Rising up, Tisha Tejaya principally noticed going to the native produce markets in Darwin as a chore.
She did not realise that it was one thing that might assist join her to her household’s migration journey from Indonesia. They got here to Australia in 1998 due to political turmoil.
It wasn’t till just lately that these market visits turned one thing Tisha would contemplate deeply and write about.
“I did not wish to find out about our previous or my cultural roots as a Chinese language-Indonesian migrant again then,” Tisha says.
“So, I attempted my greatest to distance myself from all of it.”
All of this began to alter in 2020
About two years in the past, Tisha turned 23 and realised she was across the age her mother and father, Bernadette and Tony, had been once they’d been compelled to go away all the things they knew.
She started to ruminate on what coming to Australia would have been like for them.
For the primary time, she sat with the actual fact her mother and father had whole lives in Jakarta, solely to come back right here, the place they weren’t allowed to work, the place everybody else spoke a special language, and the place they could not get the meals they knew on the grocery store.
That is when Tisha began to know why her mother and father went out of their solution to go to the Fast Creek Markets and construct relationships with native growers, and why they made issues just like the bases for his or her curries themselves.
“They had been making an attempt to maintain our tradition alive,” Tisha says.
Discovering the fitting method
In peak millennial trend, the primary place Tisha seemed was the web.
However for as soon as, it did not have a lot to supply her.
She then bluntly requested her mother and father and her Auntie Hong Teo about all of it.
“I might ask, ‘What was the struggle like? And, ‘What was it like coming to Australia?’ they usually had been actually candy about it however simply clammed up,” Tisha says.
“For lots of migrants and refugees going by means of turmoil, when you’re secure there’s not quite a lot of incentive to look again on traumatic recollections.”
So, Tisha dropped it and as a substitute began asking for the recipes they’d introduced right here with them, extra as a result of she needed to study them than another cause.
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“After I requested them about meals, they’d reminisce about little issues by means of our recipes that I might then ask extra questions on,” Tisha says.
Speaking to her household about their journey was solely the start — Tisha nonetheless needed an understanding of her broader neighborhood’s experiences.
The revelation she’d had about meals being a vessel for recollections and a solution to categorical feelings led her to a different: The native market neighborhood was full of individuals with lived experiences just like that of Tisha’s household.
Tisha began seeing the market in a different way
That is when she determined to ask Hong — who she says is a “native superstar” on the Fast Creek Markets — for assist.
Hong laughs when this description is put to her however would not disagree with it.
She got here right here from Indonesia in 1997 and has lengthy been concerned with fruit and vegetable growers within the Northern Territory as a result of her husband used to move produce down south.
“When Tisha requested if I might introduce her to growers to find out about our tradition I mentioned to her: ‘Tisha, I am very happy with you,'” Hong says.
They went to the markets and visited native farms collectively, the place Tisha began recording info concerning the vegetables and fruit she encountered, in addition to the tales the growers and distributors shared together with her about their lives. She additionally drew illustrations of the tropical produce she noticed.
By late 2020, she’d turned most of what she’d curated into an illustrated guidebook to tropical produce in Darwin’s native markets referred to as The Pocketbook.
However that also did not really feel like sufficient.
It isn’t ‘what’ Tisha’s subsequent challenge is about, however ‘who’
Tropical produce is just the floor degree of what the markets are about.
Past buying and selling vegetables and fruit for cash, they’re about folks, neighborhood, data and tales.
“Within the markets, we really feel belonging, that the place you come from is right here too. You’re feeling that the folks there are who you might be,” Hong shares.
“And also you simply really feel so glad there.”
Tisha explains that a few of the market sellers do not earn some huge cash from promoting there.
“They’re there to maintain their traditions alive and to be there for the individuals who depend on the identical meals,” she says.
“The folks in my neighborhood have come right here from throughout the waters and constructed themselves from the bottom up. They’re resilient and resourceful within the face of hardship.
“They’re beneficiant and grateful and talk by means of meals and kindness.”
Cornucopia, Tisha’s subsequent ebook, will likely be concerning the wealthy tapestry that’s their lives.
Meet Sitramon and Yawaluk, two of the ladies featured in Cornucopia
Sitramon is without doubt one of the folks set to be featured in it. She moved right here from Thailand 15 years in the past and is thought for her pawpaw salad.
She says she’s offered it at Fast Creek Marketplace for the previous decade “as a result of my language isn’t any good however I’ve expertise for cooking so I attempt to share my tradition”.
That is what she desires from sharing her story with Tisha by means of Cornucopia: For Australia to know of her and her pawpaw salad.
Yawaluk, who’s additionally from Thailand and has been right here since 1980, has offered contemporary native fruit and greens at the marketplace for over 20 years for related causes.
“Rising and promoting is difficult work however I get pleasure from it. I can see folks and make buddies, and we’re all serving to each other,” she says.
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Tisha is a 2022 winner of the ABC Trailblazer competitors.