Healthful Eating Translates Well to Other Languages, Cultures
Rather than leave her native land in Togo, West Africa, seven years ago, Christine Esse figured out a way to bring it with her.
She talks of her father’s farm, more than 6,000 miles away, as she slowly walks up a row of beets, tomatoes, and okra that she has grown. She stops and closely inspects a freshly grown hot pepper.
“You only need one of these in a soup, or you can’t eat it,” she said. “Very, very hot.”
Like her father, Esse grows a leafy plant she calls ademè, which is eaten with corn flour in West Africa.
“I have friends who come from Des Moines, Iowa, to visit and they say, ‘You are still home – look at you,’” Esse said.
Esse may have found that home when she came into contact with Pat Lawson, a volunteer Master Gardener in Wyandotte County, Kansas. With numerous others, they have built an impressive community garden on a common, residential street corner in Kansas City.
While the program has helped people from many ethnic and cultural backgrounds, Esse also notices the impact it has had on the lives of her three children, who range in age from 10 to 16.
“I want them to feel like they’re home,” said Esse, watching her kids participate in a pumpkin carving
activity. “They lost their friends in Togo, but they have friends here now.
“The most important thing they’re learning is how to share with humanity, and how people can care about all of us. When they grow up, I want them to be able to feel the importance of people in one person’s life, and how to care about others.”
More than 40 percent of the residents of Wyandotte County are racial or ethnic minorities. According to the Kansas-based REACH Healthcare Foundation, approximately 16 percent speak a language other than English in the home.
So the work that Terri Bookless does makes a lot of sense.
Bookless, a K-State Research and Extension agent in Wyandotte County, teaches weekly classes on diabetes education. She gets excited when she tells the story of “Larry,” a local resident whose blood sugar was a dangerously high 500.
“After two or three weeks, with changes in his diet, he got that down to 200,” Bookless remembers. “And he was able to walk without a cane.”
Another pupil, a middle-aged man originally from Ethiopia, said he determined that “when” he eats is as important as “what” he eats.
“He tells me that every time he eats, he thinks of ‘Terri,’” Bookless said with a laugh. “Don’t eat so much, don’t eat so much. …”
Bookless, fluent in Spanish, has provided class materials in her students’ native languages, including French, Vietnamese, and Amharic (the language of Ethiopia). Her students are referred to her classes through a partnership with Riverview Community Services, which serves more than 1,500 clients yearly.
Terri Bookless
913-432-3737
^In the photo: Wyandotte County Master Gardeners encouraged the Esse family to raise vegetables from their native Togo in the community garden.
