Charleston

My first impression of Charleston was that it was beautiful but I wasn’t sure I’d survive a whole day in the oppressively hot humid weather. Our first stop was at Drayton Hall, the oldest preserved, not restored, plantation in the country. We received a very thorough explanation of everything in the house and the history of the families who lived there, from a sweet elderly lady who served as our tour guide and was obviously very passionate about her work.

Later in the day, we talked to an African-American woman who said one of her cousins recently got married on one of the older plantations in the area and some family members were appalled, and didn’t want to go. I thought that was so interesting, because it is hard to know how to feel about such beautiful land with such an ugly history. On the one hand, I can see how this woman’s family feels about never wanting to hold a celebration on the land that had seen such suffering for their ancestors. On the other hand, I can also see how it could be seen as a celebration of how far our country has come that this young woman is able to have that choice at all, and to make her peace with a place like that.

For lunch, we had some incredible food at a Gullah restaurant. For most of us, the only connection we had to the culture of the Gullah people of South Carolina was a children’s show called “Gullah Gullah Island”. The Gullah culture developed because all of the enslaved people that were brought to work on the Charleston plantations were from the same areas in West Africa. We were excited to learn more and experience the cuisine of this culture. One of the managers of the restaurant, a kind and funny woman named Keisha, had reserved a back room for us to view a video about traditional Gullah crafts while we ate from the buffet of traditional Gullah food. The food was amazing- I’ve enjoyed expanding my culinary horizons on this trip to include lots of organic, fresh vegetarian-friendly food, but at this point, any food that was cooked in greasy goodness and resembled down-home southern cooking was more than welcome. The best way I can think of to describe Gullah food is that it is similar to soul food but with an emphasis on seafood. We all filled our plates with foods like seafood casserole, collard greens, fish head soup, biscuits, and homemade candied yams. Keisha told us that they believe in making everything themselves, that all of their fruits or vegetables are homegrown and all the stews and sauces and such are made fresh daily. She told us that Gullah food was composed of foods that the slaves on plantations were able to scavenge from the fields and find in the waters of the area. I suppose I had never thought about how different kinds of food cultures can be determined by class. In the film “People Like Us” that we viewed as a part of the sociology class for this trip, one segment discusses how lower classes tend to embrace and strongly identify with the kind of food they are used to, the kind of food they can afford- like plain white bread- rather than food that is more expensive but might be better for them- like organic whole-wheat bread. Food becomes an important identifying factor for certain cultures and experiencing a meal of traditional cultural food enables an outsider to understand the history behind the culture a bit better.

After lunch, we went to a market downtown that used to be a market where slaves were sold and now serves as a mostly outdoor craft market. We took showers at the beautiful College of Charleston and then had a delicious seafood dinner with Pierce’s family. Dinner ended with a lovely surprise of cupcakes decorated with our trip’s logo that we all enjoyed with the Greenbergs. At this point it is Day 38 of our journey and we are all feeling the toll of it. We returned to the bus exhausted and drove on to what would be our last stop, St. Augustine.