They say that not all that glitters is gold. But I say that gold, just like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. And in my conviction that justice begins with nourishment, I find traces of gold in the most unexpected corners.
During this season which coincides with Spring in certain areas and Easter in others, I have my own Afro futuristic reasons for celebrations. I have been taking cues from my surroundings too. This time, I was nudged by a subtle jewel in the world of justice, but one whose shine has been greatly compromised by its bloody history. This season has been one of resurrection of the kinds of passion fruit blooms that used to drive my older brother nuts whenever I would pick two blooms and then wrap them with the banana bark beside my ears.
I am talking about the passion fruit-a fruit which I have always had a passion for growing in my ancestral farm in Gathíngíra,in Mùrang Country for as long as I can remember. Back then, I used to pick up these flowers and admire their intricate design to the chagrin of Mùkono,,my older brother, whose value of the flower was a future passion fruit that I was jeopardizing. Nevertheless, his scolding did not kill my fascination with this plant, its flower as well as its fruit.
What I didn’t know then was that the story of the passion fruit held so much potential in the defense of food justice. The story of passion fruit is highly underrated as it is in the sameleague as the apple as an instrument of obliterating indigenous cultures and especially their food ways.
The apple is the fruit the devil used as the first junk food or first food sin in Judeo-Christian worldview. So while an apple a day keeps the doctor away, it has a history that even doctors cannot solve. One apple on offered by the snake resulted in the proverbial mother and father of Christian world being kicked out of the garden of Eden. Wherever that incident or story was told, it would have an impact on thousands of miles across the globe and for thousands of years to come.
When the Romans embraced Christianity as a state religion to save the declining empire by creating the Holy Roman Empire, the story of the apple and the snake followed the empire wherever their agents went. Similarly, that is how the story of the passion fruit would be dragged into the list of terrorist fruits. This is how it all happened. During the 1700s, the Catholic sect of the Jesuits were in Brazil vehemently trying to convert the indigenous people. That wasn’t obviously a simple act, though. It occurred to the missionaries that a beautiful berry with a color associated with royalty could be a useful ally in the spreading of the rule of the Roman(Catholicism?) over other peoples of the World.
So the Jesuit missionaries started associating the various parts of the fruit that were strange to them to the aspects of Jesus Christ’s passion. The five parts of the flower were associated with the various stages that Jesus Christ went through to demonstrated his passion for those he died for. From that point, a fruit that was locally known as The Flower of the Five Wounds by the Spaniards was later shortened to Passion fruit.
We know that the Spaniards in the Americas left Spain in search of gold and spices. The loyal family of Castile, investors and the church contributed to the first three ships of the Nina, Pinta and religiously named Santa Maria or Saint Mary. Even the naming of the ships demonstrated that the whole affair was a business. Following the various voyages, Columbus realized that land would be the greatest return on the original investment. That is how Spain acquired so much land and the Catholic Church acquired so many passionate followers in South America.
While plenty of gold was stolen from the Americans under the pain of genocide, food was also conquered. Those indigenous communities that survived still bear the mark of being colonized by bearing the names of the Spanish conquistadors. It is difficult to fathom for example how members of the ongoing genocide in Gaza would willingly carry names of the same people who are perpetrating the genocide. Yet that is what we have continued to do by failing to understand the power of history and its connection to food justice.
It is on that basis that we have decided to liberate this great fruit we growing on my ancestral land. We have always boycotted the food genocide that has been going on even in the best of times going back to the age of exploration and probably beyond. Some may think it as trivial to be so concerned with the name. Yet names are the first casualties of colonization and slavery. The first thing the western explorers did whenever they arrived in any area that had not previously been visited by any of the various conquerers was to name it and then lay claim to it. I have therefore proposed that we name the fruit Fobo or Ichure. Fobo is an Afro Brazilian character that appears in the Mardi Gras celebration which actually punishes mean rich people by whipping them along the procession of the Madi Gras. It also marks our connection with Afro Brazilians through class presentations I have done previously and the visit of professor Paulino to our farm last year. In other words, we are looking forward to creating egalitarian relationships around food, based on transparency and acknowledgement of the painful history of the genocide of indigenous people and their food ways. .
Alternatively, the localized name would be Dachua, from the words ichua and dare. Ichua is the Gíkùyù(my African language)word for hell and dare is our word for berry. That way, we pay homage to the science of the fruit and also the bloody history of the acquisition of the fruit as it made its way from the indigenous people of Brazil or other South American regions to our farm. The local team will vote on the best option for the liberated name.
I keep hearing that this year is the year of truth. In my books, no freedom will ever come any other way besides the way of truth. We can’t just be addressing the current wars while eating in a way that keeps the truth of previous genocides hidden in plain sight. We support freedom all over the world, especially in the way in which we eat and speak about food. It hurts and those who eat but are lazy to correct small things that demonize others are less likely to speak up whenever bigger wars are waged.
In Christianity, it started with the apple that condemned everyone who would be born hence. It made no difference whether you like apples or not, you were a prime candidate for being colonized by those who had authorized themselves as agents and doctors for treating the sin that had projected everyone in the world. Our food philosophy is clearly based on just principles and we are therefore not bound by such original sins but rather by the current sins of poisoning our heritage, corrupting the names of our foods and poisoning our environment and the future generations. Notably, this process has been made much easier by the declining literacy around food and the abrogating responsibility of our actions as we expect that someone else has our fate in their hands. The bloodbath has been going on for far too long and the level of pain has not always been equally visible. I am inspired by the increased level of resistance but I am still waiting for the protests and boycott against the massive genocide driven by poor food.
Whenever I say the words thayù thayù (an oath for peace) as a form of greetings and goodbye of our people, I literally mean peace in the way I live, the way I farm, cook, eat, study, treat history and spread that knowledge and seeds to future generations. In spite of its painful history this fruit can bring about a great lesson during a time of great crisis. Truly, that is my passion for food justice and the passion fruit holds great favor and promise in that pursuit.