Soul Food

Food has the unbelievable knack to bring people together. In the Krnjača Asylum Centre's cafeteria, each corner of the world meets over sweet hibiscus tea and bitter Turkish coffee.

At the entrance to the canteen there are posters keeping refugees informed about their options, including the availability of free legal aid to asylum seekers in Serbia (provided in partnership with the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights and the UNHCR) and discussing everything with refugees who are considering returning home so that they can make a well-informed decision (return and reintegration arrangements are fully provided by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and in association with the Republic of Serbia's Commissariat for Refugees).

Two posters featured to the right of the door that leads to the cafeteria.

This is one of the chefs who works in the kitchen.
He showed us around all the canteen areas.

The IOM poster provided information
in Arabic, French, and English. 

As we were touring the canteen, a woman came in to pick up a can of baby formula for her son, one of the kitchen worker told me that the day before, the same woman picked up a formula for her young daughter.

She presented the kitchen workers with a request paper in order to be given the formula.

I got a peek behind the scenes to see how they were making the gibanica for dinner later that day. All meals are prepared to halal standards, meaning that it is permissible to be eaten my a practitioner of Islam.

A view of the kitchens

The oil used is called "Rusko Ulje" (Russian
Oil) and the water is Voda Vrnjci, from a
spring in the Serbian town of Vrnjačka Banja.

The two women I spoke to who were working in the kitchens, Jelka and Mira, noted not just the quantity of food they were producing, but rather the quality. 

"The people in here eat better than we do at home, but then again, they are thousands of kilometers away from home, so this food is the least they deserve."