Photos by Ania Johnston
Interviews by Judas Ãtman and Ania Johnston
Video editing by Surya Vaidy
Petit à Petit (Little by Little), a women’s collective implements civic projects throughout Arles to create a more collective community. Both staff and volunteers, led by Anne Drilleau, work out of Dans La Cuisine, a communal kitchen in the heart of the Grifeuille, a neighborhood on the Western outskirts of Arles.
Jamila Laboub, a seasoned chef, and Olga Ivanova, an apprentice work in the kitchen weekly. Over the past 6 months, the pair have grown to become “unlikely” friends. Though they come from disparate parts of the world, their kinship is a symbol of the ways that community can come together no matter their differences.
Below you will find a combination of media captured by the creative team on this piece: a “moving portrait” of each woman that includes a sound byte from their interview, a link to a recording of the interview conducted by Ania and Judas in the original language(s) (French, English, and some Ukrainian) as well as a full-text translation of the interview.
We have tried capture how each woman would sound in English by favoring direct translation over “fixed” translation;, meaning the syntax and grammar have been discarded for a more authentic representation of each woman’s voice.
Jamila Laboub
Enregistrement audio complet de l’entretien en français
JUDAS WILEY: What is your first and last name?
JAMILA LABOUB: Hello. So, my name is Jamila Laboub.
JW: Where do you come from?
JL: I come… I come from Morocco. Since I was six years old, I am in France. I’ve had four children and in this education I saw this training as the center of my social neighborhood, which is to do a CAP (certificate) in cuisine for nine months and I have wanted to try that adventure.
I got my CAP cuisine and I worked in town at a restaurant, the Arlatan, and I have worked for four months, but It was much more intense for me. So that’s it. I wanted to look for something else in the restaurant business, but that something else is in a collective or small restaurant.
I created a group to do cooking workshops in social centers or in schools or retirement homes. And next, in the Cuisine Griffeuille, they proposed other cooking workshops and I did one, two, then three and there you go, for that I found myself again here doing cooking workshops. It’s been almost two years that I’ve been here with the Cuisine Griffeuille and with the collective Petit à Petit. One and a half years now and it’s worked out very well.
ANIA JOHNSTON (to JW): What does cooking mean to her?
JW (to JL): What is your reason for cooking?
JL: Cooking… What’s — what has changed in my life, or is it — ?
JW: Why cook? It’s a bit existential.
JL: Me, when I was little, I cooked. I cooked bread, I did the cooking for my brothers and sisters when Mom, my mother, she didn’t want it to happen or she didn’t want it. It was a duty for me. Duty. I didn’t like it but I did it, I was obliged.
Later, I was married and I saw through my children that it pleased them to taste a cake or a dish or that it pleased people. This pleased me. So, I have loved cooking in relationship with people, like you, who love mint tea; I made you mint tea, “Oh it’s so nice, thank you!” I am happy to have created pleasure with cooking. And I make family meals, and … they love it, they like this. And we try to make the world happy but now I like cooking and I feel before when … people … say there’s a therapy in cooking … that makes me a good cook.
Olga Ivanova
Enregistrement audio complet de l’entretien en français
OLGA IVANOVA: What is your first name? I’m Olga Ivanova. It’s my first and last name.
JW: And where are you from?
OA: I’m from Ukraine, from Zaporizhzhia. It’s town, where is now war… Because the war started in my country.
JW: And why are you working here at Petit à Petit?
OA: Because the war start in my – in my country. And I take my children and I go… to Europe. And … I looking for a country… who can give me house .
I’m… looking for a country who can safeguard my family. A woman here, in Tarascon, she offered me her house for my family – my girls. And I arrived directly here and I live in Tarascon, not with her, but we stay friends. We are like a French family.
JW: Why did she give you a home?
OA: Her name is Alexandra De Chimay. Her family is Romanian – who is also affected by the war when she was very little. And when the Ukrainian war started, she decided to help a family because she lived alone, she is not married, and she has no children – and she is healthy and wants to help someone. And when we sent her our photo she, right away, she said we live together for 15 months and after the City of Tarascon will give us apartments.
ANIA JOHNSTON: And what was the moment that you felt that you needed to leave?
OA: At once. It was 5 o’clock morning, the 24th of February. And there we were sleeping; it was a very nice time. And but the son of my husband tells me – he says, “The war is starting.” And the war is starting not far from the Zaporizhzhia. So we came to Kharkiv, we came to the Zaporizhzhia region, because Donet’sk it’s 300 km it was close really, to Zaporizhzhia, so it was dangerous to go back to Zaporizhzhia. And my husband, of course, we’re waiting for the war to be finished soon. But my husband said you should go because we didn’t know. You should go, you should rest down there…
JW: He’s still there, your husband?
OA: Yes. He is there. My parents are there. But, after one year, the war was not finished and we decided to find a place for to live. So we want to stay here.
JW: How did you find Anne [Drilleau]? How did you, like, start working at Petit à Petit?
OA: I had never – I haven’t ever been in France. I didn’t imagine that my life is here. I was working in a restaurant all my life. I work at a restaurant and now, I really love cuisine and my problem in France – it’s the vocabulary in French. Because the French language is complicated and I have lost so much time also because the war was coming quickly. I am starting to learn French much later. I think after a year.
One year I start to learn French, but for work, I was proposed this by – Graines d’Étoiles et Des Femmes proposed this. It’s called the kitchen but first before they propose me training at Petit à Petit to be a cook, to learn vocabulary, to learn many French things – because – I think French cuisine is the best in the world, it’s the foundation for much cuisine.
In the future I want to work with the head chef on a team, be a nice cook, maybe not chef, maybe have time to happily mix cuisines because, I see [not everywhere] but each time I arrive to a restaurant, I see that the meat is not well done.
I want to do French cuisine with Ukrainian style or maybe one day to do Ukrainian cuisine.
AJ: OK. Last question: what does cooking mean to you?
OA: It’s my life, because at 4 to 5 years old we are learning to cook and because when we started cooking , we learn borscht at school – we learn how to prepare borscht in elementary school. We have lessons, cooking lessons. Also I work in a restaurant all my life. I love the scene, I love taste, I do not eat much but I love – I love when food is good quality and prepared well.
AJ: OK. Thank you very much!
