Page 50 - 10th Annual International Charles Town Maroon Conference and Festival Magazine

June 2018 Charles Town Maroon International Conference Magazine

How long have you been cooking for the conference? vegetable soup, craw fish, bussu soup, and our normal
I’ve been cooking eight years for the conference calaloo, ackchoy, cabbage and all of those natural stuff
and most of all for this year we will be serving wild
Have you enjoyed it?
boar.
Very much and always look forward for our
conference So if we are to speak out, which we will through this
interview to people abroad and people in Jamaica
The conference is a very big event and with a big who want to come to the conference, what would you
kitchen, so you have a lot of assistant that work with
tell them about the food part of the conference?
you? For the food part of the conference, you can come out
Yes, last year I have five other persons working beside expecting quality real authentic Maroon food, no arti-
me in the kitchen and we hope to have the same
ficial flavours, all natural, all fresh.
amount for this year.

In the past few years I remember not seeing a lot of Do you like preparing food the Maroon way?
pastry type items on the menu, will that change? Yes I do, to me it is more affordable and it is way much
Hopefully we are looking forward to changing it for easier and I think it is much healthier.
this year because when it comes to pastry, you are
talking about the coconut drops, potato pudding, grater So you would say that there are great benefits from
cake, dukunu which is blue draws, and this year eating the Maroon way?
hopefully we are thinking about doing a vast amount Great, great benefits health-wise
of that knowing that we are talking about Maroon, and
we are talking about our heritage and we want to bring So why isn’t the Maroons putting it out there,
back the whole thing, so this year we are looking educating the nation?
forward to a whole lot of blue draws, coconut drops Actually, I can speak for Charles Town which we have
etc. we are guaranteed and we are actually in the been doing, we are being advertised worldwide on
process of starting preparation. radio stations, TV stations, Youtube, facebook,
Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr etc. so we try and educate
I think last year there was an argument about the youths because they are the ones who will come to
coconut not being available, what is the situation take over because we the older ones won’t be able to
now? at some time. So as I said before, I could speak of
We always have coconut cause what we do is that we Charles Town because we have been going out
store coconut, we do not wait on the appointed time, edifying the younger ones about the Maroons, we go
we have a small deep freezer where we actually get out displaying the different herbs, what they are used
the coconut, take them out, cut them up and store them for and our drumming and dancing.
so there is no way we can run out of coconut.
Thank you very much
Have you gotten any feedback from visitors to the
conference? Flavius Laidley - Systems Analyst, Events
Yes we have, and it has gone to the limit where you Planner, Tourism specialist and Webmaster.
would have persons wanting to take back the cook He has been involved in Tourism, Events
from the kitchen overseas, that is how good we are!!! creation, planning, management, marketing
and implementation since the early 1970’s in
Are there any special food that will be prepared for
Jamaica, Canada, United Kingdom and the
this year’s conference and festival? wider Caribbean.
Yes we are, we’ll be having our vegetable run-dung,
we are looking forward to doing ackee without saltfish,

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