Evelyn Esperanza

“Good afternoon, we are here today in Colobó filming and speaking about our traditions, and one of the traditions which I remember from my childhood is of pigeon peas (Gandules). Pigeon peas (Gandules) have a great significance for us Puerto Ricans because they were and still are a traditional dish. 

I remember from my childhood when our mother, and our grandmothers, would sit all our cousins down and she would come carrying a sack filled with pigeon peas and we would all sit down with our legs crossed and would peel the pigeon peas.

It truly was a spectacular day where we would laugh, have fun and later our grandmother would decide what we would make with the pigeon peas. For example, they could make pigeon pea stew(soup), or rice with pigeon peas, but the fun part was spending time as a family, all of us together with cousins who we had not seen in a long time, we would all come together because it was the day to peel pigeon peas. 

We would enjoy seeing the flower of the pigeon pea, its seeds, and we enjoyed peeling them and making our hands turn black. This happened because as you peeled a lot of pigeon peas, your hands would turn black as they released a glue-like substance, but this would not bother us, it was actually quite enjoyable for all of us.

So, here we are enjoying this plant, which is right next to me, and this was one of our traditions, one which is likely forgotten as we have modernized, and you can just buy them in a can today. However, here thanks to Iris Brown, we have our very own pigeon pea bush to continue our tradition.”