This must be the month of bananas and for good reason. January is the beginning of the dry seasons and the end of the two growing seasons. The two seasons in our traditional calendar was that of Mbura ya Njahí and Mbura ya Mwere. Mbura ya Njahi was the reasonably longer and heavier rains named after the most prominent bean known as Njahi, while Mbura ya Mwere was much lighter and shorter and was most ideal for millet, the grain it is named after. Those two types of food very very important to the food security of the community as well to the culture of my people.
It is sometimes easy to underestimate the value of food in driving and sustaining the healthy culture of my community. In other words, foods that were grown in my community feed more than bodies or stomachs. The security and the health of the community went beyond caloric intake. Having a healthy culture meant that there were certain community activities that kept the functioning of the community as smooth as possible.
There was no better time to understand the role food played in the creation of a functional culture than the month of January and the two crops of bananas, millet and Njahi. Millet for example was a grain that was pound with a grind stones or in a big wooden mortar and pestle in a colorful team event that involved singing and interesting conversations between women relatives or mothers and daughters. The pounded millet flower wound make porridge for breakfast or regular snack. The fermented millet porridge was also the default drink consumed during the work gangs by young men and women known as Ngwatio( a word with the connotation of borrowing). These Ngwatio was a group of local villagers coming together to tackle heavy duties such as breaking new ground or digging previously farrowed land and preparing it for the next season. No money changed hands and all one had to do is answer a similar call from the participants. This events were fun and mostly finished with a dance in after work. It was one of the happiest farming events full of great fun and productivity.
The month of January was typically dry and one of the lightest in terms of work. There was a much needed break for our farming community and therefore equally ideal for dances too regardless of any Ngwatio or not.
Bananas are too important of a food to cover it in this post and I will save that for the last post this month. Suffice it to say that bananas would be consumed both as food and as fruit in the form of ripe bananas.
It is therefore a great joy to have an award winning banana in our short growing history in our ancestral home. Right next to our compost pile, this banana of Kíganda has a record of 16 suckers and mature banana with 80+ count that are perfectly healthy and ready for harvest. The banana must either have sent roots into the compost or the compost piles sends some of its nutrients with the rain water that flow downward during the rain season that supposed to have ended last month. Whatever the case we are all together delighted. This is a reason good enough to remember and celebrate the sustainable practices that our culture has designed but have since been neglected at a terrible cost to the food security and sovereignty of the community and the general mental and overall wellness of the community. Progress might be doing the same old things better and not necessarily 🦍 aping ideas whose application might not be tried and tested. At least for now, we are dancing of our big win in the race towards a sense of self.
Thayù