GreenPragma: MulticulturalFamily

We are all humans, equal, sin importar tu nacionalidad, race, religiöse Glauben, couleur de la peau, 関係なく、あなたの性的指向の, risorse economiche...

La primera colada morada desde hace cinco años!

08.11.2015

Uno de los platos, mejor dicho bebidas típicas que más extraño de Ecuador es la colada morada. No hay nada que hacer: la colada morada es la bebida perfecta para evocar abrigo familiar, sabores deliciosos, guaguas de pan de todos los tamaños, y mucho más.

Cada vez que mi esposo ha estado en Ecuador no ha podido probar la colada morada (aunque me cuentan que ahora hay lugares donde la venden todo el año), en parte porque estábamos más ocupados saboreando otras golosinas de la cocina ecuatoriana. Este año, la cuenta en Twitter del Café de la Vaca empezó relativamente temprano a promocionar su deliciosa colada morada y sin querer queriendo nos atormentó a los migrantos y migrantas con el sueño de aquel sabor inigualable, casi inalcanzable gracias a los "complicados" ingredientes para preparala. De hecho yo todos estos años me hice al dolor de no poder preparar la colada morada acá en Alemania, porque dónde rayos voy a conseguir harina de maiz morada, jugo de naranjilla, mortiño!

Hasta que descubrí esta receta de Laylita "Receta fácil de colada morada", la probé el fin de semana pasado, y tuve felicidad en forma de una taza de colada.

La consistencia que le da la avena es casi igual a aquella de la harina de maíz, el jugo de maracuyá (a pesar de ser industrial) también le agregó esa acidez dulzona necesaria, y los frutos del bosque congelados no le pidieron favor a los frescos. En resumen: esta es la receta perfecta de colada morada para las y los expats, migrantos y migrantas ecuatorianos que se encuentren más allá de las fronteras de Sudamérica. A mi esposo le encantó y por fin entendió el sufrir de mi paladar y memoria en estos años en octubre/noviembre. Él aportó con las guaguas, al estilo alemán por supuesto. Las guaguas las hizo con la receta de Hefezopf, y para los ojos y los botones utilizó pedacitos de almendras.

Ahora solamente estoy esperando a que llegue el frío invernal para empezar a hacer más colada más seguido.

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Los matrimonios mixtos del El Comercio

El 6 de julio de 2015 El Comercio.com publicó un artículo sobre la crisis económica en Grecia y la situación de algunos ecuatorianos que residen allá. Al empezar a leer el artículo mi atención se desvió del tema de la crisis cuando me saltó al ojo las palabras siguientes (abajo marcado en rojo):

Artículo "Ecuatorianos abandonan Grecia por la crisis económica"
http://www.elcomercio.com/actualidad/ecuatorianos-abandonan-grecia-crisis-economica.html

Para serles sincera, esa descripción de las familias griego-ecuatorianas (o ecuatoriano-griegas si quieren) me pareció bastante pobre, por no decir otra cosa. En qué mundo vive la autora del artículo, me pregunto yo, o mejor, dóndef estudió la persona en cuestión, a quien no se le ocurre una descripción más moderna o inteligente que "mixtas"? No me entiendan mal, el calificativo "mixto" en sí no tiene nada de malo, pero en ese contexto se lo puede entender como: los casados entre griegos, o entre ecuatorianos son puros (?!?!?!) y los casados entre ecuatorianos y griegos son mixtos. Podría haberse referido sencillamente a las familias como multinacionales, o de varias nacionalidades... Pero mixto es definitivamente un calificativo pésimo... Yo, como miembro de una familia multicultural, o de dos nacionalidades, le podría preguntar a la autora del artículo: Que somos ceviche para que nos llames mixtos???? La autora, me imagino, tan puramente mestiza-ecuatoriana ella ha de ser ceviche de camarón no más...

Más abajo en la misma nota la autora mejora la selección de sus palabras. Pero al leer esa mejora pienso "Bah, ya la cagó desde el inicio..."

...

...por no decir otra cosa...

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Semana Santa - Heilige Woche

08.04.2015

Last weekend millions of Christians around the world celebrated Easter. Here in Germany, a country with Catholic and Protestant Christians, the Easter holidays lasted 4 days.

In Ecuador, the "Semana Santa" and especially Holy Friday has a very important meaning for families. During the whole Holy Week, families cook a typical Easter soup called Fanesca, which contains eleven types of beans symbolizing the eleven Apostles of Jesus. This is a very heavy soup, some (like me) don't like it, but the majority loves it, not only for its taste but for the tradition of cooking it together as family. This soup is typically served with dried salt bacalo or cod, hardboiled eggs, empanadas, fried plantains and as dessert milk rice. Many eat this soup during the whole week, some only on Holy Friday and Easter Sunday.

On Holy Friday, families go together to the processions of their neighborhoods or to the major ones in the Old-town of Quito - Jesús del Gran Poder- or Guayaquil - Cristo del Consuelo. With my family we used to go to the small procession of our neighborhood that started at night ending at midnight.

On Easter Sunday we used to visit other relatives and eat with them fanesca, and go together to the Resurrection Mass. In other words, celebrating Easter in Ecuador means predominantly sharing time with family and going to Church. There are of course many families that use all the Easter holidays to do trips together, go to the beach, travel, etc., but I would say the majority live the Catholic traditions.

Here in Germany these traditions are a bit different. A well-known symbol for the Easter celebrations is the Easter bunny and colorful Easter Eggs. It is widely popular that on Easter Sunday families go to parks or woods (mostly if they don't have a garden of their own), where one adult goes before and hides Easter eggs made of chocolates, or presents, or boiled eggs, and the children can later go to seek the eggs or presents. Not many go to the Church to the Easter Mass, and many prefer to actually take holidays abroad. I have to acknowledge, that even if this Easter egg tradition seems to be really linked to Christian celebrations, I do have troubles not seeing the to me obvious consumerism and commercialization that has been built over the years around Easter. It almost feels like a spring version of modern Christmas: full of candy, full of presents and stuff...

I'm not the most Christian person on this planet, but I do feel awkward seeing such an important moment of Jesus' life commercialized as any other big-selling event on our calenders. I guess in the future we will combine a not-so-commercialized version of the Easter egg tradition with a not-so-complicated version of the Fanesca soup, add a some religious values, with a pinch of an open-minded perspective to what the Catholic tradition tells us about Jesus' path and Easter.

In the meantime, I guess we will continue eating the couple of chocolate eggs left from past Sunday.

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Cangrejada
27.01.2015

One of the many great gains of being a multicultural family is that you get to learn how to cook many different traditional meals. After having spent Christmas here in Germany three years in a row, we decided to spent the holidays in Ecuador. These past Christmas we were in Guayaquil, and my husband learned how to prepare cangrejos for a traditional cangrejada. He also learned how to prepare the utmost delicious rice grandma-style, and he of course got to enjoy Christmas without snow and coldness. Unfortunately we don't have any pictures of the whole cangrejada, we were just too busy eating!

Here you have a couple of links to know how a good cangrejada is prepared:

(c) http://www.revistahogar.com/img/articulos/big_3400Cangrejada.jpg

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Multicultural is our past, present and future
19.01.2015

Theses past months have been both beautiful due to family Christmas' and New Year's celebrations, and horrible due to all the violence everywhere in the World. Even while staying in Ecuador, a peaceful country right now, with a more or like stable political and economic situation*, you can't help to ignore all the despicable events in Europe, Africa, Middle East.

I consider myself a World citizen. I'm Ecuadorian by birth and heart, and European/German by heart and love to my husband. My family has Ecuadorians, Germans, US-Americans, Taiwanese, and Australians in it. We are open-minded. We seek for happiness together. It is not easy to cope with distances and time differences, with being separated and spread all over Earth, but we keep it together and stay together by heart. Thanks to the Internet and technology, we can see each other through video calls and send each other constantly messages, pictures, Emails, and so we keep distances as short as possible. Understanding and accepting each other as we are, with all our cultural differences, personalities, and personal choices is a daily challenge based on love. In our family we also have many religious choices: we have Catholics, Evangelist, atheists, Buddhists, and these differences do not stop us from being a family and loving each other. On the contrary, these diversity enriches our family. And we can even say that as a multicultural family we represent the future, and we are the proof that a globalized World has more pros than cons, because a multicultural family breeds understanding, openness.

All these violent conflicts and attacks from so-called religious extremists in different places in the World, and all these racists protesters in Germany, France and the Netherlands, all these murders in Nigeria... and all the crimes committed for natural resources... all the violence against freedom of speech and indigenous in the Amazonian jungle, even in Ecuador. All this scares us, but also brings us closer and assures us of our choices towards more openness, democracy and respect. We don't forget that extremists, religious fanaticism and resources-thirsty criminals have always been around, in almost all epochs of human history, everywhere. When will we as humanity learn from all wars and conflicts so many groups of society have had to suffer? When will we learn from our mistakes?!

It would be crazy not to recognize that I'm afraid. I'm afraid to read that at these Pegida people from the German middle class consist of also young good educated people that have college studies, regular good lifestyles, most of them Christian, most of them with a quite cozy existence compared to other lives in other countries (even in Europe). What scares the most is to hear their arguments why they 'are against foreigners', and it scares because all those arguments are based on pure ignorance, fear of the unknown, and the belief that they somehow are 'the better person', or have the right to call themselves the "better educated culture".

Fear. How ironic. We both share fear, and fear each other. And out of fear one could slowly run into the trap of hate... My personal choice is to say no to fear and ignorance every day. To say no to forgetting the past and our history as humanity. To be thankful for having and being a multicultural family. And choosing not to forget implies also remembering that we as humanity have been capable to create extraordinary events, positive change, Enlightenment, scientific progress, heart-full religious believes. I believe in people like us, multicultural families, World citizens, open-minded people, believers that all change is positive and has to be shaped positive, that embracing diversity does not mean homogenizing but respecting each and every one of the cultures and beliefs.. We can't let us drown down by hate.

This kind of manifesto may sound silly to many of you, somehow naif. You are entitled to think like that. But isn't that the only thing we have left: to believe in the good side of humanity? Every day with every sunrise we need to plant the seed of love in our hearts and minds, and encourage others to do so. We are just humans. All the same inside, came from the same place, we all going back to the same place, too. Let's enjoy peacefully the ride, and try to do the best out of our journey.

* Podemos dialogar todo lo que quieran sobre esta quasi-aseveración. Dependerá qué periodos, presidentes, contextos históricos, con qué otros países nos comparemos, etc. Pero no pueden negar que en términos generales Ecuador está por el momento mejor que hace diez años. No excelentemente magnífico, pero mejor, y esto gracias a las ecuatorianas y ecuatorianos que trabajamos cada día.