African culture has settled on Guadiana Street in the Sants neighborhood of Barcelona, ??where the Abarka cooperative restaurant has been operating since last December, an initiative that seeks to break clichés and publicize the potential of the continent. Here, in the premises occupied by the historic Llopart bar, Wolof, Catalan and Spanish are heard interchangeably while generous portions of West African specialties are served while “gastronomic activism” is promoted.
Khady Drame, from Granollers and with roots in Senegal, and Malamine Soly, who arrived from this country in 2006, are two of the creators of Abarka. “It all started – they say – in 2018 when together with an Argentine friend we created the NGO Dunia Kato with the aim of raising awareness, in Senegal, of the dangers of some migratory routes, informing about the rights of people who decide to leave and organizing courses. to create job opportunities there; “We are against welfare.” Abarka was born to prepare catering and thus obtain income to finance the activity of Dunia Kato.
“Every time they hired us we rented a kitchen and little by little we bought material and grew. One day we realized that we had a business opportunity and Barcelona Activa accompanied us in the creation of our project, with which we won the first prize, of 12,000 euros, in the call for Social Entrepreneurs, in 2020,” explains Drame. , food engineer by training. For his part, Soly had accumulated experience as a restaurant manager for eight years.
Before the pandemic, the two lost their jobs and decided to dedicate themselves full time to Abarka, which has two other partners. Although initially its function was to support Dunia Kato, now its priorities are to promote the employment of people arriving from other countries and to spread African cultural wealth through gastronomy. “We want to reflect in the letter who we are, here we have workers from Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Senegal, Benin, Togo, Ethiopia and the Sahara. “But we prefer not to talk about countries but about cultures because in the past the borders were made the way they were made…”, considers Drame, reiterating that in Abarka it is as important to make food as it is to do activism, to spread a discourse that breaks with the stereotypical vision of Africa.
There is no shortage of specialties on the menu such as athiekke, a kind of couscous but with fermented cassava, which is served with fish; mafe, a peanut butter stew with rice and vegetables or beef, or fonio tabbouleh, a cereal served with mango and vegetables. All washed down with ginger juice, baobab fruit drink or cold hibiscus flower infusion with mint.
The cooperative is on several fronts: it continues with the catering, manages the restaurant and participates with its food truck in music festivals. The satisfaction of the diners and putting their grain of sand in promoting the regularization of migrants is very gratifying. Lassana Sylla has trained as a cook in Abarka and, after twelve years without papers, she has finally achieved a contract and stability in this cooperative. And Fama Balde, “despite having Spanish nationality, she had never been able to have a job like what she had studied, as an administrator, until now,” Drame highlights.
