The bread that welcomed NASA astronaut Scott Kelly back on earth in Kazakhstan
ASTANA. KAZINFORM After 340 days subsisting on freeze dried powders from “on-orbit” space pouches, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly’s first sight of earthly prepared food was a Kazakh traditional offering of bread and salt.
Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov touched ground near the town of Zhezkazgan in eastern Kazhakstan at 11:26 pm EST last night (Mar. 1). The welcome ceremony began with two women dressed in bright yellow and green, who presented the homecoming heroes with bread and salt.
“It’s an honor to participate in this event, but first let me welcome you with bread and salt. This is our custom,” said a dignitary, unnamed in the NASA TV broadcast, who welcomed them in a brief ceremony at Zhezkazgan Airport. The astronauts were also presented with tributematryoshka dolls in their likeness.
The generously sized welcome bread, at times elaborately decorated and glazed, is a staple of astronaut welcoming ceremonies in Kazakhstan, where vast unforested grasslands have served as a landing pad for space travelers of many nationalities over the years. The bread is usually presented with a small ramekin of salt in the middle and served on an embroidered towel. It’s tradition to dip a piece of bread in the salt and eat it, but Kelly, Kornienko and Volkov seem to have skipped that part in the ceremony. Their stomachs were still too unsettled to partake, as Time explains.
Bread symbolizes hospitality, and salt signifies friendship, in several Slavic cultures. “The bread and salt tradition is common for Russians and Ukrainians,” Aisha Mukasheva of the Kazakhstan embassy in Washington, DC tells Quartz. “You might be surprised why this Slavic tradition is used among Kazakh people,” she adds, explaining that people of Russian descent account for a large proportion of Kazakhstan’s population.
The article was taken from the website of the Kazakhstan Embassy in the U.S. https://www.kazakhembus.com
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