“When deeds speak, words are nothing.” — African proverb
I believe sitting around a dinner table — eating, drinking, laughing, even arguing — can change the world. With that in mind, I’m bringing dinner back. Back around my grandfather’s kitchen table, which is worn by decades of serving, conversation, and life. Back to Africa, where one in three people are undernourished and more than 800 million people go to bed hungry every night (300 million of them children). Back to a world that I believe could make more progress by breaking bread with each other than breaking each other in war.
That said, I have three goals with this blog project:
1. To feed my family. For 53 weeks (see No. 2), we will eat a meal together every single day of the week (unless someone is out of town). Sometimes it will be a gourmet delight served with candlelight in the dining room. Sometimes it will be pizza around the coffee table. Sometimes it will be cereal before we all head out in the morning. But one meal a day, 53 weeks.
2. To feed Africa. Africa is a passion of mine. Each week, I will feature information from one of the continent’s 53 countries: their food traditions, their current situation, and a way you can help.
3. To feed my soul. Since stepping foot in Rwanda a year ago, I have craved going back. I can’t at the moment, so I will bring Africa to me by way of a monthly feast, to which I will invite friends I already have as well as African friends I look forward to meeting. I currently know people from Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Don’t be surprised if by month six, you hear about me inviting a Sudanese man bagging groceries at Central Market to dinner. I’ve really always wanted to do that anyway.
About me: I’m a Dallas-based freelance writer, mother of two boys (ages 10 and 13) and, now, I guess, blogger. My paid gigs are as an occasional commentator for The Dallas Morning News and our local NPR affiliate (KERA 90.1), and writing pieces for D Magazine, Child, Texas Monthly, Southern Living, Dallas/Fort Worth Child, and Parenting Teens Online magazines. Journalism sucks right now, though, so lately I’ve written more about hospital volunteers and locksmiths (wish I were kidding) than a first-year journalism grad. Through a four-session impulse purchase at last year’s church auction, I spent some time considering my passions and what to do with them with my friend and creative coach Jill Allison Bryan. The result is this blog, which she brilliantly pulled out of me, hour by hour. Feel free to email me any time (except dinner time, of course) at dmcmullan@sbcglobal.net.
bringing dinner back 
Hi Dawn! I love how you merged your three passions into one page — the Africa aspect, especially. Hope to see your recipes for world change and reports on family change as a result of food/conversation/arguments/failures. Interesting notion of what food can do to nourish a family, a nation, a continent.
I’m hopeful, Meg. Or it could all fall apart into Noah and I arguing before 9 am like it did today. It’s a crap shoot!
Like your blog! Came across it through the DMN…I used to be a full-timer there, and now I freelance (and another coincidence, my husband works for KERA). You know that small-world thing? Well, my sister, who’s into public health (which obviously, in Rwanda, includes malnutrition), is about to move to Rwanda. She got a job with Partners in Health. Anyway, long story short, if you need a contact next time you go, lemme know…
Very small world. How interesting. Thanks for checking out the blog. Would love to get back to Rwanda and look her up if I do. Hope freelancing is hanging in there for you. Still suffering a bit on this side of town.
Dawn, this is a great idea for a blog. and so needed. one thing I’ve learned from my Italian friends and in-laws is how important it is to sit down together and enjoy a meal without hurrying, and actually talk to each other. good for you for raising people’s consciousness of what they’re missing. the African connection somehow seems to fit well with this idea, maybe bc their cultures aren’t so artifically sped-up like ours. A friend of ours lived in Mali for two years with the Peace Corps, and when she finally flew home and was in the Paris airport, she said she almost freaked bc of the culture shock and how rude people seemed after living in a village. She’s gone back to Africa and was working for a NGO in the Congo last I heard and had no plans to come back.
Great blog…my husband is from North Africa. I really look forward to learning more about the continent as a whole.
Like you, I believe in the family dinner table. My children are still relatively young (8 and 10) so we still manage to pull off dinner just about every night. We’ve eaten together without media or electronic intrustions every night since my oldest was an infant so it’s an ingrained habit. I do realize that as my kids get older and more involved in extra-curricular activities that this will become more of a challenge so I look forward to reading your ideas for getting everyone together for breakfast and lunch meals.
Thanks for reading and writing. My boys are 9 and 12 and it’s been just recently that the family dinner became a bit tricky. I think many people just give up as their kids get older. Sometimes it’s by the seat of our pants … but it’s always worth it!
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