Page 49 - 10th Annual International Charles Town Maroon Conference and Festival Magazine

Charles Town Maroon International Conference Magazine June 2018

Now that you have your family what role does food I’m here today and I got a meal and it was probably
play. five different dishes all into one, how easy is that to
It plays a major role, very major role, because it helps do on a major scale where the conference is running
us to eat healthy. You know, now-a-day kids are more almost 24 hours a day when you have thousands of
for the meats, but what I try to do, use the vegetables people?
to counteract the meat, so we do not go all meat. Well I would say sometime it can be straining but
overall it is something that I have being doing over the
Being from Charles Town, growing up in Charles years and to us it is a one two, furthermore it is easier
Town and now living in Charles Town. What does it than the whole meat meal, its affordable and we have
mean to you now to be cooking at the conference and a very large kitchen and a whole lot of things and we
festival and feeding visitors to your community? have some real dependable workers so I would say it’s
It’s a pleasure, and I would say that because for most not really hard once you put yourself to it and we are
of our tours, or should I say all tourists a pleasure dedicated to our work.
hearing comments after being fed and for that reason
it has always being a pleasure. I’ll go home in the What would you say is deferent about the type and
evening and just wait to get a call saying lunch tour ways of preparing of food even by Maroon people?
tomorrow, so I enjoy feeding persons form our Maroon In that sense I would say we are Indigenous people and
kitchen and most importantly doing it to our best and we consider our food different because we do our
getting some really good comments. authentic meals around here, meaning our food are
freshly done and we go all natural, no artificial
What do you enjoy most about your participation in flavours of any kind and so that is what I would say
the annual international Charles Town Maroon make our food different.
Conference and festival?
What I enjoy most is the whole fact of being here Are Maroons eating the same food now as they eat
prepared, feeding hundreds or maybe thousands of in times gone by?
people each year and knowing that everybody is being Maybe a fifty-fifty I would say about that because
fed and everybody is comfortable having our meals. back in the days, Maroons would consume a whole lot
of cassava, they would hunt wild boar, fishing, and I
don’t think Maroons today are eating as much of that
food as the old Maroons back then.

Have Maroons food evolved or new types
of food becoming Maroon food?
There is no way new food can become
Maroon food because if you are talking
about back then in the Maroon days,
Quao, Nanny, you are talking about
cassava, wild boar, you are talking about
fishing, ground provision and all those
stuffs so I wouldn’t say that.

Annette and her team at work

48