For this update, I thought I would try and decipher why this is the case, with a deeply personal exploration of my emotions related to this question. Over the past year I’ve kept returning to this question again and again—to where it has me doubting the whole ambition of writing the cookbook.

As everything I’ve written to date, seems listless, impersonal, and lacking any emotional depth to describe the experiences which serve as inspiration and motivation for wanting to write a St Helena Cookbook in the first place.

Recently I listened to an interview on the ‘What Now? with Trevor Noah’ podcast with Ta-Nehisi Coates, the discussion explored how a person’s heritage shapes their world view, and how that feeds into individual choices made in life. I couldn’t stop thinking about this discussion in relation to answering why my writing to date lacked vigour. Their discussion bounced around in my head, and the following thought emerged. As its a cookbook, I’ll be writing about Saint food of course–describing its taste, its texture, and how to make it. But, I’m not just writing about how ingredients come together to create the most wonderful dishes. In writing stories about Plo, or Fishcakes, I’m actually writing about the experiences of growing up and living on St Helena. Through writing about food, it reflects and captures Island traditions, its quacks, its challenges, its pace of life. I’m actually writing about the Saint experience.

Now, the Saint experience is not something that has been widely written about (at least not to my knowledge anyway), it’s not something you can readily read about in novels, expressed in poetry, or as first hand accounts of Island life. I can’t compare notes with others to help guide me. However, this quote shared by Ta-Nehisi Coates, from Alain LeRoy Locke resonated when thinking about where to start. “All classes of people under social pressure are permeated with a common experience; they are emotionally welded as others cannot be. With them, even ordinary living has epic depth and lyric intensity, and this, their material handicap, is their spiritual advantage.” Wow!

If in trying to describe my food, I’m writing about the Saint experience-I’m trying to express my spiritual advantage. This makes me terrified of misremembering and misrepresenting the very pride I hold so tight. I’ve created this subconscious beast, running wild with self imposed pressure to find the prefect unoffending words to capture what the Saint experience is. A feeling I know to be true, a feeling that guides and defines me. A feeling I want to share with you in the hope you can feel it to. The feeling of being a Saint. No one is asking this of me dear reader. No one other than myself. So why this pressure?

This Saint experience I talk about, this feeling, isn’t something that is widely discussed among family or with friends. We don’t sit around with a beer and talk about how our life choices have been shaped by our heritage in the same way as discussed in the aforementioned podcast. We talk about the struggles of living day to day. Of raising a family, of making enough money to provide for yours, of how things we hold dear are disappearing, not changing–disappearing. That way of life that shaped me, that is no more. Lost to memory. Destroyed not as part of some grand nefarious plot, but rather by the unrelenting flow of decisions made with a lack of attentiveness for preserving the fragility of what made, and makes St Helena remarkable.

For we Saints, we’re a friendly people. We’re loud, we swear far to much compared to others (me included), but we’ll invite you in, feed you, look after you, make sure you’re okay. This is what we do. Saints hold the values of fairness, honesty and helping each other out in the highest regard. Betray these either in character or action, and you will be judged. Admittedly, probably too quickly, and those actions become what your story is. It will follow you through life, impossible to escape in a community where, we don’t all know each other, but we all know off each other. This is how we talk about ourselves. Caught in an endless paradox of competing dual personalities that encompass daily living. Might this be the root of this self imposed pressure halting meaningful progress, weighing me down.

To comprehend how this paradox arose, I characterise it as the lasting, ever present gift of colonialism. Where the traditional British class system has morphed into a Saint variation. With its centuries old influence creating a mutable environment which reinforces this maddening contraction. Broken only by leaving the island, or at the dinner table, you accept your place within this social construct. Learning that being a part of the collective shelters you from judgement, fearful of diverging from the accepted norms. It’s invisible hand shaping our shared mentality. Reinforced across generations, these colonial roots have grown so deep, they are impossible to escape. It is the rope which binds and restrains us.

Being a product of this colonial legacy, I have a perpetual dread of judgement for not wanting to disgrace my community. To diverge from the norm, say something that embarrasses. Manifesting as this self imposed solitary desire to be word perfect and respectful in whatever I write. Instead of just writing what my experience was, and is. Causing any writing to be filtered via this looming worry not to write something wrong. Even after writing that sentence, the realisation of how ridiculous that is, because there is nothing bad, or wrong to write about. It just is. However, this dread repeatedly results in dull, bland accounts of what I’m attempting to capture. Slowly sabotaging why I want to create a cookbook in the first place.

Coupled with an apprehension that as I talk about my Saint experience, I feel like I’m betraying the Saints who still live on the Island. I’m regularly ranting at Emma-Jane about this and that happening on the island, but always stop myself sharing that publicly. As when I was living on the island, I hated others that passed judgement from afar, offering opinions lacking context or nuance for everyday considerations. Therefore, I keep my own counsel, as any negativity feels like treachery.

The rationale I keep returning too as the reason for why I’m not living on St Helena to escape this apprehension is a deep rooted sense of helplessness–the lack any real power to change the place and grow. Knowing that statement is deluded and egoistical, as I’m not really doing anything of note presently to address this sense of helplessness. Aware that isolated in the middle of the Ocean we will forever exist in the aftermath of decisions conceived in distant bureaucratic offices. Unable to escape memories of broken promises, impractical projects, dismissed local knowledge, imposed individual visions, and schemes lacking any real help. Later to be abandoned for reasons that were obvious to begin with. All dismantling trust and culture alike in its wake. Against this backdrop, I retreated. Not unlike many other Saints I know who share my deep pride and desire to uplift our community. I’ve been beaten down by this onslaught of ever changing agendas driven by an ever changing army of colonists.

The initial motivation for Saint Cooks started after reading an insulting characterisation of the Saint community. It dismissed Saint food as something Saints were incapable of celebrating. Looking down its nose at our quiet pride, and the unspoken bonds stretching back across generations that unite us around a pot or pan. Another colonial gift. Ignorant of the epic depth of ordinary living, experienced in the most extraordinary surroundings.

Accounts like this is something I’ve heard most of my formative years, always along the lines of–yes, yes, that nice, but you don’t know anything. Sit down and let me as a person who has been on Island for a minute, but learned in the ways of the ‘big’ world tell you, about the thing you’re lived all your life. The determination for trying to write a St Helena cookbook, is to punch this view hard in it’s nose. To show that our food, Saint food is worth celebrating. To shout about how we express our love with it. Our dignity in persevering despite hardships. To capture that lost way of life which created the virtues that shaped me, and which I want to pass on to my child. How we come together to look after each other, because Saints really are Saints.

That is why it is taking so long to write this St Helena Cookbook. My inability to reconcile these clashing emotions, and break free of these bonds. Hopefully this essay is the first step towards that goal. Acknowledging what is preventing my progress and why. Releasing some of this self imposed pressure to please all the people, all the time. To write unburdened, and like a nice drop of Curry, share rich, warm, vivid stories, with a bitta bite, of what makes the Saint experience so extraordinary. Trusting that my Saint experience translates. Reflecting a unique shared way of life that binds our community across time and distance.

-Robin

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