Journeva
🇬🇧 English · Cooking Recipes · A1–B2

The Freedom Soup

Every 1 January, Haitians eat a pumpkin soup that, people say, they were once not allowed to taste, and in 2021 UNESCO put it on its list of living heritage.

Level A1 · Beginner

It is 1 January 1804. Haiti is free from France. It is a new country.

People say: before 1804, they cook pumpkin soup but cannot eat it. Now everybody eats it. They call it soup joumou.

Cook a big piece of pumpkin in water. Make it smooth. Add carrots, potatoes and a little pasta. Add lime juice and salt.

Today Haitians eat it every 1 January. In 2021 the soup is on a UNESCO list.

The same story, one level up

Every Journeva story exists at four levels — same plot, same characters, richer language each step. Here is how this one begins at each level.

A2 · Elementary

On 1 January 1804 Haiti became free from France. Before that, most people there were enslaved. …

B1 · Intermediate

On 1 January 1804, in the town of Gonaïves, Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared Haiti independent from France after years of revolution by enslaved people. …

B2 · Upper intermediate

On 1 January 1804, in the town of Gonaïves, Jean-Jacques Dessalines declared Haiti independent from France, ending a revolution led by people who had been enslaved. …

Read the whole story at A2, B1 and B2

In the app you can tap any word for its meaning, listen to the story read aloud with the words lighting up, and save words to practise later. Ten stories are free at every level, and every story is free at A1.

Get Journeva on the App Store

This story in other languages

Read it in a language you already know to check your understanding — every Journeva story is written in all five.

More English stories

Cooking Recipes · A1–B2

The Upside-Down Tart

From 1894 two sisters ran a station hotel in France, and one of them baked her apple tart the wrong way up: here is the true story and the recipe.

Cooking Recipes · A1–B2

The Sauce That Takes All Morning

In 1891 every publisher refuses Pellegrino Artusi's cookbook, so he prints it himself, and inside is the first written recipe for the sauce of Bologna.

Cooking Recipes · A1–B2

Midnight Pasta

Ten past midnight in Naples, four hungry friends, and a cupboard holding nothing but spaghetti, garlic, oil and one dry chilli: that is a dinner.

All English stories →