Ageing
Hoof Soup for lunch
Kit MacLachlan draws lessons about the ageing agenda from an Elders Lunch Club in the Arctic
Kit MacLachlan draws lessons about the ageing agenda from an Elders Lunch Club in the Arctic
When we arrived at our present parish in 1997, I was invited to join the team which is responsible for the Outlook Lunch Club (for over 55's). As I had been involved with older people in the previous parish, this suited me very well as a way of getting to know people. So this year, when my husband and I visited our last parish whilst on holiday, we were delighted to be invited by the curate to attend the local Elders' Centre, which had been built since our time, for lunch.
There were several members of our old congregation there, and we enjoyed catching up on all the news after 6 years.
"Have some soup" they invited. So we wandered over to the soup pot.The speciality of the day was CARIBOU HOOVES - complete with fur.
Delicious!
We regretted that we had in fact had a late breakfast and were still full, but a cup of tea would be just fine. They smiled gently and accepted our refusal graciously, and we enjoyed our cups of tea with bannock, a more acceptable favourite.
The parish was in the Canadian Arctic, 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle , and anything cooked is a delicacy, since traditionally the Inuit eat raw meat, - in an igloo you cannot cook and have a house! Indeed, the old word Eskimo literally means raw meat eater. The hooves are thrown into a large pot of water (no vegetables) and boiled for three hours, and are then ready to eat - usually with great relish. To me, the water looked grey, and the hooves singularly unappetising.
However, one thing which I thought was definitely worthwhile: the elders invited post-natal girls to join them for lunch. Many of the girls having their first babies are young teenagers, and the idea is to teach them some of the traditions of their culture, and to help them with Inuinaktun the language of the elders, which is in danger of dying out.
In this country, at least on the surface of it, we speak the same language as our young people, but in our rapidly changing world, there are many things that separate the young from the old culturally. How and where to bring together the young and the old, in order to share culture, values, and faith, are problems across the world it seems.
Perhaps hoof soup is the answer!
© 2005 Kit MacLachlan & Newsline