BFI Foodscape Mapping Project Oral Histories

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Clementine Harvey
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1 BFI Foodscape Mapping Project Oral Histories Date: February 15, 2017 Transcript of interview conducted with NAOMI PRIMERO Berkeley, California Organizational affiliation: Berkeley Student Food Collective by: GRACE LIHN Thank you for joining me in this interview today, Naomi. I m going to start with a few questions about your personal history, and then move into questions about your involvement with the Berkeley Student Food Collective. Can you tell me where you were born? PRIMERO Well, I say that I m Pennsylvanian, but I was born in New Jersey. I only lived there for 2 years and then moved to Pennsylvania, so I definitely consider myself a Pennsylvanian. I grew up around a lot of trees in the middle of the Appalachian mountains. That s what I associate with home forest and mountains. Can you describe the house, or home, you grew up in? My house is a colonial... Wow, that s very specific! Yeah, I m not sure how I know that, but I just do! So, it s a colonial, it s white and it has green shutters. When you first walk into the house through the front door, you can look up and see the bottom of the roof -- the second floor doesn t exist there. Even in rooms that are only one floor high, the ceilings are still high. In places not my home, I often feel claustrophobic because I m so used to high-ceiling-ed, airy rooms.

2 The openness of my house made it so that sounds would easily echo throughout the building. It would be unusual to not hear every sound downstairs from upstairs in my room. So, if the house is quiet, then there was something wrong. The openness also allowed air to flow through all parts of the house easily. I would be upstairs in my room and be able to smell all the food my mom was cooking for dinner and be able to tell what she was making. Also, since all of we Primero kids were young, we were always encouraged to play music and make art. There s artwork on all the walls in my house. You mention that you could smell your mom s cooking wafting up from the kitchen to your room. Was there a particular dish she would cook that you especially enjoyed? Ah, I love all of my mom s cooking. She s a really really good cook; she was known within the homeschool community I was homeschooled by her until high school as the Betty Crocker of the community, even though she could do way more than just baking. One of my favorites is a Filipino fish stew, called sinigang. [Pronounced sih-nih-gahng] Can you describe that dish to me how it looks, tastes, smells the sounds or voices you hear? It typically has salmon, spinach or bok choy, tomatoes, onions, and other vegetables. The broth is light and takes a long time to cook. There s another version of sinigang that has meat ribs instead of fish. Because the broth takes so long to make, the smell of fish or meat from the broth ends up filling the whole house. You can eat it with a fish sauce, called patis in Tagalog, to make it a little more flavorful. What does that fish sauce taste like? Can you describe it to me?

3 It s a sharp saltiness even a few drops in sinigang or nilaga broth would make it salty enough. It s like a dark brown color. Some people say or worry the people who don t like fish that it tastes like fish. It really doesn t. It s just a salty taste. You mentioned a little bit about your mom, about how the community knew her by her wonderful cooking. Can you describe her to me? She s an incredibly strong person, which either is a product of or a reason for her decision to immigrate here from the Philippines. Was there a time when the fortitude which you just described was especially apparent to you, or is there a memory that you have which reminds you of your mother s fortitude? I can t remember a specific instance in general, she s never let the way she s perceived to get in her way. She s just as short as me and, you know, a woman of color who came from another country, but she s taught all of us that that shouldn t stop us from getting what we want. She doesn t take anything [derogatory] from anyone. Ah, I remember one instance. There was this one time when she was picking up pizza for dinner this pizza place in a city we went to a lot. She walked up to the register to order pizza and the employees there were all fairly young... college-student-aged I believe. I think they looked at her and thought that she didn t know how to speak English well and began making a joke of their interaction. They spoke really slowly to her and kept looking at each other and laughing. My mom spoke curtly to them in perfect English, promptly left, and called the manager of the pizza place to inform them of her experience. Thank you for sharing, Naomi.

4 Now, I d like to move into some questions about your experiences with the Berkeley Student Food Collective. How did you first become involved with the Food Collective? The Food Collective is special to me because well, it s special to me for many reasons but one of the reasons why it s special is because it s the first organization I joined at my time here at Berkeley. I joined at the very beginning of my first semester here fall semester freshman year. I actually remember that you told me about the Collective, and having spent most of my gap year involved with farms and agricultural projects, it seemed super in line for me to join. So that s how I got involved. Tell me about your favorite experience at the Food Collective. Oh favorite experience I don t have a single favorite experience but it s an experience that I have over and over again, and it s my favorite one to have over and over again and that is going to the store and talking to a lot of people that I know and a lot of people I don t know. I think it s really cool to just walk into the store and know who the cashier is, and saying Hi, how are you?! and then seeing all these people come in together people walking into the store and recognizing them as people come into the store often, learning those people s names. Yeah just talking with people at the collective is one of my favorite things. Can you describe to me the physical space of the store, and the emotions you feel when you are in that space? The physical space of the store itself? Yeah So, um, I actually love our storefront so much partially because of how small it is. I know that, like, that s something we ve been trying to work on a lot and a limiting factor in a number of ways. But the tiny rectangle that we inhabit in the store is really awesome like the fact that we are able to fit two bulk bin organizers, several shelves at least two or three long shelves of products and I like that

5 the produce is right in front of the store so that you when you walk in, it s just like, Fresh veggies and fruit! I think that s an amazing thing to see. And to know that they re all local foods from farmers in the area. And um having the cashier in the middle is also really neat, because they can say hi to anyone who s in the store, and anyone who needs help could just pop their head around the shelf and be like, Hey, where is this? if the storefront [staff] person isn t there. And so I understand that the smallness of it has been challenging, but it s also nice because you have a closer relationship to the people coming in the store. Hmm, yeah, so if you could choose one word to describe the store, what word would you use? Um Or a couple words? Oh- gosh hmm ((pause)) I would call it welcoming. Yeah. And I think that s because that s what we try to do with our storefront physically. But I think in terms of our mission as a collective, that s really what we re trying to do is welcome more and more people into our store. Yeah, in German there s the word gemeinschaft which means community as opposed to gesellschaft which means society in a structural, systematic sense. It sounds like this is the idea that you re getting at? Yeah, exactly. That is totally accurate. What keeps you committed or sustains you in the Food Collective? You talked a bit about your interests and your

6 passions. What is it that keeps you coming back, refreshed or rejuvenated? I love that it s a community. It s the difference between community and society, as we just talked about. The BSFC [Berkeley Student Food Collective] is totally a community. And you see it s not just a matter of seeing the same people over and over again. The fact that it s a community that s built on food, I think is important. The fact that we can talk to each other about the things we put into our bodies something about that makes our interactions so much more personal. Because diet is personal. The food we choose to eat is personal. So every time someone comes in and maybe asks you for a recommendation, that s a personal interaction that you re having. And those interactions and talking with the people who come to the collective and see it as a radical and acceptable, and really in some ways healing, place to be is what keeps me coming back to the collective. You characterized the collective as a healing space to be [in]. Can you describe that to me in a little bit more detail? Yeah I think it s almost kind of like a place and I m thinking of this relative to other spaces in my life that I ve been in um, so I think it s like everything of the collective: the smallness of the storefront, the people that you always see there it s just so personal. And I think because of the lack of intimate interactions that we often have in the world, leaves it so that we re often deprived of that personal relationship we have with the people that we re coming to for food. And even in the university or in the city, or wherever you are. And I think because the store tries to embody a sense of welcoming it s almost like your spirit was atrophied by the lack of personal interaction, and you go into the store and someone asks you about your day and gives you a recommendation for a fruit or says that this product is really good, and you re just like, This is great! We re talking about

7 food and you re interested in making my day better and more well-nourished! Going back to what you said about the people in the store, or in the collective in general can you describe who is in the collective who makes up the collective? Hmm the collective there are so many people who make it run. But logistically, there s the board that we have that oversees all of our committees, and then our operations manager, and then all of our members, who we re all volunteers except for the operations manager. Everyone makes the board I mean the collective run. Everyone makes the collective run. I mean, this is also true: everyone also helps run the board, honestly. [laughs] It s not really my job [as communications director]; it s the job of everyone. Because, yeah, board might have more of a leadership quality to it, but of course the idea is that the hierarchy isn t vertical. It s supposed to all be horizontal. I totally believe that with the collective. Everyone makes the store run. Every single person is important to running the store. Like, I can t imagine if we had no storefront people! That d be weird. Yeah, it would be. Like one of those new waiter-less restaurants. Yeah, exactly. Those are the total opposite of the Food Collective. Ugh! So in this giant jigsaw with all the people running the Food Collective, is there anyone missing? Mm, good question I would say that we don t have any person missing necessarily because there are so many voices that are being told right now. And I think the voices that are not being heard by the collective is something that we re all trying to work on, but particularly the formation of the anti-oppression committee has been [part of] working on this.

*High Frequency Words also found in Texas Treasures Updated 8/19/11

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