Cooking is universal

By Yan Kyaw

Cooking is universal, no matter where you are, what your cultural background is, we can create anything that’s genuine with love. Well, that’s what happened on the third day of our Costa Rica trip, when hope seemed lost in the gloomy day that we foresaw, 19 culturally diverse mischievous people gathered in a strange widely spacious garage of a kind and not old grandmother. We were perplexed, we were tired, but the vibe around the garage full of tables and vibes familiar yet so distant, made our fatigue just disappear. Then the grandmother started talking while our tour guide Angie quickly followed with the translation. We were then asked for volunteers to come up and start the process off with the start of the traditional dish of Costa Rica: Rice and Beans. While we were each struggling to comprehend what to do with the ingredients, we were prompted first hand to mix the ingredients and cook as well, the rest of the group were fixated on the cooking that felt so simple yet so hard at the same time. As the next set of volunteers were requested, we were promptly reminded by our grand overseers that without active participation in this activity, we won’t eat because well, we the beginners were in charge of making our dinner. As more and more volunteers went up and made their part into the bigger dishes of tortillas con queso, cajetas de coco, tortas de plátano maduro, and carne molida, we learned more than we anticipated. We unknowingly got closer, we learned more than cooking, we learned that sometimes it’s less difficult if we split up the workload and the small deeds that we do, can make a bigger impact than we know. This experience is one that can’t be said in words, but experienced first hand, it shows how living in the present is so important.