Out of Eden Walk: Food to power a walk around the world

Paul Salopek: This project is based on following the first humans who walked out of Africa, right? So, of course, I’m looking down at my feet as I walk through one of our origin sites, the Rift Valley of northeastern Africa. After talking to experts, they say the place is just littered with millions of stone tools. And what are those stone tools? Their kitchen utensils, choppers, meat cleavers, cutters and scrapers. So, the African Rift, where we were born, was basically a giant cutting board, a kitchen, an antique kitchen.

It has a biological premise. When we were able to cut open animals for the first time millions of years ago, using stone tools, we basically sliced open all this energy from the ecosystem that we couldn’t get with a strictly plant diet or a mixed plant diet. Animal protein, animal fat, especially marrow organs, were so nutritious that they “proteinated” us and allowed us to evolve the way we’ve evolved today, big-brained apes.

It was kind of lemony. It was almost like a light lemonade, frothy, kind of fizzy. And it’s not super alcoholic. It’s actually quite nutritious. But it was kind of funny because we walked out of the desert into these palm groves, and there were a bunch of people out walking around with very large knives because they’re chopping these notches in these trees to collect sap, kind of reeling in front of us, waving their rather large knives.

Yeah, this is the case, you know, in a highly conflicted area where humans are at each other,  and I’ve covered quite a few wars, as well … Food takes on an even more heightened power when humans are in extremis. And I think it’s one of the few places where a kind of a safe zone is the kitchen. And so, in Nablus, my walking partner, Bassam Almohor, and I joined a group of women who were trying to preserve Nabulsi traditional cooking. As one said, “Everybody’s eating Kentucky Fried Chicken now.” And they were trying to find these original ingredients in a culture of food in the Levant, which is basically a crossroads. You know, they’re influences from Rome, they’re influences from the Ottomans.

Absolutely. In this ancient city founded by the Romans 2,000 years ago, this kitchen was an outpost of cultural resistance and preservation. These women [were] very conscious that the herbs they were cutting, the dough they were kneading, the dumplings they were stewing … were kind of symbols of identity for them.

Yeah, I consider it one of the fringe benefits of walking across the world on this project, Marco, is gleaning orchards, and about 80% of my route, I think it’s like 15,000 miles so far, is through farmland. Think about it. Out of Africa, through the Levant, into Anatolia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. It’s pretty rural, so I’m eating a lot of fresh food straight out of people’s fields and orchards. And my walking partner in Anatolia, a Kurdish guy, a photographer, Murat Yazar … he would empty his rucksack at the end of the day when we were making camp and out spilled this cornucopia of tomatoes and figs and fiery peppers and kind of very fresh zucchinis that snapped when you when you broke them. He would just kind of smile wryly, and I say, “Where’d you get this stuff?” And, he’d say, “In our culture, Paul, it’s allowed.”

Yeah, this is one of the more surreal food stories of this global journey. So we walk into this small town, it’s mainly a Muslim town, on this river in Bihar in eastern India … and I see a sign that just pops. It’s a pizza sign. It says pizzeria, and it had an arrow. It’s a handmade sign in the market. I hadn’t had pizza eons. So, I followed this sign to a guy’s shop, and imagine kind of an Indian busy marketplace, right, with awnings sticking out onto streets and lots of activity, local produce. This guy had been a defense contractor in Afghanistan with the US military, working for two years at Pizza Huts on US military bases, on FOBs, forward operating bases. Which, as you know, are like mini American cities. That’s the American way of war. You bring your Pizza Hut pizzas with you. And he had learned to make exact duplicates of Pizza Hut pizzas here in the middle of India. And he was so proud of it. He had custom-designed an oven. He was importing spices from a big port on the Indian coast. And I said, “How’s business?” And he got a little bit deflated. He said, “Paul, I think I’m a little bit ahead of my time. Nobody knows what pizza is here, and nobody eats it.” 

You know, every one of these people I met, every one of the kitchens I had the privilege of stepping into, the dinner tables that I sat around, whether it was a Kazakh shepherd on the floor or on a rug on the sand, or whether it was a Saudi prince’s palace with 16 courses, is that food is the common bridge to each other. No matter what culture, ideology, geography, politics … If somebody invites you to break bread, you’ve made it. You’ve made this kind of primal connection. And just as Murat was, you know, grazing the farmers’ fields as we walk through Anatolia, internalizing his home. Right. He was a he was a melancholic Kurd, and his part of the world was in civil war for 50 years. He kind of was internalizing. He was eating his landscape, eating his home. I see this project as the same, at a global level, that the planetary landscape sustains us. It’s our table, and we better respect it. And every time we eat, we’re savoring a bit of home. So, it’s an important, important glue that holds humanity together.