Global Hospitality
Written by Joshua Burdette
"There's a hunger beyond food that's expressed in food, and that's why feeding is always a kind of miracle." —Sara Miles
In the small village of Hualqui, high up in the Peruvian Sierra, there is a small Presbyterian congregation that meets by candlelight to worship and pray and give thanks to God. I found it years ago when I was living in South America, when some friends and I traveled up into the highlands to experience life in the Andes Mountains. It was there that we met a campesino named Anciano, an 85-year-old elder of the village church, and it was there that I experienced a true act of hospitality.
On our last morning in Hualqui, we hiked to the dirt road at the top of the hill to hitch a ride back to Cajamarca. From the road I looked out over the terra-cotta rooftops, mudbrick walls, and a patchwork of farms surrounding the river that spiraled down through the valley. At any moment I expected to see a van barrel around the corner in a cloud of dust to take us away. Instead, I saw Anciano making his way towards us, smiling with a stick in his hand to steady his gait on the rugged terrain. “I’m inviting you to my house to eat before you leave,” he informed us. “The truck will wait on you. Les invito.”
“Les invito.” In Peru, and especially in the highlands, an invitation like this might as well have been a command.
Unable to refuse, we followed him down the stone path through fields of alfalfa and lavender until we got to a little shack at the bottom of the hill. On the way there I noticed a quick flash of color dip into the trail and then dart back out again, interrupting an otherwise earth-toned landscape. It was Anciano’s daughter, an elderly woman in her 60s, dressed as all the women of the village in bright hand-woven textiles, a bulbous skirt, and a straw hat. She was sprinting from field to field, house to house, with her long black braids dangling behind her as she zigzagged through the village. Each time she scampered across the path an extra tin mug handle or two was looped by another finger in her grasp. This was not a home that tended toward the superfluous, in smallwares or anything, and I soon realized that our visit demanded a loan from the neighbors in order to serve us breakfast.
At their home we sat under the rafters of a chicken coop and ate scrambled egg sandwiches and creamed honey. A large stone sitting atop a larger, flat one still had bits of kernels and flour; it was the millstone they used to grind the wheat for the bread I was eating. It was pan serrano, dense and chewy on the inside and crusty on the outside with bits of char from the wood oven. They cut it open and added the eggs, scrambled loose right in the pan with bright and springy yolks marbled with soft whites. To balance the saltiness we spread a little raw honey from a repurposed soap dish and washed it all down with hot oat porridge from the borrowed mugs. At that moment I became aware that I was experiencing something both ordinary and special. Everything they gave us came from what they had put into the land and gotten in return: dirt and seeds and water and sweat and patience. The distance from farm to table was mere steps.
I can’t remember this meal without the experience and sting of nostalgia. It was likely an ordinary act of second nature kindness for our hosts. For myself, it was the greatest act of hospitality I’ve ever received. I’m confident it came at a great cost to our hosts. In a place where death is ubiquitous and labor is directly tied to survival, this meal had a sacred, almost eucharistic, nature to it. Through our eating, we were literally giving thanks, living gratitude. Thanks for life, thanks for rain in season, thanks for Anciano’s model of hospitality.
Yet…there is also something else that I associate with this meal.
I can’t shake this unsettling question: what would have happened if the tables were turned? What if I’d encountered Anciano carefully walking the streets of my city with his cane and straw hat? Would he have gotten an invitation into my house or yours? Would I have been as eager to receive him as he was to receive me? Or would I have passed over him and the extravagant blessing it is to give without expecting anything in return?
I have much to learn from the hospitality of my global neighbors. Will you join me?
