October 3, 2019 • 50 mins
Travel is all about borders - the physical, the spiritual, the metaphorical and the emotional. Daniel Scheffler talks Margaret Atwood's novel, Handmaid's Tale, and has Sascha Fong from the UN talking about overcoming borders in Eritrea and LA Chef Nancy Silverton on borders from within. #travel
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, and welcome to Everywhere, a production of I Heart Radio.
I am your host Daniel Shaffler. This week's commandment thou
shalt break down borders, Robert Frost said, before I build
a wall, I'd asked to know what I was walling
(00:21):
in or walling out and to whom I was like
to give offense. Traveling is all about borders. They are
physical or literal ones, those metaphorical ones, and then those
deep spiritual ones. As a traveler, I'm always considering borders.
(00:42):
Can I cross this? Who will I be when I
am on the other side of this border? Why do
we have these borders in the first place? And right
now we the people are having to rethink borders altogether.
The ancient Greek saw unrestrained movement as one of the
(01:03):
four freedoms, distinguishing liberty from slavery. An influx of migrants
added to wealth and taxes in local defense. And I
think those things sound like assets to me. But this
thinking is apparently now all gone. We've had wars, excessive poverty,
(01:24):
terrorist attacks, and environmental changes forcing people to move, and
as a result, walls are being erected everywhere. My girl
AOC recently went to the American southern border to see
what the real situation is like, and she was fucking horrified.
It's humanity at its lowest vibration. But for some reason,
(01:48):
humans like borders. As a species, we like to make
sure things aren't too blurry or too complex. That to
our idiotic mind's eye, keeps it all under control. And
so since World War Two, national leaders have said, let's delineate,
let's give this globe higher walls and longer borders, all
(02:12):
to pretend that they offering citizens extra safety. Countries all
over the world have done this and have lied about
the value of borders. So I'm not saying that borders
should be totally open. There should be reasonable checks and restrictions,
and in most of the world that is the way
it is, in spite of the conservative media telling you otherwise.
(02:36):
What we're really saying is that there should also be reasonable, compassionate,
and respectful, common sense flexibility. In the nineties, the big
talk was globalization and living and traveling in a borderless society. Finally,
a moment to challenge orders had come. The European Union
(02:58):
was created to facilitate this concept and had rapidly expanded
its reach eastwards since the African continent was establishing a
Pan African agreement to facilitate ease of movement, and even
the US, Mexico and Canada once try to keep things
breezy and easy to scurry through, but as expected, it
(03:21):
was all too loose and hippie dippy ideal for the
power elite. Just look at the happy travelers buying fantasy
World passports who thought they could finally explore this glow freely.
Most recently, musician Moss Deaf was arrested in South Africa
for trying to leave the country with his World passport.
(03:44):
So fast forward thirty years later, we know that the
border free dream has finally collapsed, but we should hold
onto some variant of it to its best principles. As
we speak, new Chinese imperialists are laying down borders in Africa.
(04:05):
Mother Russia has expanded her reach in America is cruelly
raising its drawbridge and turning its back on a legitimate
asylum seeker. What a turn of events now that cheery
Canada is showing the world how to handle migrants, how
(04:28):
to document them thoroughly and integrate them into Canadian bliss.
A maple leaf tattoo is always optional. Germany, out of
guilt or perhaps some confusion, forgot the integration and documentation
part of rightfully letting in millions of hard up migrants,
(04:50):
and now there's a glut of people not quite fitting
into that Deutsche lifestyle. As a German citizen, I know
how complex things are as a result, Shall we bring
up Brexit and the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East?
No wonder, the system that is Europe is calling foul.
(05:13):
If you missed the travel news of the last few months,
well let me brief you. Decided that he's shameless. Wall
facing Mexico isn't enough. What is of more importance to
him is to make sure that immigrants are kept out
at all costs, resulting in the internationally watched scandal of
splitting up families at the border and detaining them in
(05:35):
wartime like internment camps. Then the Supreme Court upheld forty
five long argued travel ban, accepting the government's argument that
the ban was within presidential power to craft in national
security policy and thus his authority to suspend entry of
aliens into the United States, for instance, Iranian nationals and
(05:59):
their families who are perhaps American citizens or even dual
citizens or even green card holders are all unfairly discriminatedly
affected through this restricted travel. I call it unconstitutional. So
there are over sixty million migrants and refugees currently on
(06:20):
the move around the world. Many of course, are from Syria,
with Canada working to settle twenty five thousand Syrians across
the country by the end of this year. We can
know what but displaced people are also leaving Haiti, Afghanistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq,
(06:43):
North Korea, and all over Northern Africa, fleeing conflict zones,
forever wars, failed states, and the effects of climate change.
I have met many of these people on my travels
and their stories are breaking. But what they have in
common is the simple human need for belonging, the hope
(07:07):
for a safer, better life. But it's all because of
the concept of border that is now evolved. So remember
follow the Money in the six film or the President's Men. Well,
I think it would be wise to heat that now.
Border control and infrastructure are big business, And besides the
(07:30):
negative effects borders can sometimes have on humanity, corporations are
profiting of our often manufactured fears that boogeyman fear of
the other. Capital oh race, religious beliefs, sexual expression, and
gender identity belonged to the unpleasant club of the other.
(07:54):
So fear drives countries to build ever stricter and more
expensive to manage for orders and corporations. Then probably some
compliant politicians profit from this imaginary enemy. Some powers around
the world seem to think that grinding down minorities will
keep them in check. But a Simone de Beauvoir, who
(08:17):
wrote Second Sex, said all oppression creates a state of war.
This is no exception. Blessed be the fruit. A dark
war is being berthed. The Handmaids know all about borders,
and it isn't pretty for them either, And that's why
Margaret Edward's Handmaid's Tale is the greatest show on television
(08:41):
of the century. It depicts a world where borders are
both physical and between genders. The show helps understand the
disturbing reality of this current administration's racist policies, a new
Supreme Court justice, as well as add One's recent victory
in Turkey. If you want more, you can also get
(09:03):
the sequel, Margaret atwards new book, The Testaments. But with
pointing out problems, I also feel like we need to
offer some solutions. Remember the nineteen seventy two educational television
series Free to Be You and Me, Folks like ROBERTA. Flack,
Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross remind America that gender and
(09:27):
racial stereotypes can in fact be broken. And it's now
nearly half a century later and we need a new
version of this Free to Be Here. The message is simple,
(09:51):
Americas shouldn't judge you because unless you're Native American, you've
come from somewhere else. A catchy jingle on every radio
station across the country would never do better public good
if radio can magically make you hum ed. Shearon and
Taylor Swift Well orthodoptr Rhys Jones, in his book Violent Borders,
(10:17):
Refugees and the Right to Move, argues that getting rid
of borders is in fact simply a human rights issue
because let's face it, the border is in fact only
inside you, and it's time to rethink how you're living, voting,
and being in this world. Are they keeping them out
(10:41):
or they're keeping you in? Under his eye, let's take
(11:01):
a breather and we'll be right back with everywhere after
a word from our sponsors. Thanks for sticking around. Here's
more of everywhere. For my next interview, I'm with my
friend Sasha Fung, who happens to work at the u N.
But more interestingly, we met on an aeroplane to Jordan's
(11:25):
and stayed up all night talking. Sasha, I met you
on a plane heading to Amn and I started chatting
to you, and I offered you something to sleep, which
you refused, But we ended up being friends anyway and
(11:46):
spent the most magical time in Aman. And now we
are fast friends, and I've met your kids, and I'm
so grateful that we are friends, because you are one
of the smartest people I've ever met, and I feel
privileged to be in your realm. So thanks for being
in studio with me today. And Ella, who snapping peacefully
(12:09):
in your arms. It's amazing to be here. I mean,
considering the people I've sat next to, this was like
the winning lottery ticket. I felt the same. And when
you walked down the aisle and you plumped yourself next
to me, I had that split second of oh, I
was hoping the seat next to me would stay free.
But then you started, and you launched into this conversation.
(12:29):
Zero notion of small talk. It was right to the essence, like,
let's not waste time. We only have a twelve hour
flight ahead of us, and we needed to sleep on
that flight. I was getting up to work and you
were presenting to some fancy director board, not very fancy.
But so the thing that got us talking was you
(12:50):
mentioned Eritrea to me, and you had been stationed working
for the u N in Eritrea for two years almost
and we got talking about this incredible country. So perhaps
start with telling me how that happened and how you
found yourself in this magical place, which I don't think
a lot of people know about. It is a magical place.
(13:14):
I was only there for one year, but would have
gladly stayed longer, except that I had my husband and
my kids in San Francisco and the commute between Asmara
and the Bay area of California is a tricky one,
and I would have otherwise loved to stay. It's a
place that I always had a craving to go see.
(13:35):
When I was at university, my roommate across the corridor
launched an aery Trea independence support organization and we were
sending all sorts of things to ery Trea because they
had just become independent, and it was this huge deal.
And then I nearly had a chance to go earlier
(13:55):
in my career but couldn't, and so it was like
this itch I needed to scratch. I had this q
curiosity for this place that continued to be so mysterious,
and so when I got the chance to go a
second time, I just knew, this is it. This is
actually an experience I want to have, and it's one
that I'm willing to leave my husband and kids for.
I want to go to Eritrea. I want to see it.
(14:17):
I want to work there. So you flew in and
you arrive and what is it? What is the country
which is in the horn of Africa and not on
the heart list of anyone traveling? Well, you know, that
was the amazing part about it, because how many places
(14:37):
do you go to in today's globalized world, where we
have so much information about everything, and you have Google
maps and you can see everything and sort of form
an opinion. But about Eritrea, I had barely any opinion
at all, except a few books that I had read
and a few things that I'd heard from friends and colleagues.
(14:58):
Whould work there, So I came with this completely blank
slate and a lot of expectations and a little bit
of trepidation, you know, going completely into the unknown. And
there was something about just landing there. Remember being picked
up at the airport and some people came to greet me,
and I felt this affinity. It's kind of hard to describe,
(15:19):
but I think that happens to all of us. You know,
there are places where you instantly somehow feel more at
home than in others. And I can't quite describe it,
but it's a feeling that sort of grew quite quickly,
and it just made me feel a lot more at
home than I had any rights of feeding because it
was pretty alien in some ways. But they'd put me
(15:40):
up in this sort of one big hotel in town.
And I decided the next day that I was going
to go explore, and so I went off with my
sneakers on a dusty track and someone had said, oh, yeah,
i'll just follow this road and you'll find the cathedral.
Of course, I didn't find the cathedral. I walked for
ages and I was getting really thirsty, and I realized
(16:00):
I had no NUCKFI, didn't have the local currency, and
it's really quite tricky to change naka because you're only
allowed to change it in certain government locations. And so
I realized I had no no nakfa, no water, no
working phone, and I was trapesing along on this beautiful
sunny day. And then this little group of kids picked
me up and they said, China, China, because that's what
(16:23):
they call for. And I don't think I look particularly Asian,
but all I could hear was China, China. You lost.
And I said, yeah, I think China has lost. And
they're like, what do you want to go see? And
I said cathedral and they say, we take you. It
was a band of little kids, and they had this
sort of dried injera, which is the staple in their pockets,
(16:45):
and they were trying to give me bits of India
because you know, they're very hospitable air trey and so
he wanted to make sure I wasn't about to keel
over from starvation. And then they took me to the
cathedral and they said, here's cathedral. Here cathedral, And I
was suddenly in the middle of Asmara, which honestly looks
(17:06):
as though you've traveled in time to the nineteen fifties.
I don't think it has changed very much. There are
these Italian buildings. There's a stone cathedral, this wide avenue
with palm trees, Bouginvilia everywhere. Because the Italians brought a
lot of that. There's a lot of local erritray and
masonry that's kind of blended in. And then you see
(17:28):
these old gentlemen walking with their Borsellino hats and their
coats that are far too big for them, and and
you have sort of quite Italianate names, and you have
these ancient cars, and it really feels like you've gone
back in time. It felt so magical. And so I
was standing in front of this cathedral looking down at
(17:49):
this sort of nineteen fifties city scape. You know, it's
a small sleepy town Asmara, with this little group of
kids who are kind of waiting for me to take
in the beauty of their case Edril. And then I
wanted to thank them for having gone out of their
way like it didn't want them to get in trouble.
And I said, can I buy you a little pastry?
(18:10):
Because I had heard that there was some fantastic pastry
and as matter, you know, old Sicilian cookies that they
stopped making in Sicily decades ago, but old grandmother still
make them and as mater and they said, yeah, sure.
So we went to the little pastry shop and I'd
managed by that point to change a few nakfa. I
had no idea exactly how many, but I figured a
(18:32):
few pastries so it would probably be okay. And then
they said, now you buy yourself pastries, but we don't
want any, and I said, what do you mean your kids?
Of course you want pastries, and they said no. And
there was something that I then got to learn quite
quickly in Eritrea. This pride, you know, this self reliance.
You don't just take what's given to you. You feel
(18:54):
like you have to deserve it. And they somehow felt
that they didn't need to be rewarded. And coming from
the States or you know, from northern Europe, where everybody
has such a built in expectation to be rewarded for anything,
this was like and I had to literally stand there
on the street corner and negotiate with them, these five
(19:15):
six seven year olds, please, will you accept a pastry?
And by the way, just the fact that with English
I could negotiate with them already tells you a lot
about this country. I think, you know, they spoke English
well enough to be involved in this conversation with this
random person they'd sort of picked up. So I kind
of reckon. I'm a pretty good negotiator, but but I
(19:37):
didn't have a patch on those kids, and so in
the end, the best I could get out of them
was their agreement that the youngest in the group I
was allowed to buy a pastry for, not the others,
just the baby. And this happened day two, depending how
you count. I'd arrived the night before, and that's sort
of what set me up for my year there. That experience,
(20:00):
it's beautiful. It's a beautiful lesson. If only we could
apply that lesson in Western civilization. Do you think we
call Africa the West? It's like a weird thing being
from South Africa, Like people call us western and I'm like, well,
Erry Tree, it feels very Eastern to me at the
same time, very European. It's been such a melting pot
(20:21):
of cultures, and I think that's why I also felt
that affinity. They identify with a lot of different cultures,
so it makes it easier for you to identify with them.
But so it's a good question. I would not call
erry Tree of the West. I mean, there's no McDonald's,
there's no three G, there's no diet Coke. I would
not call it the West. Let's talk about the food,
(20:45):
because I know that I've never woken up and been like,
can't wait to go eat some error trained food tonight.
There's every culture you could possibly imagine in my city.
I don't know of the error train restaurant. I'm sure
it's here, and I will find it and we will
go there, but it's not something I think many people
know about. Erytrain food, at least in a matter where
(21:10):
I spent most of my time, is very similar to Ethiopian,
but there's some really important differences. Essentially, it's in Gera
is the sort of staple and it's that big, sort
of spongy flatbread, and it's made out of what the
Ethiopians called deaf and we in Eritrea are called tough,
and it's supposed to be a superfood. It might be
(21:32):
gluten free or very low in gluten, has a really
high iron content, and the air tray and swear by it.
It's like there's something about national identity, and in Gera
people carry it around with them, and some people have
actually said to me, I don't know what I would do.
I don't know how it could live anywhere else where.
They don't make injera, and the funny thing is that
(21:53):
there's a big air tray in diaspora and many of
them go out to other places, like this woman was
telling me she went to Angola and made a little
bit of money by making injera for airy trains that
were at the time working in Angola. Like India is
the symbol for so much of the country, and it's
really fantastic because you can add all these extra sort
(22:13):
of bits to it. And it's very communal, so you
eat with your hands and people take their time. Nobody's
checking their phone, and you couldn't anyway, would be far
too messy because you're eating with your hands. You don't
sit there with your carefully guarded plates and knife and fork.
You know, there's a big platter in the middle, and
everybody piles in and you learn all the different things
that go into the Injia, and my favorites were actually
(22:36):
the fasting food. So many erry trains are very devout
and food and religion are closely intertwined. They have many
periods where they're observing fasting and they will be absolutely rigorous,
and the fasting food just means without meat, and so
that's when you get all these creative vegetarian dishes. So
I actually always quite like the fasting food. There's one
(22:59):
thing I didn't, and unfortunately, that's the one dish that
people prepare for you when you're a guest of honor
in someone's house. And it's called AT and it's basically
a porridge, but you eat it with melted butter and
chili powder and yogurt and it's incredibly rich. When you're
(23:19):
expecting a baby, you're supposed to eat it because there's
a a belief that that's good for young expectant mothers,
not for me. It looks beautiful, like this sort of mountain,
and presenting a AT is such a sign of welcome
to my home. That was difficult, and I would try
(23:41):
and find ways of saying, I know your wife is
very busy. Please tell her she doesn't have to do
AT for me, or I will just come from lunch.
You know, no need for AT. Coffee is fine, because
the one thing I loved is the eritrey and coffee ceremony.
That is something for the senses. I'm Austrian, so I
love coffee. I'm obsessed with coffee. But it's about as
(24:03):
far away as you could get from your caramel latte
Grunde with sprinkles on top in Starbucks as you could
possibly imagine. You know, this is the real thing. Where
you hear the coffee beans being roasted in this old
metal pan over the fire, so you hear the click,
click click click click of the beans and then they
(24:24):
start smelling good, and you're supposed to wave your hand
over the smoke of the beans towards your nose, and
that's a sort of respect sign of respect to the
person who's preparing the coffee. And then the coffee comes,
and there's always a little bit of popcorn and in
gerra and other things with it. And you sit and
you have the first round, and then you have the
(24:47):
second round, and then you have the third, which is
called baraka means blessing. And maybe after the third round
you can be on your way, but maybe not, because
then sometimes there's a fourth throat out and there's a
fifth round. And this is a sort of centerpiece of
people's life. You know, this is how they communicate. They
(25:07):
communicate over coffee, and it's perfectly acceptable for life to
just stop because you're having coffee. And then I think,
you know, when you stand here in the line for
your take out and you're rushing off with it to
some meeting, how different we have evolved around this ancient
tradition of coffee and there it's still ancient. I think
(25:29):
there's a century old thing as far as I know,
and you feel that, you know. That's why I booked
a counterculture barista to come and spend the afternoon with
us and slowly make coffee for the last five hours
in studio. I knew that you were going to tell
me some slow, beautiful Eritrey and coffee story. What is
(25:53):
the thing that touched you the most? What is the
thing that sticks with you that you just can't stop
thinking about. I think the thing that touched me the
most is realizing this thirst for opportunity and willingness to
(26:13):
make something out of opportunities that I saw, especially in
young people. For example, there's a quite a vibrant music scene,
which is a bit counterintuitive because Eritrea is a country
that struggled for thirty years to gain its independence against
overwhelming odds where promoting the arts was not exactly a
(26:38):
top priority. And then with the isolation and the sanctions,
certain things just remained out of reach that wouldn't be
out of reach elsewhere. For example, I really like to
know how many pianos are there in Eritrea. I know
of a few, and in fact I spent a day
in San Francisco trying to find a spep heart for
(27:00):
one of them, because there wasn't a spare part in
the country to be had. And yet I met virtuoso pianists.
I met a jazz singer who sounded as though she
grown up in the Bronx. I met an opera singer
who can perform in Italian and German. And when I
(27:23):
asked him, so, when it's the first time you actually
ever heard opera, he said, Tom and Jerry cartoon. And
so how do you become a virtuoso musician in a
context where it's not that easy to get materials or
sheet music or instruments. And so we were discussing this
(27:46):
one night after a beautiful concert, and these Eritrean musicians
they said, you know something, Shasha, because I often got cold, Shasha,
you know something, Shasha. We're always so pleased when we
hear that eritreans in some in Cisco or in New York,
or in Berlin or wherever have come top of their
class or top of their PhD program, or have excelled
(28:09):
in a business, because we really think that if you
give eritreans two centimeters of opportunity, they will make two
kilometers of opportunity out of that. And that's an attitude
that's just really impressive. It's an impressive attitude to life.
And you saw that throughout. I mean the musicians were
(28:32):
sort of one example, but you could sort of see
that throughout in the mentality and that was I think,
to me, a sort of lesson that I hope I'll
never forget. I've told my kids, I've told my husband.
You know, it's something that I think will always stick
with me, and I hope, I hope the error traans
never lose it. I mean, it's something very precious. I
(28:54):
hope that stays in their culture. I really do, as
they open up and as they are opening up to
the world in a way that has never been that way.
I mean, I grew up parting in Africa and Eritrea
was always one of the places that wasn't as well
known as the others. Kenya was up and coming always,
(29:15):
my parents were always talking about Nairobi. They were always
talking about, of course, Angola and the potential in these countries,
and Eritrea was not on the list. And now it
is in a way, and I think that's so amazing,
and I love that there's an idea that it's the
little guy that can inspire somehow, like the unexpected place
(29:37):
is always the place that teaches me this lesson that
I'm like, shit, that's spectacular. Let me take that. And
I think what I wish for people to hear is
if you travel, you are able to learn these lessons
if you're open to them, because the country, the place,
the town, the people will give you these lessons. The
(30:01):
moments are there if you're willing to open yourself. Most
people are not. But if you open yourself up just
a little bit, just a fraction, just too sameting meters,
perhaps there's two kilometers of beauty and inspiration and wisdom
that's ready for you. I think that's beautifully said. I
(30:23):
think that's exactly right. And maybe because a place like
eric Trea you come to without preconceived ideas. Everybody knows
what they want to see when they go to Tokyo
right or Paris, or I've got friends staying with me
right now, they've got a list for New York City.
(30:45):
And given that we have such a surplus of information
usually about everything these days, it's just so refreshing to
go with a deficit of information and information, and deficit
you can't even fill by googling the crap out of
it because it doesn't exist in that way. That's kind
(31:06):
of a pioneer thing. You feel that you might as
well be the only person discovering this. To be honest,
it was a rush for me in that year. I
mean there were moments I would feel it and on Eritrea,
you know, there's like a secret handshake of internationals who
have been there, and actually handshake is the wrong word.
(31:28):
It's more like a shoulder bump, because traditionally the old
fighters when they meet, they don't shake hands. They bump
their right shoulders together three times. It's a bit awkward
at first, but you kind of get used to it.
And at first I wasn't sure whether I was allowed
to do that, given that I'm not exactly a fighter.
I didn't exactly earn my spurs, but you know, they're
(31:48):
quite open, so you sort of shoulder bump. And there's
a sort of community of people who have been to Eritrea,
and so there's something quite special about that. That is
the beauty of going off the beaten track. So I
would love to challenge people to go and find the
(32:10):
other error trials of the world in the most respectful,
most appropriate way. I mean, perhaps it's somewhere in Ohio,
some part of Greenland that you could go and learn
something similar. The world is open, it's ready, you just
have to go. Totally agree. Thank you for spending time
(32:32):
with me. This was spectacular. Do you tell such beautiful stories.
Thank you for wanting to hear them. This is a
great moment for us to travel to advertising Land and
we'll be right back with Everywhere. Welcome once again to Everywhere.
Let's hop back to it. For my next interview, I'm
(32:56):
with my friend Nancy Silverton the Share of Los Angeles.
We talk about how bord is are not just physical
but metaphysical and emotional. Okay, so what I wanted us
to really talk about is my show is about funk
the list. Don't chank off anything. Food is a way
(33:19):
to take you into humanity, and travel is an equal
way away to touch humanity. You've made a carea of food,
I've made a careat of travel. But essentially we're looking
for the same thing. We're looking to find ways to
be with humanity, right, absolutely, So tell me how that
(33:39):
feels to you and what you think about. Well, I'll
tell you. I live for food. I live to eat,
I live to make food. All of it is very interconnected.
I love to cook because, first of all, I love
to use my hands. So the cooking that I do
is very simple cooking where I use rolling pins to
(34:00):
roll out does and I use knives to chop and
I use my favorite wooden spoons to stir. Right, And
there's something that I connect with those very very basic tools.
I am so inspired most of all with produce. That
is what really gets me thinking. That's where I start
(34:21):
to create a dish is from produce, and from that
it turns into whether it's a salad or a vegetable
or a compliment to a protein, it always starts with produce,
and it always starts with myself. No matter where I
am and what country, no matter what city, no matter
what state, it starts at the farmer's market, and that's
(34:42):
my way of connecting with the city. So first and
foremost my pleasure when it comes to food is actually
being able to prepare the food. I get so much
joy when I make food that makes people happy. And
then so it's the preparing, it's the joy that I bring.
(35:03):
But it's being at the table with friends. There's nowhere
else I would want to be then at that table,
if it's two or fifty with delicious food. That's where
all my friends always gravitated because there was such interesting
conversation at my dinner table. You know. I grew up
(35:25):
in an era where there was definitely um most mothers
were non working mothers, right, they were working in the household,
but not out of the household. The father would come
home a little cocktail hour down to a very sterile dinner.
And I didn't grow up that way. Um my mother did.
She was a homemaker, but she was also a writer,
(35:47):
so she wrote from the house. And my father was
a lawyer and they were very very political, and they
had very interesting friends. And always at the dinner table
at my house was just a whole lot of how
healthy conversation. Just the being fed, the comfort just brought
out so many wonderful conversations. And my parents were just
(36:11):
so well read and so opinionated. That's really where I
learned everything, you know, I really learned so much more
at that table than I did at school. But see,
like these conversations with my parents, they wouldn't have happened
if one of my parents said let's sit down and
(36:31):
talk and there was no food, right, an empty table
could be the same, sitting nothing in front of them.
I don't think there would have been that conversation because
I think so much goes on with each bite because
it's a story. You know, food is a story, And
when I taste people's food that I can't taste their story.
(36:54):
It's just so one note. Half the time, you don't
even need to know who's cooking it. You taste it
and you taste the story of that of whoever that is.
That's responsible and that's the best kind of food. Right.
So I have this little thing that I always say.
I say that travel is a way to lose yourself
(37:16):
to find yourself. Maybe you want to tell me a
little bit about how you see that if that rings truth, well,
I think it also has to do with what kind
of travel you do. So if you are a somebody
that from your comfort comfort of your own home city,
plan out a trip where every minute is accounted for,
(37:40):
for instance, being met at the airport in whatever city
it is, being driven to whatever hotel that you've planned,
being picked up for whatever meal. Some people that's the
way they have to travel, as every step has to
be because they are afraid of the unknown. But if
you can travel, this is thing that I definitely learned
(38:01):
from my father. If you can pack a suitcase and
make a plane ticket and pack your passport and just
go and probably have a hotel because that helps to
have a hotel, But sort of the rest is just
the excitement of the unknown and exploring. It's a whole
different kind of trip. And that's the only way I
(38:21):
know how to travel. I've never been on a guided
tour or anything like that. Um, sometimes if I'm going
to a city that I know, there are a couple
of restaurants that are hard to get into, and it's
it helps to have a reservation before I will do that.
But most of it is open because you never know
what's down that alley? Right, tell me a story about
(38:42):
what you found. You went down an alley somewhere, you
turned left someway where you were going to turn right.
That's like every experience that I have traveling is like
that really is going out the door and turning right. Um.
I love to collect antique. I don't know if they're
a wuntics, but old coffee grinders, which I use for
(39:03):
pepper grinders or pepper mills. So they're square boxes with
a drawer and a grinder. But when I cook, I
love to cook with very coarse, crack black pepper, and
the only way to get that coarseness is to break
the peppercorns with the back of a um frying pan
to crack them because I like them that course, especially
(39:24):
on steaks, so you really crunch into them. But with
these coffee grinders, you can turn the grinder to a
very coarse grind, and just by turning the crank and
opening up the drawer, you have a whole lot of
pepper to season with. And I love them and they're beautiful.
So um, there's just so many examples I just don't
(39:46):
have on the top of my head of just pulling
up to a tiny hilltop town in my own region
of Umbria where you know, where I have a house
and just getting out and whether it's a a full
cheese store, a bakery, you know, those are the kinds
of things. A beautiful church that you opened the door.
(40:07):
You know, it's all that discovery. That's what travel is
for me. Right. Travel has a way that it offers
you an opportunity to try everything right. So, like, if
you're willing to right, well, that's why I want you
to tell me, you know, I mean, you've got to
go with the punches. You know, it's not all gonna
be success, and there's gonna be some setbacks and some difficulty.
(40:30):
You know, Like last time I was in Mexico City, right,
I was in a very uh crowded actually bakery, and
I got my wallet stolen out of my purse. So
it could have ruined my trip, or I could have
had a great time the last two days that I
was there, and that's what I chose, you know, So
(40:50):
you have to expect that things can happen. You know.
I have some friends that I travel with, and I
have to say they're a lot pickier than I am,
and so We'll go to a hotel that they hadn't
already checked out online to see the rooms, and when
they get there, some of them have to change rooms
two or three or four. You know, it's like, I
really don't care. You know, You're like, I'm going out,
you know. Yeah, So I think there's you have to
(41:13):
have that willingness to accept the unknown, except that it's
not going to be seamless. But that's part of the adventure.
And sometimes adventures are the memories. They always I mean,
I don't think you come back and you say, oh, yes,
I stayed at this lovely hotel, like oh in the hotel,
(41:34):
the hotel hotel, that's boring thing. Oh my god, No,
you tell me about I met this pusson and we
went on this wild adventure. I met them randomly at
the coffee shop, said saying, they were like, come to
a dinner, and I said, my god, of course. And
the next thing, I'm at a fucking crazy party at
someone's house, right, And you you know what, you wouldn't
(41:58):
get that experience at of a guide book. Can't can't
put down the book please. Um, I guess we should
talk about a little bit of Los Angeles because you
are so quintessentially Los Angeles and from Los Angeles. But
I think if people think about the food scene of
Los Angeles, it's you like you my first person who
(42:21):
comes to mind. Um, and l A was never a
food town. As much as it had the best what
it was, it was just not recognized because when okay,
so when people thought about food, they thought about food
being cooked by a foodie. Does that make sense to
(42:42):
our listeners? Okay, they didn't think about all of the
neighborhoods that Los Angeles has more than anywhere else in
the country where the people are cooking their food. I mean,
so many ethnic neighborhoods in Los Angeles where the food
(43:04):
has always been so wonderful. And so I think when
people started recognizing the food of immigrants as food, all
of a sudden, people started looking at Los Angeles, where
we always supported that food and that food culture. Well,
(43:25):
because in some ways, they did this offensive thing in
America where they called food that wasn't in parentheses American,
they called it exotic, exotic you, I mean, to me,
that's racists. But I think that Los Angeles to me,
(43:45):
and I was a closet lover of Los Angeles if
you had to be a closet lover. And by the way,
I never I never defended it. When you know, when
people would ask me that you know, where are you from,
and I would say Los Angeles. I hate Los Angeles,
horrible city, I wouldn't. I wouldn't defend it because I
understood why people had that feeling, because this is a
(44:06):
city you have to spend time in to get to know. Yeah,
even just the distance, and just just because of that. Yes,
I feel like Los Angeles is on the up. It's
a city that's moving up and that I love it.
When I come, I find myself mesmerized every time and
sort of a little sad that I'm leaving. But I'm
(44:26):
in New Yorker, which is you know, we were never
supposed to love Los Angeles. We were supposed to deny
Los Angeles. You were supposed to hate it Los Angeles. Yeah,
it feels like every time I'm like, God, I'm someone new,
Like what is the smell? Yeah? Of course it's gentrifying. Yeah,
and it's a natural poblicity. And there's obviously two sides
(44:49):
to that, um, but hopefully we have It's California, so
there's an overside hand that's not an overside, there's a
over rule hand that's positive right where it's like, we're
going to try and make this as sustainable and ecologically
as possible in a major city. I think the mayor
has done an amazing job. I think that he's doing
(45:10):
his best. I mean, they could do something about the homeless.
I was gonna say, the homelessness is it was. I
wish it was sad, simple, you know, but it's just
out of control now, right. But I'm tired of saying that,
Like that's the thing that I'm like, I'm kind of saying, like,
the homeless is, what a problem? I'm like, we need
(45:32):
to do smash shootings. It's terrible, right. Are we sick
of hearing that? I'm sick hearing. Yeah. No, it is true,
and it's not happening fast enough, is the problem. And
it's getting worse. And I have to say, I haven't
seen homeless, the homeless situation at this grandeur anywhere else
in the country. It is the worst here right now.
(45:54):
Maybe what I want to end the chap with is
maybe I want you to tell me something really personal
about you, something that you're not sharing that's been in
your hand and just something that you like no one's
ever cost, but no one's ever asked me, and I
don't I have to say, I don't feel like I'm
unique in this feeling. I obviously have gotten a lot
(46:16):
of notoriety. I've gotten a lot of awards, I have
successful businesses, people's taught me on the street, all those
kinds of acknowledgement, and yet like, not even deep down,
just a little bit down, I'm always thinking, like, when
are they going to find out that I'm really an imposter,
(46:36):
that I'm not that talented and I don't really know
what I'm doing and somehow I make it work and
I've been fooling them all And you can't shake that feeling.
I have that feelings too, Yeah, and I am in
no ways as you are, but the age remember, but
(46:58):
I have it too. I think, what is that? It's
a deep insecurity that people have that we allow others
to check our value system. You know, now I'm putting
a podcast, I'm putting a creative project into the world,
and for the first time, it's not a magazine or
The New York Times or whoever I'm writing for directing
(47:19):
it I'm directing this with my wonderful producer and we
he's my creative ally, but I'm scripting it. It's it's
my thing. So here I'm putting my soul everything out
into the world, and I'm going, how do we value this? Oh,
it's downloads and streams and advertising dollar And that's petrifying
(47:42):
to me because I'm only interested in the construction and
destruction of the creative process. The rest of the stuff
is like, I've never had to think of myself like
that and value myself like that because I've probably constructed
a world around me that I didn't have to because funk,
(48:02):
what if I'm not good enough? And what does that mean?
You know, I think it's hard to put a value
on a creative expression. And you've taken your creativity and
people pay money for it, so of course you have
to be like, oh, we am I worth a hundred
dollar ticket at lunch? And am I worth the bill?
(48:24):
And that's fucking scary, it is, But maybe it's okay
because every day when when I feel like, oh my god,
like what is this now, I just have to stand
in my posture and say, only you want the answer,
judge this the rest of all doesn't matter. But it's
(48:46):
fucking tough. It is, and I am my harshest critic
for myself. But I don't feel like I'm ake a
judgmental person and I'm always looking to judge people. I'm not,
but I do judge to myself. But you're a success,
and you're so wonderful, and you so Sweden, and you
screw me, So what is that to judge? I'll let
(49:11):
you know what I am on your show next time.
If I figured out what that was, you can ask
me that I will make a notes. Well, thank you
for thank you. What a pleasure. Yeah, what a pleasure
that you didn't ask me what my last meal would be?
Or if I had to design my perfect dinner party
(49:33):
alive or Dad? You know who would those be? You know,
it's like really, or would it like to be a
woman in the kitchen? It's like, you're a woman. So
I have a plan to catch but if you'd still
like to reach us, go to Everywhere Podcast on Instagram,
(49:57):
Everywhere Pod on Twitter, all the website at everywhere podcast
dot com. Thanks for hanging out. I'm Daniel Shaffler and
I'll see you everywhere for more podcasts from I heart Radio,
(50:24):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hi, and welcome to Everywhere, a production of I Heart Radio.
I am your host Daniel Shaffler. This week's commandment thou
shalt break down borders, Robert Frost said, before I build
a wall, I'd asked to know what I was walling
(00:21):
in or walling out and to whom I was like
to give offense. Traveling is all about borders. They are
physical or literal ones, those metaphorical ones, and then those
deep spiritual ones. As a traveler, I'm always considering borders.
(00:42):
Can I cross this? Who will I be when I
am on the other side of this border? Why do
we have these borders in the first place? And right
now we the people are having to rethink borders altogether.
The ancient Greek saw unrestrained movement as one of the
(01:03):
four freedoms, distinguishing liberty from slavery. An influx of migrants
added to wealth and taxes in local defense. And I
think those things sound like assets to me. But this
thinking is apparently now all gone. We've had wars, excessive poverty,
(01:24):
terrorist attacks, and environmental changes forcing people to move, and
as a result, walls are being erected everywhere. My girl
AOC recently went to the American southern border to see
what the real situation is like, and she was fucking horrified.
It's humanity at its lowest vibration. But for some reason,
(01:48):
humans like borders. As a species, we like to make
sure things aren't too blurry or too complex. That to
our idiotic mind's eye, keeps it all under control. And
so since World War Two, national leaders have said, let's delineate,
let's give this globe higher walls and longer borders, all
(02:12):
to pretend that they offering citizens extra safety. Countries all
over the world have done this and have lied about
the value of borders. So I'm not saying that borders
should be totally open. There should be reasonable checks and restrictions,
and in most of the world that is the way
it is, in spite of the conservative media telling you otherwise.
(02:36):
What we're really saying is that there should also be reasonable, compassionate,
and respectful, common sense flexibility. In the nineties, the big
talk was globalization and living and traveling in a borderless society. Finally,
a moment to challenge orders had come. The European Union
(02:58):
was created to facilitate this concept and had rapidly expanded
its reach eastwards since the African continent was establishing a
Pan African agreement to facilitate ease of movement, and even
the US, Mexico and Canada once try to keep things
breezy and easy to scurry through, but as expected, it
(03:21):
was all too loose and hippie dippy ideal for the
power elite. Just look at the happy travelers buying fantasy
World passports who thought they could finally explore this glow freely.
Most recently, musician Moss Deaf was arrested in South Africa
for trying to leave the country with his World passport.
(03:44):
So fast forward thirty years later, we know that the
border free dream has finally collapsed, but we should hold
onto some variant of it to its best principles. As
we speak, new Chinese imperialists are laying down borders in Africa.
(04:05):
Mother Russia has expanded her reach in America is cruelly
raising its drawbridge and turning its back on a legitimate
asylum seeker. What a turn of events now that cheery
Canada is showing the world how to handle migrants, how
(04:28):
to document them thoroughly and integrate them into Canadian bliss.
A maple leaf tattoo is always optional. Germany, out of
guilt or perhaps some confusion, forgot the integration and documentation
part of rightfully letting in millions of hard up migrants,
(04:50):
and now there's a glut of people not quite fitting
into that Deutsche lifestyle. As a German citizen, I know
how complex things are as a result, Shall we bring
up Brexit and the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East?
No wonder, the system that is Europe is calling foul.
(05:13):
If you missed the travel news of the last few months,
well let me brief you. Decided that he's shameless. Wall
facing Mexico isn't enough. What is of more importance to
him is to make sure that immigrants are kept out
at all costs, resulting in the internationally watched scandal of
splitting up families at the border and detaining them in
(05:35):
wartime like internment camps. Then the Supreme Court upheld forty
five long argued travel ban, accepting the government's argument that
the ban was within presidential power to craft in national
security policy and thus his authority to suspend entry of
aliens into the United States, for instance, Iranian nationals and
(05:59):
their families who are perhaps American citizens or even dual
citizens or even green card holders are all unfairly discriminatedly
affected through this restricted travel. I call it unconstitutional. So
there are over sixty million migrants and refugees currently on
(06:20):
the move around the world. Many of course, are from Syria,
with Canada working to settle twenty five thousand Syrians across
the country by the end of this year. We can
know what but displaced people are also leaving Haiti, Afghanistan, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq,
(06:43):
North Korea, and all over Northern Africa, fleeing conflict zones,
forever wars, failed states, and the effects of climate change.
I have met many of these people on my travels
and their stories are breaking. But what they have in
common is the simple human need for belonging, the hope
(07:07):
for a safer, better life. But it's all because of
the concept of border that is now evolved. So remember
follow the Money in the six film or the President's Men. Well,
I think it would be wise to heat that now.
Border control and infrastructure are big business, And besides the
(07:30):
negative effects borders can sometimes have on humanity, corporations are
profiting of our often manufactured fears that boogeyman fear of
the other. Capital oh race, religious beliefs, sexual expression, and
gender identity belonged to the unpleasant club of the other.
(07:54):
So fear drives countries to build ever stricter and more
expensive to manage for orders and corporations. Then probably some
compliant politicians profit from this imaginary enemy. Some powers around
the world seem to think that grinding down minorities will
keep them in check. But a Simone de Beauvoir, who
(08:17):
wrote Second Sex, said all oppression creates a state of war.
This is no exception. Blessed be the fruit. A dark
war is being berthed. The Handmaids know all about borders,
and it isn't pretty for them either, And that's why
Margaret Edward's Handmaid's Tale is the greatest show on television
(08:41):
of the century. It depicts a world where borders are
both physical and between genders. The show helps understand the
disturbing reality of this current administration's racist policies, a new
Supreme Court justice, as well as add One's recent victory
in Turkey. If you want more, you can also get
(09:03):
the sequel, Margaret atwards new book, The Testaments. But with
pointing out problems, I also feel like we need to
offer some solutions. Remember the nineteen seventy two educational television
series Free to Be You and Me, Folks like ROBERTA. Flack,
Michael Jackson, and Diana Ross remind America that gender and
(09:27):
racial stereotypes can in fact be broken. And it's now
nearly half a century later and we need a new
version of this Free to Be Here. The message is simple,
(09:51):
Americas shouldn't judge you because unless you're Native American, you've
come from somewhere else. A catchy jingle on every radio
station across the country would never do better public good
if radio can magically make you hum ed. Shearon and
Taylor Swift Well orthodoptr Rhys Jones, in his book Violent Borders,
(10:17):
Refugees and the Right to Move, argues that getting rid
of borders is in fact simply a human rights issue
because let's face it, the border is in fact only
inside you, and it's time to rethink how you're living, voting,
and being in this world. Are they keeping them out
(10:41):
or they're keeping you in? Under his eye, let's take
(11:01):
a breather and we'll be right back with everywhere after
a word from our sponsors. Thanks for sticking around. Here's
more of everywhere. For my next interview, I'm with my
friend Sasha Fung, who happens to work at the u N.
But more interestingly, we met on an aeroplane to Jordan's
(11:25):
and stayed up all night talking. Sasha, I met you
on a plane heading to Amn and I started chatting
to you, and I offered you something to sleep, which
you refused, But we ended up being friends anyway and
(11:46):
spent the most magical time in Aman. And now we
are fast friends, and I've met your kids, and I'm
so grateful that we are friends, because you are one
of the smartest people I've ever met, and I feel
privileged to be in your realm. So thanks for being
in studio with me today. And Ella, who snapping peacefully
(12:09):
in your arms. It's amazing to be here. I mean,
considering the people I've sat next to, this was like
the winning lottery ticket. I felt the same. And when
you walked down the aisle and you plumped yourself next
to me, I had that split second of oh, I
was hoping the seat next to me would stay free.
But then you started, and you launched into this conversation.
(12:29):
Zero notion of small talk. It was right to the essence, like,
let's not waste time. We only have a twelve hour
flight ahead of us, and we needed to sleep on
that flight. I was getting up to work and you
were presenting to some fancy director board, not very fancy.
But so the thing that got us talking was you
(12:50):
mentioned Eritrea to me, and you had been stationed working
for the u N in Eritrea for two years almost
and we got talking about this incredible country. So perhaps
start with telling me how that happened and how you
found yourself in this magical place, which I don't think
a lot of people know about. It is a magical place.
(13:14):
I was only there for one year, but would have
gladly stayed longer, except that I had my husband and
my kids in San Francisco and the commute between Asmara
and the Bay area of California is a tricky one,
and I would have otherwise loved to stay. It's a
place that I always had a craving to go see.
(13:35):
When I was at university, my roommate across the corridor
launched an aery Trea independence support organization and we were
sending all sorts of things to ery Trea because they
had just become independent, and it was this huge deal.
And then I nearly had a chance to go earlier
(13:55):
in my career but couldn't, and so it was like
this itch I needed to scratch. I had this q
curiosity for this place that continued to be so mysterious,
and so when I got the chance to go a
second time, I just knew, this is it. This is
actually an experience I want to have, and it's one
that I'm willing to leave my husband and kids for.
I want to go to Eritrea. I want to see it.
(14:17):
I want to work there. So you flew in and
you arrive and what is it? What is the country
which is in the horn of Africa and not on
the heart list of anyone traveling? Well, you know, that
was the amazing part about it, because how many places
(14:37):
do you go to in today's globalized world, where we
have so much information about everything, and you have Google
maps and you can see everything and sort of form
an opinion. But about Eritrea, I had barely any opinion
at all, except a few books that I had read
and a few things that I'd heard from friends and colleagues.
(14:58):
Whould work there, So I came with this completely blank
slate and a lot of expectations and a little bit
of trepidation, you know, going completely into the unknown. And
there was something about just landing there. Remember being picked
up at the airport and some people came to greet me,
and I felt this affinity. It's kind of hard to describe,
(15:19):
but I think that happens to all of us. You know,
there are places where you instantly somehow feel more at
home than in others. And I can't quite describe it,
but it's a feeling that sort of grew quite quickly,
and it just made me feel a lot more at
home than I had any rights of feeding because it
was pretty alien in some ways. But they'd put me
(15:40):
up in this sort of one big hotel in town.
And I decided the next day that I was going
to go explore, and so I went off with my
sneakers on a dusty track and someone had said, oh, yeah,
i'll just follow this road and you'll find the cathedral.
Of course, I didn't find the cathedral. I walked for
ages and I was getting really thirsty, and I realized
(16:00):
I had no NUCKFI, didn't have the local currency, and
it's really quite tricky to change naka because you're only
allowed to change it in certain government locations. And so
I realized I had no no nakfa, no water, no
working phone, and I was trapesing along on this beautiful
sunny day. And then this little group of kids picked
me up and they said, China, China, because that's what
(16:23):
they call for. And I don't think I look particularly Asian,
but all I could hear was China, China. You lost.
And I said, yeah, I think China has lost. And
they're like, what do you want to go see? And
I said cathedral and they say, we take you. It
was a band of little kids, and they had this
sort of dried injera, which is the staple in their pockets,
(16:45):
and they were trying to give me bits of India
because you know, they're very hospitable air trey and so
he wanted to make sure I wasn't about to keel
over from starvation. And then they took me to the
cathedral and they said, here's cathedral. Here cathedral, And I
was suddenly in the middle of Asmara, which honestly looks
(17:06):
as though you've traveled in time to the nineteen fifties.
I don't think it has changed very much. There are
these Italian buildings. There's a stone cathedral, this wide avenue
with palm trees, Bouginvilia everywhere. Because the Italians brought a
lot of that. There's a lot of local erritray and
masonry that's kind of blended in. And then you see
(17:28):
these old gentlemen walking with their Borsellino hats and their
coats that are far too big for them, and and
you have sort of quite Italianate names, and you have
these ancient cars, and it really feels like you've gone
back in time. It felt so magical. And so I
was standing in front of this cathedral looking down at
(17:49):
this sort of nineteen fifties city scape. You know, it's
a small sleepy town Asmara, with this little group of
kids who are kind of waiting for me to take
in the beauty of their case Edril. And then I
wanted to thank them for having gone out of their
way like it didn't want them to get in trouble.
And I said, can I buy you a little pastry?
(18:10):
Because I had heard that there was some fantastic pastry
and as matter, you know, old Sicilian cookies that they
stopped making in Sicily decades ago, but old grandmother still
make them and as mater and they said, yeah, sure.
So we went to the little pastry shop and I'd
managed by that point to change a few nakfa. I
had no idea exactly how many, but I figured a
(18:32):
few pastries so it would probably be okay. And then
they said, now you buy yourself pastries, but we don't
want any, and I said, what do you mean your kids?
Of course you want pastries, and they said no. And
there was something that I then got to learn quite
quickly in Eritrea. This pride, you know, this self reliance.
You don't just take what's given to you. You feel
(18:54):
like you have to deserve it. And they somehow felt
that they didn't need to be rewarded. And coming from
the States or you know, from northern Europe, where everybody
has such a built in expectation to be rewarded for anything,
this was like and I had to literally stand there
on the street corner and negotiate with them, these five
(19:15):
six seven year olds, please, will you accept a pastry?
And by the way, just the fact that with English
I could negotiate with them already tells you a lot
about this country. I think, you know, they spoke English
well enough to be involved in this conversation with this
random person they'd sort of picked up. So I kind
of reckon. I'm a pretty good negotiator, but but I
(19:37):
didn't have a patch on those kids, and so in
the end, the best I could get out of them
was their agreement that the youngest in the group I
was allowed to buy a pastry for, not the others,
just the baby. And this happened day two, depending how
you count. I'd arrived the night before, and that's sort
of what set me up for my year there. That experience,
(20:00):
it's beautiful. It's a beautiful lesson. If only we could
apply that lesson in Western civilization. Do you think we
call Africa the West? It's like a weird thing being
from South Africa, Like people call us western and I'm like, well,
Erry Tree, it feels very Eastern to me at the
same time, very European. It's been such a melting pot
(20:21):
of cultures, and I think that's why I also felt
that affinity. They identify with a lot of different cultures,
so it makes it easier for you to identify with them.
But so it's a good question. I would not call
erry Tree of the West. I mean, there's no McDonald's,
there's no three G, there's no diet Coke. I would
not call it the West. Let's talk about the food,
(20:45):
because I know that I've never woken up and been like,
can't wait to go eat some error trained food tonight.
There's every culture you could possibly imagine in my city.
I don't know of the error train restaurant. I'm sure
it's here, and I will find it and we will
go there, but it's not something I think many people
know about. Erytrain food, at least in a matter where
(21:10):
I spent most of my time, is very similar to Ethiopian,
but there's some really important differences. Essentially, it's in Gera
is the sort of staple and it's that big, sort
of spongy flatbread, and it's made out of what the
Ethiopians called deaf and we in Eritrea are called tough,
and it's supposed to be a superfood. It might be
(21:32):
gluten free or very low in gluten, has a really
high iron content, and the air tray and swear by it.
It's like there's something about national identity, and in Gera
people carry it around with them, and some people have
actually said to me, I don't know what I would do.
I don't know how it could live anywhere else where.
They don't make injera, and the funny thing is that
(21:53):
there's a big air tray in diaspora and many of
them go out to other places, like this woman was
telling me she went to Angola and made a little
bit of money by making injera for airy trains that
were at the time working in Angola. Like India is
the symbol for so much of the country, and it's
really fantastic because you can add all these extra sort
(22:13):
of bits to it. And it's very communal, so you
eat with your hands and people take their time. Nobody's
checking their phone, and you couldn't anyway, would be far
too messy because you're eating with your hands. You don't
sit there with your carefully guarded plates and knife and fork.
You know, there's a big platter in the middle, and
everybody piles in and you learn all the different things
that go into the Injia, and my favorites were actually
(22:36):
the fasting food. So many erry trains are very devout
and food and religion are closely intertwined. They have many
periods where they're observing fasting and they will be absolutely rigorous,
and the fasting food just means without meat, and so
that's when you get all these creative vegetarian dishes. So
I actually always quite like the fasting food. There's one
(22:59):
thing I didn't, and unfortunately, that's the one dish that
people prepare for you when you're a guest of honor
in someone's house. And it's called AT and it's basically
a porridge, but you eat it with melted butter and
chili powder and yogurt and it's incredibly rich. When you're
(23:19):
expecting a baby, you're supposed to eat it because there's
a a belief that that's good for young expectant mothers,
not for me. It looks beautiful, like this sort of mountain,
and presenting a AT is such a sign of welcome
to my home. That was difficult, and I would try
(23:41):
and find ways of saying, I know your wife is
very busy. Please tell her she doesn't have to do
AT for me, or I will just come from lunch.
You know, no need for AT. Coffee is fine, because
the one thing I loved is the eritrey and coffee ceremony.
That is something for the senses. I'm Austrian, so I
love coffee. I'm obsessed with coffee. But it's about as
(24:03):
far away as you could get from your caramel latte
Grunde with sprinkles on top in Starbucks as you could
possibly imagine. You know, this is the real thing. Where
you hear the coffee beans being roasted in this old
metal pan over the fire, so you hear the click,
click click click click of the beans and then they
(24:24):
start smelling good, and you're supposed to wave your hand
over the smoke of the beans towards your nose, and
that's a sort of respect sign of respect to the
person who's preparing the coffee. And then the coffee comes,
and there's always a little bit of popcorn and in
gerra and other things with it. And you sit and
you have the first round, and then you have the
(24:47):
second round, and then you have the third, which is
called baraka means blessing. And maybe after the third round
you can be on your way, but maybe not, because
then sometimes there's a fourth throat out and there's a
fifth round. And this is a sort of centerpiece of
people's life. You know, this is how they communicate. They
(25:07):
communicate over coffee, and it's perfectly acceptable for life to
just stop because you're having coffee. And then I think,
you know, when you stand here in the line for
your take out and you're rushing off with it to
some meeting, how different we have evolved around this ancient
tradition of coffee and there it's still ancient. I think
(25:29):
there's a century old thing as far as I know,
and you feel that, you know. That's why I booked
a counterculture barista to come and spend the afternoon with
us and slowly make coffee for the last five hours
in studio. I knew that you were going to tell
me some slow, beautiful Eritrey and coffee story. What is
(25:53):
the thing that touched you the most? What is the
thing that sticks with you that you just can't stop
thinking about. I think the thing that touched me the
most is realizing this thirst for opportunity and willingness to
(26:13):
make something out of opportunities that I saw, especially in
young people. For example, there's a quite a vibrant music scene,
which is a bit counterintuitive because Eritrea is a country
that struggled for thirty years to gain its independence against
overwhelming odds where promoting the arts was not exactly a
(26:38):
top priority. And then with the isolation and the sanctions,
certain things just remained out of reach that wouldn't be
out of reach elsewhere. For example, I really like to
know how many pianos are there in Eritrea. I know
of a few, and in fact I spent a day
in San Francisco trying to find a spep heart for
(27:00):
one of them, because there wasn't a spare part in
the country to be had. And yet I met virtuoso pianists.
I met a jazz singer who sounded as though she
grown up in the Bronx. I met an opera singer
who can perform in Italian and German. And when I
(27:23):
asked him, so, when it's the first time you actually
ever heard opera, he said, Tom and Jerry cartoon. And
so how do you become a virtuoso musician in a
context where it's not that easy to get materials or
sheet music or instruments. And so we were discussing this
(27:46):
one night after a beautiful concert, and these Eritrean musicians
they said, you know something, Shasha, because I often got cold, Shasha,
you know something, Shasha. We're always so pleased when we
hear that eritreans in some in Cisco or in New York,
or in Berlin or wherever have come top of their
class or top of their PhD program, or have excelled
(28:09):
in a business, because we really think that if you
give eritreans two centimeters of opportunity, they will make two
kilometers of opportunity out of that. And that's an attitude
that's just really impressive. It's an impressive attitude to life.
And you saw that throughout. I mean the musicians were
(28:32):
sort of one example, but you could sort of see
that throughout in the mentality and that was I think,
to me, a sort of lesson that I hope I'll
never forget. I've told my kids, I've told my husband.
You know, it's something that I think will always stick
with me, and I hope, I hope the error traans
never lose it. I mean, it's something very precious. I
(28:54):
hope that stays in their culture. I really do, as
they open up and as they are opening up to
the world in a way that has never been that way.
I mean, I grew up parting in Africa and Eritrea
was always one of the places that wasn't as well
known as the others. Kenya was up and coming always,
(29:15):
my parents were always talking about Nairobi. They were always
talking about, of course, Angola and the potential in these countries,
and Eritrea was not on the list. And now it
is in a way, and I think that's so amazing,
and I love that there's an idea that it's the
little guy that can inspire somehow, like the unexpected place
(29:37):
is always the place that teaches me this lesson that
I'm like, shit, that's spectacular. Let me take that. And
I think what I wish for people to hear is
if you travel, you are able to learn these lessons
if you're open to them, because the country, the place,
the town, the people will give you these lessons. The
(30:01):
moments are there if you're willing to open yourself. Most
people are not. But if you open yourself up just
a little bit, just a fraction, just too sameting meters,
perhaps there's two kilometers of beauty and inspiration and wisdom
that's ready for you. I think that's beautifully said. I
(30:23):
think that's exactly right. And maybe because a place like
eric Trea you come to without preconceived ideas. Everybody knows
what they want to see when they go to Tokyo
right or Paris, or I've got friends staying with me
right now, they've got a list for New York City.
(30:45):
And given that we have such a surplus of information
usually about everything these days, it's just so refreshing to
go with a deficit of information and information, and deficit
you can't even fill by googling the crap out of
it because it doesn't exist in that way. That's kind
(31:06):
of a pioneer thing. You feel that you might as
well be the only person discovering this. To be honest,
it was a rush for me in that year. I
mean there were moments I would feel it and on Eritrea,
you know, there's like a secret handshake of internationals who
have been there, and actually handshake is the wrong word.
(31:28):
It's more like a shoulder bump, because traditionally the old
fighters when they meet, they don't shake hands. They bump
their right shoulders together three times. It's a bit awkward
at first, but you kind of get used to it.
And at first I wasn't sure whether I was allowed
to do that, given that I'm not exactly a fighter.
I didn't exactly earn my spurs, but you know, they're
(31:48):
quite open, so you sort of shoulder bump. And there's
a sort of community of people who have been to Eritrea,
and so there's something quite special about that. That is
the beauty of going off the beaten track. So I
would love to challenge people to go and find the
(32:10):
other error trials of the world in the most respectful,
most appropriate way. I mean, perhaps it's somewhere in Ohio,
some part of Greenland that you could go and learn
something similar. The world is open, it's ready, you just
have to go. Totally agree. Thank you for spending time
(32:32):
with me. This was spectacular. Do you tell such beautiful stories.
Thank you for wanting to hear them. This is a
great moment for us to travel to advertising Land and
we'll be right back with Everywhere. Welcome once again to Everywhere.
Let's hop back to it. For my next interview, I'm
(32:56):
with my friend Nancy Silverton the Share of Los Angeles.
We talk about how bord is are not just physical
but metaphysical and emotional. Okay, so what I wanted us
to really talk about is my show is about funk
the list. Don't chank off anything. Food is a way
(33:19):
to take you into humanity, and travel is an equal
way away to touch humanity. You've made a carea of food,
I've made a careat of travel. But essentially we're looking
for the same thing. We're looking to find ways to
be with humanity, right, absolutely, So tell me how that
(33:39):
feels to you and what you think about. Well, I'll
tell you. I live for food. I live to eat,
I live to make food. All of it is very interconnected.
I love to cook because, first of all, I love
to use my hands. So the cooking that I do
is very simple cooking where I use rolling pins to
(34:00):
roll out does and I use knives to chop and
I use my favorite wooden spoons to stir. Right, And
there's something that I connect with those very very basic tools.
I am so inspired most of all with produce. That
is what really gets me thinking. That's where I start
(34:21):
to create a dish is from produce, and from that
it turns into whether it's a salad or a vegetable
or a compliment to a protein, it always starts with produce,
and it always starts with myself. No matter where I
am and what country, no matter what city, no matter
what state, it starts at the farmer's market, and that's
(34:42):
my way of connecting with the city. So first and
foremost my pleasure when it comes to food is actually
being able to prepare the food. I get so much
joy when I make food that makes people happy. And
then so it's the preparing, it's the joy that I bring.
(35:03):
But it's being at the table with friends. There's nowhere
else I would want to be then at that table,
if it's two or fifty with delicious food. That's where
all my friends always gravitated because there was such interesting
conversation at my dinner table. You know. I grew up
(35:25):
in an era where there was definitely um most mothers
were non working mothers, right, they were working in the household,
but not out of the household. The father would come
home a little cocktail hour down to a very sterile dinner.
And I didn't grow up that way. Um my mother did.
She was a homemaker, but she was also a writer,
(35:47):
so she wrote from the house. And my father was
a lawyer and they were very very political, and they
had very interesting friends. And always at the dinner table
at my house was just a whole lot of how
healthy conversation. Just the being fed, the comfort just brought
out so many wonderful conversations. And my parents were just
(36:11):
so well read and so opinionated. That's really where I
learned everything, you know, I really learned so much more
at that table than I did at school. But see,
like these conversations with my parents, they wouldn't have happened
if one of my parents said let's sit down and
(36:31):
talk and there was no food, right, an empty table
could be the same, sitting nothing in front of them.
I don't think there would have been that conversation because
I think so much goes on with each bite because
it's a story. You know, food is a story, And
when I taste people's food that I can't taste their story.
(36:54):
It's just so one note. Half the time, you don't
even need to know who's cooking it. You taste it
and you taste the story of that of whoever that is.
That's responsible and that's the best kind of food. Right.
So I have this little thing that I always say.
I say that travel is a way to lose yourself
(37:16):
to find yourself. Maybe you want to tell me a
little bit about how you see that if that rings truth, well,
I think it also has to do with what kind
of travel you do. So if you are a somebody
that from your comfort comfort of your own home city,
plan out a trip where every minute is accounted for,
(37:40):
for instance, being met at the airport in whatever city
it is, being driven to whatever hotel that you've planned,
being picked up for whatever meal. Some people that's the
way they have to travel, as every step has to
be because they are afraid of the unknown. But if
you can travel, this is thing that I definitely learned
(38:01):
from my father. If you can pack a suitcase and
make a plane ticket and pack your passport and just
go and probably have a hotel because that helps to
have a hotel, But sort of the rest is just
the excitement of the unknown and exploring. It's a whole
different kind of trip. And that's the only way I
(38:21):
know how to travel. I've never been on a guided
tour or anything like that. Um, sometimes if I'm going
to a city that I know, there are a couple
of restaurants that are hard to get into, and it's
it helps to have a reservation before I will do that.
But most of it is open because you never know
what's down that alley? Right, tell me a story about
(38:42):
what you found. You went down an alley somewhere, you
turned left someway where you were going to turn right.
That's like every experience that I have traveling is like
that really is going out the door and turning right. Um.
I love to collect antique. I don't know if they're
a wuntics, but old coffee grinders, which I use for
(39:03):
pepper grinders or pepper mills. So they're square boxes with
a drawer and a grinder. But when I cook, I
love to cook with very coarse, crack black pepper, and
the only way to get that coarseness is to break
the peppercorns with the back of a um frying pan
to crack them because I like them that course, especially
(39:24):
on steaks, so you really crunch into them. But with
these coffee grinders, you can turn the grinder to a
very coarse grind, and just by turning the crank and
opening up the drawer, you have a whole lot of
pepper to season with. And I love them and they're beautiful.
So um, there's just so many examples I just don't
(39:46):
have on the top of my head of just pulling
up to a tiny hilltop town in my own region
of Umbria where you know, where I have a house
and just getting out and whether it's a a full
cheese store, a bakery, you know, those are the kinds
of things. A beautiful church that you opened the door.
(40:07):
You know, it's all that discovery. That's what travel is
for me. Right. Travel has a way that it offers
you an opportunity to try everything right. So, like, if
you're willing to right, well, that's why I want you
to tell me, you know, I mean, you've got to
go with the punches. You know, it's not all gonna
be success, and there's gonna be some setbacks and some difficulty.
(40:30):
You know, Like last time I was in Mexico City, right,
I was in a very uh crowded actually bakery, and
I got my wallet stolen out of my purse. So
it could have ruined my trip, or I could have
had a great time the last two days that I
was there, and that's what I chose, you know, So
(40:50):
you have to expect that things can happen. You know.
I have some friends that I travel with, and I
have to say they're a lot pickier than I am,
and so We'll go to a hotel that they hadn't
already checked out online to see the rooms, and when
they get there, some of them have to change rooms
two or three or four. You know, it's like, I
really don't care. You know, You're like, I'm going out,
you know. Yeah, So I think there's you have to
(41:13):
have that willingness to accept the unknown, except that it's
not going to be seamless. But that's part of the adventure.
And sometimes adventures are the memories. They always I mean,
I don't think you come back and you say, oh, yes,
I stayed at this lovely hotel, like oh in the hotel,
(41:34):
the hotel hotel, that's boring thing. Oh my god, No,
you tell me about I met this pusson and we
went on this wild adventure. I met them randomly at
the coffee shop, said saying, they were like, come to
a dinner, and I said, my god, of course. And
the next thing, I'm at a fucking crazy party at
someone's house, right, And you you know what, you wouldn't
(41:58):
get that experience at of a guide book. Can't can't
put down the book please. Um, I guess we should
talk about a little bit of Los Angeles because you
are so quintessentially Los Angeles and from Los Angeles. But
I think if people think about the food scene of
Los Angeles, it's you like you my first person who
(42:21):
comes to mind. Um, and l A was never a
food town. As much as it had the best what
it was, it was just not recognized because when okay,
so when people thought about food, they thought about food
being cooked by a foodie. Does that make sense to
(42:42):
our listeners? Okay, they didn't think about all of the
neighborhoods that Los Angeles has more than anywhere else in
the country where the people are cooking their food. I mean,
so many ethnic neighborhoods in Los Angeles where the food
(43:04):
has always been so wonderful. And so I think when
people started recognizing the food of immigrants as food, all
of a sudden, people started looking at Los Angeles, where
we always supported that food and that food culture. Well,
(43:25):
because in some ways, they did this offensive thing in
America where they called food that wasn't in parentheses American,
they called it exotic, exotic you, I mean, to me,
that's racists. But I think that Los Angeles to me,
(43:45):
and I was a closet lover of Los Angeles if
you had to be a closet lover. And by the way,
I never I never defended it. When you know, when
people would ask me that you know, where are you from,
and I would say Los Angeles. I hate Los Angeles,
horrible city, I wouldn't. I wouldn't defend it because I
understood why people had that feeling, because this is a
(44:06):
city you have to spend time in to get to know. Yeah,
even just the distance, and just just because of that. Yes,
I feel like Los Angeles is on the up. It's
a city that's moving up and that I love it.
When I come, I find myself mesmerized every time and
sort of a little sad that I'm leaving. But I'm
(44:26):
in New Yorker, which is you know, we were never
supposed to love Los Angeles. We were supposed to deny
Los Angeles. You were supposed to hate it Los Angeles. Yeah,
it feels like every time I'm like, God, I'm someone new,
Like what is the smell? Yeah? Of course it's gentrifying. Yeah,
and it's a natural poblicity. And there's obviously two sides
(44:49):
to that, um, but hopefully we have It's California, so
there's an overside hand that's not an overside, there's a
over rule hand that's positive right where it's like, we're
going to try and make this as sustainable and ecologically
as possible in a major city. I think the mayor
has done an amazing job. I think that he's doing
(45:10):
his best. I mean, they could do something about the homeless.
I was gonna say, the homelessness is it was. I
wish it was sad, simple, you know, but it's just
out of control now, right. But I'm tired of saying that,
Like that's the thing that I'm like, I'm kind of saying, like,
the homeless is, what a problem? I'm like, we need
(45:32):
to do smash shootings. It's terrible, right. Are we sick
of hearing that? I'm sick hearing. Yeah. No, it is true,
and it's not happening fast enough, is the problem. And
it's getting worse. And I have to say, I haven't
seen homeless, the homeless situation at this grandeur anywhere else
in the country. It is the worst here right now.
(45:54):
Maybe what I want to end the chap with is
maybe I want you to tell me something really personal
about you, something that you're not sharing that's been in
your hand and just something that you like no one's
ever cost, but no one's ever asked me, and I
don't I have to say, I don't feel like I'm
unique in this feeling. I obviously have gotten a lot
(46:16):
of notoriety. I've gotten a lot of awards, I have
successful businesses, people's taught me on the street, all those
kinds of acknowledgement, and yet like, not even deep down,
just a little bit down, I'm always thinking, like, when
are they going to find out that I'm really an imposter,
(46:36):
that I'm not that talented and I don't really know
what I'm doing and somehow I make it work and
I've been fooling them all And you can't shake that feeling.
I have that feelings too, Yeah, and I am in
no ways as you are, but the age remember, but
(46:58):
I have it too. I think, what is that? It's
a deep insecurity that people have that we allow others
to check our value system. You know, now I'm putting
a podcast, I'm putting a creative project into the world,
and for the first time, it's not a magazine or
The New York Times or whoever I'm writing for directing
(47:19):
it I'm directing this with my wonderful producer and we
he's my creative ally, but I'm scripting it. It's it's
my thing. So here I'm putting my soul everything out
into the world, and I'm going, how do we value this? Oh,
it's downloads and streams and advertising dollar And that's petrifying
(47:42):
to me because I'm only interested in the construction and
destruction of the creative process. The rest of the stuff
is like, I've never had to think of myself like
that and value myself like that because I've probably constructed
a world around me that I didn't have to because funk,
(48:02):
what if I'm not good enough? And what does that mean?
You know, I think it's hard to put a value
on a creative expression. And you've taken your creativity and
people pay money for it, so of course you have
to be like, oh, we am I worth a hundred
dollar ticket at lunch? And am I worth the bill?
(48:24):
And that's fucking scary, it is, But maybe it's okay
because every day when when I feel like, oh my god,
like what is this now, I just have to stand
in my posture and say, only you want the answer,
judge this the rest of all doesn't matter. But it's
(48:46):
fucking tough. It is, and I am my harshest critic
for myself. But I don't feel like I'm ake a
judgmental person and I'm always looking to judge people. I'm not,
but I do judge to myself. But you're a success,
and you're so wonderful, and you so Sweden, and you
screw me, So what is that to judge? I'll let
(49:11):
you know what I am on your show next time.
If I figured out what that was, you can ask
me that I will make a notes. Well, thank you
for thank you. What a pleasure. Yeah, what a pleasure
that you didn't ask me what my last meal would be?
Or if I had to design my perfect dinner party
(49:33):
alive or Dad? You know who would those be? You know,
it's like really, or would it like to be a
woman in the kitchen? It's like, you're a woman. So
I have a plan to catch but if you'd still
like to reach us, go to Everywhere Podcast on Instagram,
(49:57):
Everywhere Pod on Twitter, all the website at everywhere podcast
dot com. Thanks for hanging out. I'm Daniel Shaffler and
I'll see you everywhere for more podcasts from I heart Radio,
(50:24):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Everywhere News
Host
Daniel Scheffler
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
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Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com