I can tell you I had tears in my eyes. We were alone in the room when I saw everybody
filling the room. And it's the same sensation that I have every single day. When I'm sitting,
you know, we have our latest project, it's something called Taube, which we called Farmers'
Kitchen. I don't call it restaurant because it's a list of forbidden words like concept
and restaurant. Restaurant is one of the words that you don't choose. We'd rather say
Farmers' Kitchen. So it's like in a dead-end alley and like I sit in the corners, this is
like my officer, I don't have a proper office. And every day when I see people coming in
for lunch, I say, well, we're still doing the right thing, and people are still responding
and like it's very reassuring for me. It's a wonderful event. I'm not going to say Krone
and also organizers because I think they are just doing their job. It is when we have the
power of money, politics, or recognition, it is what are we going to do about it? Are we
going to make more of the same? Or if we receive more, it doesn't mean what are we going to
do to receive more and more, but what are we going to do to give more? I learned from
my yesterday's friend, Alan Jenkins, that King Frederick, who's a Danish king, like
in the Second World War, when people had to go towards the yellow star, he was the first
to want to wear it. So it is how to set an example as a leader. How can each one of us
make a change? How to hear always in my head what Galdi said, be the change you want to
see. It's not just about asking others, what's the standard for me, what's the other's
standard for me, what my father did for me, what my superior did for me, it is what each
and every one of us can do. Jacqueline is going to talk like just after me, just give
you this small pot of honey. It's a project that she would tell everything about, but
I think it's a project of honey production in cities, and her organization tried to make
a change through a small pot of honey that is being produced by homeless in cities. So
this is definitely nothing, but this has been produced by millions of bees. Can you imagine
if you remember how honey is produced, guys? It's every drop by drop, who is transported
by each single bee, and each single bee don't think about politics or religion or nothing
at all, they just do what they have to do. So how can we just do what we have to do,
and how I hope what we are doing is the correct and right thing. I'm going to tell you a small
story about a very small adventure in a very small country called Lebanon. Lebanon is not
bigger than, you know, 10,000 square kilometers, it's nearly as big as a long island, and it's
nearly a million, it's less than a million people in the city of Beirut, at five million
in the whole country. And it's, you know, it makes such a stir, sometimes I wonder why,
but sometimes I say like it's quite unique, it's quite a unique case, not just because
of Lebanese, you know, and you know, we're more like pickups as Lebanese, maybe as Mediterranean,
but I think it's quite a unique case because we're going to, I'm going to show just, you
know, like images of it, it's like shows that will go on and on, and just a little bit,
show you some pictures about what we do. So just to situate the country a little bit before,
I think Lebanon is quite a unique country because it's a country where the concept of
the other does not exist. And all other countries in the world, there's a majority and a small
minority, there are others, you know, black and white, Christian and Muslim, green and
yellow, you know, like anything about religion, about race, about anything. Lebanon is the
only place where the concept of the other does not exist. Who is the other and who is
the main? Are they Christian or Muslim as a religion? Are they sea people or mountain
people? Are they people looking to the east or people looking to the west? It's all of
these together, it's none of these and all of these together. It's really a half and
half country, which makes it so wonderful because so diverse, you know, but at the same
time so fragile, because the second one part gets a little bit stronger than the other,
it would like to, you know, eradicate or erase the other. So what we try to do is first of
all say like fair enough, our latest tool was from 1975 till 1991, and we killed each
other because our ethnic, our religious, you know, our political differences. And then,
you know, like, I'm a son of farmers and producers, and I said, what can we do to break
all of these people together? I'm not going to talk about food or food quality, you know,
or gastronomy, I'm just going to talk about people, wonderful people, wonderful producers
who are first of all human beings. So what we try to do is like to find a common ground
between all of these diverse and different people. Difference can be a reason to make
war between each other, or we can just celebrate diversity. Celebrate diversity, see what's
different between me and him, and say fair enough, this is the difference between those
of us, we can kill each other because of this, or we can say both of us, you know, like honey.
So this is a common ground we can build around. So land, the product of the land, the agriculture
and the cuisine was this common ground between all these diverse people. People in different
regions of Lebanon, whether they are in the north or in the south, they had no religious
difference at all in their food tradition. Obviously, Muslims would not maybe drink a
lot of alcohol or eat pork, but many Christians, too, at the same time, don't eat much pork
in this part of the world, maybe, or drink or do not drink alcohol. So other than that,
it is like absolutely the same traditions. There's a big difference between regional
differences, because Lebanon is a very small country, but still, you know, it has a coast
of 200 kilometers, it was a coastal plain, and a very different climate, and food production
and cuisine, since there are high mountains that climb to 3,000 meter altitude, and it's
a completely different, drastic production, cuisine and agriculture, and then below it's
a Bekaa Valley, who is like just in Avangu to what's inland, and the desert of the inland
is going to be. So it was about how can you bring all of these different people around
the common project. We started in 2004 with a farmer's market. It was like a very, very
simple step. One of the producers all around the country doing great work, but who would
like to have to make a village? It was how to bring the producer from rural areas to
urban areas, where there's a demand and a purchasing power. So in 2004, we started the
first farmer's market in Lebanon, in Bekaa, and someone was just asking me, what's the
difference between a farmer's market and a souk? All Oriental souks are wonderful places,
but it's more like, you know, open air malls, where you have more resellers than producers.
What we wanted to do in this project was about putting the people, the producers first, you
know, it was about the people at what they do, and not just their production. So it's
the producers on the market. It's the direct relation between the consumer and the producer.
It's pride and recognition for the producer, and it is an important economical return for
the producer himself. And for the consumer, it's very important to understand that food
is not just a commodity that you buy with money. We don't just go get a job, make money
and go buy food. Food is not something you buy. Food is something that our parents produced,
planted or cooked. If we can't do it ourselves, you know, anymore, at least have a direct
contact with the person who's doing it. So the project began as a farmer's market in
2004, and it was straight away like a meeting place for people. People used to come with
there, and are still coming with there, you know, kids and family on a Saturday morning,
it's every Saturday morning, it's the beginning of weekend, and it got to be, you know, like
a meeting place and an educational place in the center of the city. From that, we moved
to something else, which is education in schools, where it was important to know to give some
sort of edge to the children. Children are just like a sponge, you know, like whatever
we put in there, they are coming to give back. So what they see, what they listen and what
they eat, it's what's going to form them and to make them. And from that step, in 2007,
we said, it's, well, all of this is wonderful, but we would like to go and discover the producers
themselves in their own villages. What can we do? So we created all the food and fees,
which are regional food festivals, which is a move in a country direction, a move from
urban to rural, where we would go to a village, you know, if it's very well known for its
tomato, to the tomato village here, the cherry village there, or the fish festival in another
village. So all of this is very important to give, you know, pride and recognition to
the producer himself, to the peasant. So the peasant knows, you know, he's not like just
the bottom of the pyramid. The pyramid has no bottom and no top. We are all just, you
know, contributing by whatever we're doing. In Islam, they're the same, where they say
each act is an act of prayer. You don't need to go to a church or to a mosque to pray.
Whatever you're doing, you're a writer, whatever you write, you know, it's an act of worship.
Whatever you're cooking, whatever you're doing, you know, you're just, it's an act of worship
and whatever you're doing, if you're doing it, it's the best way possible. So as of
2007, we started these different activities in the villages, and it's always, you know,
about empowering producers, about, you know, meeting the producers, about bringing an important
income and recognition to the producers. And this project here is called Hybzumela.
It's bread and salt that we did four years ago with a lady who's giving, Mariah Vogelsang,
who's a wonderful Dutch food designer, who's giving, I think, just now a workshop for kids
about vegetables. So Mariah came to Lebanon like four weeks, and we did a workshop about
what was food memory for people. It was like 50 producers and people from all around the
country, and it was about thinking what was the food, the war food memories they had,
and everybody had the same war food memory, it was bread. Because the second war or problems
started, people just ran away to bakeries to buy bread, to stop bread in their houses.
So what we did together was like, we, each one baked his bread, we shaded it into like
a bowl, we colored it into green with parsley juice, because the green line was divided
between East Beirut and West Beirut. And this is where the supermarket, the farmers market
started and still is on this green line. Today it's not a green line anymore, it's like downtown
Beirut, like a fancy nice part of the city. And we filled each of these bowls with like
some kind of local ricotta, so the sport like Lebanon, you know, in Arabic, and cedar honey,
and other people had to come and we drew like this big line, you know, of green bread bowls,
and other people had to come on the market day and eat, you know, raise this bread bowl
and eat a little bit of the ricotta and the honey and try, you know, to ingest the war
memory of other people. So it's always, it's not just about, you know, selling products,
it's just about what the food and the history can have or can translate as of history and
tradition. From all different expression of tradition, tradition is not a book that one
opens and reads, right? It is, you know, architecture, it is costume, I think we are all dressed the
same, I think architecture is all getting the same, music is nearly all getting the same,
but there is one only expression of tradition that is still authentic and that people take
us all around, Italian, didn't take their language with them around the world, right?
They took pizza and pasta, Lebanese took their kibbeh and tabbouleh. Yesterday when you were
preparing lunch, Kenneth, you know, Kenneth is from Finland and he had a big smile on his face
when Renee presented the finished kaffir, right? So it is the best expression of one is what all
these wonderful producers outside are doing. They have like jewels in their hands. They are so proud
of like potato or a nal, you know, of a seaweed and all of these things are expression of this land.
Nothing can be a better expression of me as an individual of my history and of my roots,
better than the food itself, better than the agriculture and what we do out of it, which is
the food itself. So as you see in this picture, we got to 2009, November 2009, where we said,
well, all of this is great, but there is one part that is still missing. There are many parts
who are still missing, for sure. But one part that we wanted to add, which was the cuisine itself.
I don't want the producer to be a supplier for individuals, you know, a supplier of goods,
vegetables or pot of jam for individuals in their own houses or for chefs, you know. Renee is a
great chef. He's looking at the producers, but it's still not the producer that is cooking.
What's this is Mona and this is Nelly. This is a Mali and that makes the best bread ever in the world.
What does Mali prepares for lunch for her kids every single day? What does Nelly prepare? What
does Suzanne prepares for her family every single day? So it was about like, what does these wonderful
farmers and producers do as a traditional cuisine themselves in their own houses? So it was 2009,
November, when it created this farmer's kitchen, like there's a farmer's market, it was a farmer's
kitchen, where every single day a different lady from a different village would come to like this,
I'm sure you saw pictures of it here, like this big space in Beirut, 60 people seating and Tuesday
is tea counters at the end, not more than that, like a kitchen, like a home kitchen, nothing more,
for the lady not to be intimidated by the place. Obviously, there's a team of chefs and people
who are here to support this lady, but every single day it's a different lady who comes from a
different village of Lebanon and who would prepare her own cuisine from eight in the morning until
12.30, at 12.30 we clean and set up the buffet on the same place where she was working as a
1 to 4, it is as she was, she is behind her counter and serving food people 10 to 15 different dishes,
the drinks and the desserts and she's serving people as she was hosting them at home. So every
single day a different lady from a different region who's telling a different story of a different
region. So it is certainly about the land, certainly about the product, but I think first and foremost
about the people themselves, about wonderful producers, wonderful cook, curious people,
you know, why are you all here today, why did you come, where did you come from, what are you
expecting, you know, what do you want to take with you? For me it is, you know, like this, just a simple,
small pot of honey and it is, you know, the change that you want to see. How can each and every one
of us, you know, be aware, be responsible and bring this small drop that we'll add and we'll
definitely make a change. Thank you.
