Editor’s note: Vacation, business travel, migrant labor, language study, study abroad, international marriage, immigration—many of us have such experiences of crossing national borders, and there are many immigrants living in our country. Ilda examines the emigrant sensibility we will need in order to live equally and peacefully in the age of globalization. This series is supported by the Korea Press Foundation’s Press Promotion Fund.

 

▲ The “Campaign to Outlaw Genetically-Modified Seeds,” started mainly by foreigners in Xela, is now in its third year ©Luna

Making nixtamal, Guatemalan traditional food

 

In my last year in Guatemala, I cooked for people many times. I wanted to make meals for the people who had done so much for me. It was nearly impossible to find in Xela the ingredients required by the Korean food recipes I found online, but finding substitutes was a task more fun than difficult.

 

I even had a party on special days. On Chuseok [Korean Thanksgiving], I ground rice in the blender to make stuffed rice cakes; on the winter solstice, I made red bean porridge; on Seolnal [Lunar New Year’s Day], I made dumpling soup instead of rice-cake soup. I also used the blender to make red pepper power for cabbage kimchi; I made anyone who visited me taste it. Most of my guests liked the food I made. Although of course, there were many times when I had to serve whatever it was—bibimbap or bulgogi and rice, kimbap or mung-bean pancakes—with tortillas.

 

Because I shared the house with several other people, it wasn’t uncommon to hold large parties together in which we had 10, 20, or more people over. We often had parties in which people cooked together and shared the food. One of the scenes from Xela that I miss is when we would make a campfire in the large front yard, or even without a campfire, when we would gather together to enjoy food from several countries or of unknown origin, laughing and chatting and running back and forth from the kitchen.

 

The foreigners in Xela depended on and supported each other in this kind of way. Most of them had come to Xela to courageously attempt a new life, whether it be for a few months or a several years. They brought with them assets—both visible and invisible—that they had been storing up, and were using creativity to cultivate a new home. When faced with sudden changes, they naturally knew how to roll with them, as if riding waves. Because we had friends to gather with like this, to eat with and talk with, we were able to momentarily forget our fear and loneliness.

 

▲ Making nixtamal, a traditional Guatemalan food © Luna

If you ask me what the highlight of my cooking was, I would say it was nixtamal. Nixtamal is a paste made by boiling dried corn over a wood fire, letting it cool, and then grinding it. For a long time I wished to make—not just assist in making—this food that the average Guatemalan wouldn’t even tackle, and in my last year I finally found a neighbor with the same goal. We made tens of tamales by filling corn leaves with nixtamal and cooking them over a wood fire, and then gave them as gifts to our Guatemalan and foreign friends.

 

Koreans don’t even acknowledge their neighbors

 

Coming back to Korea after 6 years away, I was shocked at how the number of coffee shops had increased exponentially. I was even more surprised when I sat in one of the coffee shops and tasted a cup of Guatemalan coffee. It’s true that Guatemalans drink a lot of coffee, but there is no coffee there that has such a refined, elegant flavor. Most of the highest-quality coffee beans, which indigenous people cultivate, are exported abroad.

 

“I don’t criticize your life in Korea, as long as you’re happy. But how long do you plan to keep the chocolate that Angel gave you and the tortillas from Mexico?!”

 

It’s been 6 months since I started living with Ben, an English man who made nixtamal with me in Guatemala 2 years ago. Ben has said that he can’t understand why Koreans who live in the same building won’t even make eye contact with their neighbors, let alone hug or shake hands with them.

 

“If the building’s owner would just allow access to the roof, a lot of communal activities would be possible, and we could invite people to eat. And we could grow a few vegetables...”

 

It seems like it would be hard for him to live in Korea for a long time. He bikes one hour to work, from Hongik University [subway] Station to Hwajeong Station, and back every day, but when I take him to Namdaemun Market, he yawns and says he is bored. As someone who has no interest in buying things and spending money, and whose partner is always working on her laptop, life in Seoul must be tough on him.

 

▲ Foreigners in Xela support and rely on each other ©Luna

I want to experience the wisdom and light of the land where I was born

 

Returning to Korea after entering the strange land of my 40s, I found that I had missed out on an important part of growing up. I had grown in a positive direction while I was having a variety of experiences in Guatemala, and I thought this was something that I couldn’t have done in Korea. I’m pretty sure of that.

 

What I had overlooked was that there are rites of passage that people can only undergo in the land where they were born. Also, that there are psychological issues that can only be resolved in that certain place where you grew up. As if they had been waiting for me in a freezer for the past 6 years, my unresolved issues rose up from within, threatening to overwhelm me, within days of my return to Korea.

 

The most distressing of the things I am fighting to accept haven’t changed in 6 years are none other than my own old habits. Things I had wanted to fix, had wanted to overcome, and had mistakenly thought that I had fixed and overcome through my trip—I still struggle with them now. Inexplicable anger and envy, psychological dependency, an urge to run away, depression, etc. These cause serious difficulties not just for my work but also for my life with my partner, who has come from a faraway country to be with me.

 

“Luna, if you quit your job, what would you want to do first?”

“Get up early. Get up and do something, anything. I just want to voluntarily get up early.”

 

That’s what I said. When I lived in Guatemala, I rose with the sun. I was under no pressure to do so, I just didn’t want to miss a moment of the dazzling sunlight. So the fact that getting up in the morning is so hard now makes me wonder if I haven’t lost something.

 

▲ Mayans say that people were created from corn ©Luna

Sometimes in my dreams, I see faces from Guatemala and Xela that I miss. My friend Lupe, a painter, wrote in a Facebook message that some helpful force must be bringing me to that place in order to give me strength. I don’t want to go back there as if I were running away from here. I want to complete the tasks I have here. Angel said he was glad to hear that I think that way. It’s natural that a life that had been tossed aside for 6 years would be difficult to resume.

 

And later, I want to experience the age-old wisdom and light of the land where I was born, like I had absorbed the age-old wisdom and light of Guatemala. This was my hope when I left Guatemala.

 

“As your trip continues, I feel for some reason like you have always been travelling. The Luna that I met in this place also seemed like someone who was travelling.” (A message I received from a friend in Korea, while I was in Xela) [Translated by Marilyn Hook] 

 

*Original article: https://ildaro.com/7279 Published: November 4, 2015

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