Ethnic Lunches
I turned 5 during the year I started Kindergarten. It was Australia, 1955.
My parents emigrated from Alexandria, Egypt when Colonel Nasser had overthrown King Farouk. Egypt, once again, was going to be Egypt for the Egyptians, not Europeans. There was a mass exodus. Some families moved back to their places of origin -- France, Italy, Greece -- and others moved on to new destinations -- Canada, America or, in our case, to Australia in December 1954.
My father spoke 5 languages, English being one of them. My brother could also speak some English as he went to an English school in Egypt. However the rest of our family, my grandmother, my mother, my sister and I, couldn’t speak a word.
It was traumatic times for all of us and all for different reasons. One of my traumas was food.
Milk at playtime was one. The milk was delivered in the early hours of the morning, and sat in the sun until the canteen staff arrived at around 9.30am. Then it would be taken inside and kept cool until playtime at 11.00am. You had to drink it or you would be in trouble. How could I tell them, when I couldn’t speak any English, that I felt ill after trying to drink this tepid, probably slightly-off milk. I hated it. There were other children who actually vomited, and the man with the sawdust would come along and cover it. If you were lucky you could pour the milk down the drain without being caught. Disgusting times.
I didn’t dislike milk, I used to have a lovely hot chocolate at home in the morning before going to school. Lots of drinking chocolate added to freshly boiled milk with three teaspoons of sugar, which made you feel all warm and content. It was a great way to start your day.
However by the end of the day I would go home crying to my parents, not wanting to go to school anymore. Nobody could understand me and I couldn’t drink the milk because it made me feel sick. But I guess my milk complaint was trivial compared to the difficulties that my parents were going through.
Mum, bless her, found some flavoured straws at the local shop. They came in vanilla, strawberry or chocolate so when you drank through the straw it would flavour the milk. That sounded OK. So I went to school with my straws, feeling a little bit happier. The idea of flavoured straws was fine until you had to suck the slightly-off milk through them. Again I went home crying and not wanting to go back to school. I’m not sure how long we persevered with this trauma, but eventually I was spared from this playtime milk ritual.
Bringing lunch or play-lunch from home was another one of my traumas. Probably for the first couple of years at school, I don’t think it was an issue. It only became apparent to me when I started to understand what the other children were saying.
It was quite normal for me to have salami, mortadella, feta cheese, olives, or leftover meat, which had probably been cooked with garlic, in my sandwiches. We kept our lunches in our school bags in the lockers and when lunchtime came the smell of salami, mortadella or garlic would permeate the locker room and all my little “friends” would pull faces, point and laugh.
I soon started throwing away my lunch or just not taking it out of my bag. I wanted to have “normal” Australian sandwiches: devon with tomato sauce, vegemite, honey, or jam sandwiches. Or I would have liked to buy a sausage roll, a pasty, or a pie with sauce from the canteen.
Many times I would go home absolutely starving. Several times Mum would discover the uneaten sandwiches in my bag, when I had forgotten to throw them out. That made her really mad. The solution was to keep my sandwiches simple: jam, honey or peanut butter. Sometimes Dad would make peanut butter with honey or jam. He couldn’t help himself. I didn’t like Vegemite. I think it is something you have to be raised with as I have done with my children. They were given rusks dipped in Vegemite, recommended by the baby health clinic sister, from the age of 3 months.
My play-lunch would be a piece of fruit, a piece of cake or some Greek biscuits. The cake was fine. It was the “white” biscuits that were strange: it could have been the sesame seeds on top of the little plaited biscuits, or the smell of cinnamon that might have taken the other children aback. I loved my sweets, so I think I overcame their sneers. There is just some food you cannot throw out. That would be sacrilege.
I never dared to ask any of my friends home or ever wanted a birthday party. I think I had my first birthday party when I was 11.
Birthday parties at friends’ houses would involve little sandwiches, again with devon and tomato sauce, little sausage rolls with tomato sauce, frankfurts with tomato sauce, little pies with tomato sauce,. Then for sweets there was fairy bread (bread with hundreds and thousands), little fairy cakes, hedgehog (crushed biscuits mixed with a chocolate sauce), lemon curd cakes, toffees, or stick jaws, chocolate crackles (made with rice bubbles and chocolate sauce) and coconut ice. I sometimes think that Australians had these with tomato sauce as well.
I’m not sure what Mum made for my birthday party, but I’m sure it was a truly Greek feast and I am also sure that there were plenty of leftovers.
It was such a waste to throw all that good food out during my primary school days. I now think that it was the other children who really missed out.
People have become much more tolerant and adventurous with food. You walk through any Australian or English supermarket today and you can buy just about any type of food from around the world. You can go to a deli and find a choice of all sorts of goodies, including salami, mortadella, feta cheese, olives, schnitzels, Greek salads, and a wide selection of breads to put them on : Turkish pita bread, Italian ciabatti, French baguette, bagels, lavasch wraps, as well as white or brown sliced. I look back now and think that at the age of five I was probably one of the youngest food pioneers.
