to chicken to [plenty else I can’t get a read on.] I must admit… as a (former, currently inactive) vegetarian… it has been a bit of a stretch for me, at moments, and it still is, trying to identify and navigate the meats on my rice. (Mum and Dad, any flashbacks? 1986, six-year-old Karen parses her portion of chicken or pork and declares 95% of it officially “inedible”.) Anyway, that’s my own vegetarian issue, and for the record I have the utmost respect for all the meat-lovers in my life, and… like I said… love Liberia’s many meats thing on a theoretical level.

So: many meats make good soup. It speaks to all these interconnected things that I’ve been reflecting on. About how to understand the meaning and purpose of my being here in Liberia, working alongside the staff of LEAD. About Partners Worldwide, who is affiliated with LEAD and who arranged my internship. About HandCrafting Justice, where partnership is also a core value and practice, and where we talk about “the women” (whose handcrafts we market) as though we belonged to each other (we do). About the Reed family, who recently concluded four years of community development work in Liberia (including starting LEAD) and who returned to the US before their next field placement a month after my arrival last October. About my dad and his siblings, growing up in Nigeria, because my grandparents were teaching and doing mission work there.

Maybe I will write more on this soon. Because each of these interconnected pieces can be spun out in many directions. But for now, its still marinating.