From Home to Here:

A Kenyan student’s food journey at CMU - from disorientation to adaptation to institutional advocacy

Food was never just food for me.

Back home in Kenya, it was routine. Comfort. The smell of home before I even sat down. At CMU, it became something else - a signal. A test. A quiet measure of whether I belonged.

It is a story about what happens when your body, your budget, and your sense of self all land in a new place at the same time.

In Kenya, I knew what a reasonable grocery basket looked like. At CMU, I had to relearn that from scratch. A few basics cost more than I expected, and that changed everything - what I bought, how often I cooked, and whether I could afford the foods that felt normal to me.

I started making trade-offs I had never made before. Fresh produce or something filling. Familiar ingredients or cheaper substitutes. A full week of meals or stretching what I had.

That is what food insecurity can look like for international students. Not always empty shelves. Sometimes just constant calculation.

Back home, food came with a rhythm I did not have to explain. Here, I had to translate everything - what I wanted to eat, where to find it, how to afford it, and why it mattered. That translation was tiring. It made me feel oddly visible and invisible at the same time.

“When you cannot eat like yourself, you start wondering whether you are allowed to belong like yourself.”

Food was not only about hunger. It was about identity. It was about memory. It was about whether the institution around me could see the full student, not just the academic one.

CMU is not starting from zero. There are Language Lunches, Celebration of Culture events, and college orientations that share resources with incoming students. I have seen these advertised. I am grateful for the connections this institution has made possible — even the conversations this project sparked in class felt like a small version of what belonging can look like.

CMU has a food pantry where students can book appointments and shop.

It took me about a month or two to find out it existed, and I have been here since January. I arrived in spring, outside the typical orientation window. If it took me that long to find it, I cannot be the only one.

This is not only a message for administrators. It is also for:

• faculty who advise international students,
• dining services teams who decide what goes on the shelves, and
• student groups who organize the events that make people feel seen.
  

1. Please stock the CMU food pantry with culturally diverse ingredients, because access to familiar food should not feel like a privilege that only some students get to experience.
2. Please make the CMU food pantry more visible to students who arrive outside the standard orientation cycle, because not every international student lands in the Fall.
3. Please keep creating spaces like Language Lunches and Celebration of Culture events, and make sure international students who arrive mid year know these spaces exist and are meant for them too.

Food stops being invisible the moment you leave home.

Universities should pay attention to what that means.