Bread and Salt
Reading the accounts of Jewish migrants who made this journey over 100 years ago, we are struck with their apparent obsession with food. They describe the barrels of pickled herring and potatoes that sustain them through the journey, and sometimes complain of a lack of understanding for their dietary needs. We add a category to our daily logbook, recording the food we eat each day, and pretty soon we start to understand what an important part of the voyage this is. Meal times on the boat are strictly timed, and we must eat what we’re given or not eat at all. The meals in the officer’s mess offer us our main daily interaction with other people. The menu is Polish, and heavily based around meat and potatoes, which is challenging for me as a vegetarian. On one occasion I am presented with a plate of potatoes accompanied by a large boiled carrot, proudly presented to imitate a steak. It makes us realise what a fundamental part of our culture and identity food is.
We have brought with us the bread culture we started a few months ago. It was transported in the bread-making suitcase that Katy created and since our arrival on the ship it has sat in a tupperware in the fridge of our cabin, smelling distinctly. It is perhaps our most unusual piece of luggage. Artist Eva Bakkeslett writes about bread culture as a physical and metaphorical model for culture. She writes: ‘The word culture comes from the Latin words cultura – meaning to cultivate – to prepare the ground for something to emerge out of… It is interesting that the word culture is used both for human culture and fermented foods, which have been a vital way to preserve and enhance food for centuries. Culture is alive. It breathes and moves and develops a structure, given the right conditions and a portion of TLC.’1
On Christmas day, we decide to make some of own sourdough bread. We are given permission to use the ship’s galley, and Katy mixes our dough whilst I record her. The strip-lighted stainless steel room is a strange backdrop for this domestic process, and the bread-making begins to look like a soviet-era instructional video. We leave the dough to prove, and return later in the day to bake the bread. As usual, Niko offers advice on what we should do and how we should do it. But the loaves come out perfectly, and the crew are happy to have fresh bread with dinner.
Spending three weeks aboard a ship makes us aware of the importance of food preservation. Before huge freezers could be loaded with as much meat as a Polish chef desired, salted food would have been a necessity. Mark Kurlansky writes of salt’s ability to preserve: it’s ability to protect against decay, as well as to sustain life, has given salt a broad metaphorical importance – we associate it with longevity and permanence.’2 He writes about rituals that use bread and salt: ‘Bringing bread and salt to a new home is a Jewish tradition dating back to the middle ages.’3 We create our own bread and salt ceremony to mark the thresholds we cross on our journey. When we cross the equator, we take our Lithuanian black bread down to the deck, and each eat a piece, dipped in salt, to quietly celebrate ‘crossing the line’. On our long-awaited arrival at Cape Town harbour, we repeat this ritual, sitting on suitcases at the harbour-side watching cranes unloading cargo from the ships.
Rebecca Beinart
1 Cultural Fermentation: A talk by Eva Bakkeslett, 2008
2 Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky
3 Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky
