There are many dimensions to gaining that trust, but among the most basic involves the sharing of food.<\/p>\n
Dye recalls his first real-life lesson in the importance of eating local foods while working in remote communities. He was in the Kashmir region of the Himalayas about 30 years ago conducting surveys about diarrhea in the village children. After entering the first house, he turned on his tape recorder and began asking family members questions about their beliefs about the causes of the diarrhea and their treatments. But the interview was not going particularly well.<\/p>\n
\u201cA woman ladled some chai into a metal cup and handed it to me. Sanitation was a huge issue in the village, so naturally I wondered about the milk and water that were mixed into the tea,\u201d says Dye. \u201cBut I remembered a basic rule about doing field research in anthropology, which requires us to accept any offering of food or drink, lest we offend someone and risk an entire research project.\u201d<\/p>\n Dye drank\u2014then gulped\u2014the warm tea, which he found to be rich and creamy, as well as satisfying in the cold, high-altitude environment. At that point, everyone broke into a more natural conversation, leaving the research questions for another\u2014and more successful\u2014day.<\/p>\n \u201cFor some communities, eating certain foods means that you’re a part of that nationality,\u201d says Dye. \u201cIf you drink chang, a type of homemade beer in Tibet, it\u2019s said you\u2019re Tibetan.\u201d<\/p>\n Depending on where he is working, Dye\u2019s diet has included, in addition to chang, snakes, wildebeests, insects, giraffes, and bats.<\/p>\n Nadine Grimm, who has studied languages in remote areas of South America and Africa, has enjoyed a similarly wide palette, which has included, for example, monkey and python.<\/p>\n \u201cEating local foods makes it easier to connect with indigenous communities,\u201d she says. \u201cOnce they offer me food, I feel accepted, which makes it easier to do my research.\u201d<\/p>\n It isn’t just the culinary choices that are different in these remote communities; it\u2019s also the attitudes some cultures have toward food\u2014and that includes the Bagyeli Pygmies, who are hunter\/gatherers.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the Bagyeli Pygmies, the entire day is preoccupied with how they\u2019ll get food,\u201d says Grimm. \u201cSometimes they\u2019re unlucky and don\u2019t have enough food for themselves, let alone for a guest, which is why I stay in a nearby town and limit my meals with them.\u201d<\/p>\n Because the availability of food varies greatly with the Bagyeli, dining with the community takes on added significance. \u201cThey gradually offered me better food items,\u201d she says, \u201cstarting with steamed bread fruit and working their way up to wild meat.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cEating local\u201d in much of the United States is, of course, a trend more often than a necessity. It\u2019s a trend that\u2019s captured the interest of many college students, including at Rochester.<\/p>\n This past semester, Dye and Grimm shared with undergraduate students some of their thoughts and experiences about eating locally\u2014globally\u2014over a cooking and eating demonstration incorporating a couple of their favorite foods from Tibet and from Swahili-speaking regions of Africa.<\/p>\n![\"women](\"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/food-culture-nadine-grimm.jpg\")
Eating local\u2014globally<\/strong><\/h2>\n