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INTERVIEWS

Henry Amato

Paul Arceneaux

Francis Chauvin

Kathia Duran

Pete & Clara Gerica

Wayne Schexnayder

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Interviews and photographs by Laura Westbrook, director, Louisiana Regional Folklife Program

Kathia Duran

Cheese Maker – Hammond, LA

“I mean [since Hurricane Katrina], how am I going to make the cheese and how am I going to put it in the stores? That will be something that I will have to work with, for instance, the [Crescent] City Farmers Market and several other non-profit entities to promote and marketthe product. But the bottom line is the community; they need to support, and ask for, Louisiana-made products.”

—Kathia Duran

Listen to this 4-minute audio clip of Kathia Duran talking about growing up in Costa Rica and moving to New Orleans. [Windows Media Player required. Go here to download the player for free.]

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What follows is a portion of the original interview that has been edited for length. To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.

EDITED TRANSCRIPT

Date: November 11, 2005
Location: Coffee Shop – Metairie, LA
Interviewer: Laura Westbrook, University of New Orleans
Length: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Project: Gulf Coast Foodways Renaissance Project/Hurricane Katrina

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Laura Westbrook: It's November 11th and this is an interview with Ms. Kathia Duran at a coffee shop next door to Union Supermarket in Metairie, which sells Kathia’s cheeses. The interviewer is Laura Westbrook. Kathia, will you pronounce your name for me?

Kathia Duran: Sure; my name is Kathia Duran—Kathia Duran, was Hidalgo.

And how long have you lived in this region? How long have you lived near the—?

I came to New Orleans 15 years ago. I went to school here to Loyola University and—

I did too.

Yeah; I studied there and then like a lot of us—fall in love with the city and all the little things that they had so then I stayed here and I've been here ever since. I kind of moved out of Orleans Parish and I live in St. Charles Parish but this more community; so I'm still going back and forth—back and forth to—to New Orleans.

And what was it like—where did you come from and what was that like making the decision to move here?

Well I am from San Jose, Costa Rica and all my family is from there and everybody is there except my mother who I brought about five years ago. And I just—it was one of those love connections—stories in which you meet an American there and you fall in love and we had a long distant relationship and you know finally after dating for a couple—about a year he came back to Costa Rica so we can continue in this long-distant relationship; we're spending a lot of money on—on telephone and he was almost finished with his—his career in—studies at Tulane so he brought me here to study English and you know we got married and—you know I stayed. [Laughs] I stayed in New Orleans; so that's how I ended up originally in—in New Orleans and I found a lot of similarities that is—believe it or not but for—it's a lot of Spanish and French influence so you know I've—what shocked me at the beginning quite frankly was the large black American community, which we don't have.

So the beginning living in—in Orleans Parish was for me a little bit scary quite frankly because we—we don't know. But then they had a lot of—kind of Spanish, French—the Creoles and the Cajuns and all this various cultures and that's what I kind of felt at home with the red beans and rice on Monday which we eat it every day. And it was funny because that's what we eat every day and here they—they eat it every Monday, so—and the sausage and—and all the—the food and the meals you can—and the family ties and you know it's—it's more the slow pace atmosphere, the easy going; that kind of thing I'm very familiar with—with the Spanish culture. So there was a—for me a connection; it was very—actually very easy to—to meld into—into the culture and you know I stayed and that's—that's one of the difficult things right now after Katrina that for a lot of us who are actually not from here—not born here which we—we kind of adopt the City and love it and everything that it's a time that is so difficult that 50-percent of me says, “Got to get out of here; there's nothing here.” I mean there is nothing for you here to offer and a lot of my family and friends that live out of state—that's what they say. Get out of that black hole; that's what they tell me. But another 50-percent of me—is in love with the City and—and—and the morning. I mean the morning every day, the City—what's happening and I just want to be part of the construction and the building and—and having again that sense—That's where it—it kind of tears me apart.

It is quite a tear.

It's tearing me—tearing me apart every day that a lot of me says get out of here; forget about this cheese business. Forget about your life here. And another 50-percent of me says stay with—with my people, with my music, with my culture with—with this thing that is—New Orleans that is very glue(y); I kind of find it very glue(y) and so that—that's the most difficult thing and that's what we started last week making—last week—about two weeks ago we reopened the operation. We started making the cheeses; they—you know there's people placing an order here and there but it's nothing. Right now it's literally nothing for me—for us, so it's almost like—exactly it felt like that way it felt 15 years ago when I came to this City—because you come with a suitcase to a new place and you don't know what you're going to do; you don't know what's your future; you don't have a routine; you just pretty much go day by day. That's exactly how it feels right now as an immigrant.

Yes; so you're almost living like an immigrant in your own home now?

Yeah; even though I—I go to uptown and I go to downtown and I've been going around and I know my way around and I know the people here and it's just like—it's—it's just like they—I live day by day with a lot of uncertainty. It's—so that's the reality right now.

Yeah; you mentioned how—how easy it was—or how—how the culture here made it easier for you to make a transition to living here. Are there Hispanic traditions that you brought with you or—or did—were you able to connect with the community here and continue to carry on some of the traditions? You mentioned food traditions; were there other ones that—like certain kinds of celebrations, or—?

Well if—if you think about it a lot of that culture—traditions all around the world goes around food. Food is the center attention—is the table, is what you eat what makes people to connect. And the first five, six years because I was going to a university and I was—I did not speak English; I pretty much was with Americans. I was kind of avoiding my own culture and trying to merge—and trying to transfer myself to the new culture but after I kind of simulate and understood—I kind of went back to my own people, so it's—it's just like you play a game and—and you know lately the past years what I do—I attend a Spanish-speaking church and I did that on purpose even though I can go to American—English-speaking church I go to a Spanish-speaking church because there's not just the Gospel that you're going to; you go for the social, so they do—they do you know lots of events, lots of cultural events about Hispanic—not just my own country because we have very few—very few Costa Ricans in—in New Orleans. But about you know the food and the music and, you know, the Independence Day—we celebrate Independence Day and we celebrate in outfits how—how we dress up—

Yes; the traditional?

Yes, but it's always around about food and music and it's funny because every—every culture that you go it's about food and music—food and music. So I do other things around my church—.But I will give you the address later—later but and then they—I was more involved with the economic development—I mean I used to be more involved with the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the—the city of Kenner has a lot of cultural activities because the majority of people—Hispanic people live in Kenner, so they have all these cultural events.

Speaking of the good food, how did you get started in the cheese business?

Well—well first of all my family—my mother's side is from a place called Cartago.

How is that spelled?

It's spelled C-a-r-t-a-g-o and that's—

And that's in Costa Rica?

That's in Costa Rica; they—that's the mountains and they grow—they're in the dairy—it's all dairy and cows and so a lot of farming—my distant family—when I used to grow up and I used to go to the countryside to see my grandmother. You know, you go down the street to drink coffee with a neighbor and the lady was in the back making cheese. But—and it was very common; it was very common as a way of making—making the cheese because when you were making the cheese you can't stop until you've finished. And I—I just remember it was very, very common—pretty much all the houses one way or the other with so much access of milk that they had the sour cream and they had—they had the different kind of cheeses, and so I always grew up with the sense of—that they made their own bread and they made their own cheese; they—they grow their own vegetables because my family from my mother's side is still [doing this] today—they—they do a lot of agri-business. They even grow—they have coffee plantations; a lot of them have potato plantations; they have plantings and they grow also sugar—sugar cane and—and let me see what else they grow that I remember—and of course it's a given—it's a given for them to have cows. So it's just part of the scenery; I mean it's—it's so—so I think I always had that on me.

Did you learn as a child?

No; actually I learned it a year ago. I finally—it's one of the things—it's one of the things that you grow seeing the countryside and as you get older and none of my family went to college, okay. So as you grow older you want to pull away from that and you hate it because you want to pull away from all those things because you—you just want to become a city girl. You want to—it's one of those things that—that they make in movies today; you hate it and you don't want to do that anymore and you don't want to know and you are embarrassed and so you know even though I grew up in the city, every weekend, every Saturday my parents—since I was little, they took me to the countryside with a lot of the rest of my family you know and we used to go fishing to the rivers and—and we used to go and pick berries and they had a lot of different kinds of strawberries and berries. So but—as you grow older you didn't want to deal with that anymore. You just—that's not cool, okay; you—you want to go—you have another mentality so it's one of the things where I grew up and I went to college there and then that's what I—or reasons I—I came to New Orleans because you know I fall in love with—with this American boy that used to live there and it happens that he—he came back to New Orleans to study at Tulane University and he said come with—come along with me and I thought that—that was a big opportunity when I was going to leave along with him and that's something that you do—you don't do that any—in your country—in my country; you don't—you don't—

A very romantic story?

Yeah; you don't live together with a boy in those days.

And so far away.

And so far away; it was—it was an adventure for me. I couldn't hardly get away from the countryside, the city—the everything. It was a new adventure for me and that's how I—I moved from you know Costa Rica to—to New Orleans but I know that I—you know deep inside of me you carry all those things that your grandmother taught you. I mean when I was growing up I saw my grandmother get up in the morning and she made tortillas and I remember she—she had—I mean it's amazing and now I treasure that—that I do it, even though I can go next door and buy the tortillas, I do it in her memory.

Yes.

Okay; so it's something that it glues to you when I was growing up. She—she got out—it was a given; it's almost like brushing your teeth. You make your bread and your tortillas—period. And she used to go to the back when she had the chickens; she pulled their—their eggs and she started making her bread and she said what she was going to cook for breakfast. We'd eat tortillas for breakfast with—with the beans and boom—boom, I mean—I mean she did 12, 13, 14 [Gestures] and she cooked them and I mean like in a flash. And I grew up seeing that—making the bread and making the—going to the back and pull the—the cilantro and the—and the peppers because everybody had—not everybody but everybody living in big areas where there's a lot of ground, so they grow their own little vegetable garden.

Right; and keep their own chickens and—?

So they have a little—five—ten chickens and when I was little they—I had my own little chicken thing when my rabbit and my duck in—in—.

So they had an area set aside for you?

Some for me because every morning traditionally they gave me that responsibility in which I—I used to go to—to—to—there was an elementary school where a girl used to—I need to go and feed the chickens and make sure everything with them and then you can go to school. So there was kind of the responsibility that they gave you and I had my little rabbit here and a little duck here and my little parrot here.

Uh-huh; did that make you feel important when you were small?

It was—it was—it was so—so cool, but now when you get 18—20, that is like, you don't even mention that because that's so embarrassing, okay. But these days I—I am so proud that they taught me this. And because a lot of people these days think that believe it or not when I started making a cheese a year ago and I said I'm going to take my time, I'm going to go to my country back again; I have to—I have to stay two or three months—I'm going to take a loan if I have to do it and go into the woods and these people are going to taught me how to make the cheese. That traditional cheese—and that's how I made myself—the only things are I'm—I'm being lately in the past three—four years, every time I go I said to myself, “Okay, I need to learn how to do bread,” so I go to the lady who is right about 90 years old who lived down the street who is just like almost ready to die and I said, “You still making bread? Yeah, honey; you're still make—taught me. I don't want this to die. Okay; and the last time right now because of the hurricane I went to Costa Rica. I evacuate to Jackson to—Pittsburgh, Mississippi and then from there I went to Costa Rica for—for two weeks and so that—you know I—I did—that's one of the things I did you know.

Yes; you used that time—?

Yeah; I used the time to reconnect with my past, with—with—with those little traditions—little, little stabilities but they're important. They're—they're important; they're a part of me that—and—and when I go and talk to all the Hispanic people at church and everything they remember the same things I remember but they're like discarding them. They're not part of that. Right now everything is supermarket. They think that the milk comes from bottles. I said, “No; milk comes from cows.” This is a different thing; I mean believe it or not a lot of kids these days—trust me; that's the first thing I learned. A lot of kids just think—think the milk comes from I don't know where. They don't even—they don't even connect that—that cheese and the milk and vegetables, they—they just didn't farm and that it's animals that provide and it's hard-working people—especially the hard-working people doing the first step to raising those animals, to—to treating the land to—to grow those vegetables. So I have a lot of appreciation when I went back to them to the Crescent City [Farmers’ Market] and saw all those farmers. I saw my grandfather—I say my grandmother it's just that they would do it—well they did for business; the coffee plantation was a business and the planting—the plantation was a business, but the chickens and the cheese it was just for you to make and you give it to your neighbors and they exchange.

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To download the entire transcript in PDF form, please click here.