HIGH ON THE HOG, Hoping for the dough

It is a great sigh of relief seeing people of African descent producing excellent content about food. Some of the faces are folks whose work I have been following for quite a while.

What is important to me is not that White people are recognizing Black people's food but that Black people are getting economic gain and consuming some of their own content. It's all about power full stop. People will always be nice to a certain extent, but power carries you a whole lot futher.

I almost froze up the first time I looked at the flyer for this Netflix show with mixed emotions. Then my mind traveled back to the lasting image from a slave narrative by Olaudah Equiano. According to Olaudah's account, people in his native region in what is modern day Nigeria owned slaves.

One ended up being a slave due to debt or war. What I found interesting is that the only thing that distinguished a free person from a slave was food. While an enslaved person did the same amount of work for the same duration as his master, he or she had to eat apart from everyone else. In other words, eating by oneself was the mark of slavery.

Upon his capture as and transportation to America, Equiano was sold on the slave market. He was then taken to the plantation of his enslaver. The following morning, he was tasked with fanning his bedridden boss. On his way to the room where the plantation owner layed, Equiano saw an enslaved woman in kitchen with a mouth piece tied around her mouth to keep her from eating the food she was cooking. I immediately went online to research how that mouthpiece looked like. I was horrified at how creative man can be even when the creativity is aimed at causing untold misery. But this was a form of turture that was mind-boggling.

It is quite amazing to me that food has now become an equal opportunity enslaver. Bad food knows no master or slave. Those with power suffer from eating too much of the bad food that has largely put them in power or maintain that power. The dispossessed are suffering from the consumption of processed food made by the powerful as they have been duped to value foreign and processed food and for lack of resources to secure healthy and justice food. Bad diet has become an equal opportunity killer.

One issue that is at the heart of every plate is justice or the luck there of. That is a fact we cannot ran away from. A threat to a plate justice anywhere is a threat to heatlth and sanity everywhere. That sounds like something Dr. Martin Luther King Jr would say.

High on the Hog is content that we will be consuming for a while. It a great time to ask what we intend to accomplish at the end of it. I love seeing familiar Black faces. But my goal is to move the needle of justice forward. I want to be high on legitimate power. High on the Hog can be a metaphor of exclusivity. It leaves out those that don't eat hogs or meat. But legitimate power is something that none has any dietary restrictions to be concerned about. While we all can eat any kind of food without any regard to race, the mouthpiece to power has both racial and class bias. I will be watching closely to see how that will be less so. Hopefully I won't be holding my breath too long. Otherwise, I might find that I can't breath.

The Republic of Muratina (Honey Wine)

I am not a big fan of alcohol and I don't typically dream about it. I certainly can't say the same thing about my ethnic honey mead named Mùratina.  I have many reasons for being very interested in the traditional brew. The most common interests being culinary, cultural and political. Maybe at the end of this writeup, I might add literally to that list.

I should clarify that the talk of Mùratina has been doing the round on social media in the form of a story about a Kenyan in the U.K who has packaged the traditional brew for sale in the U.K market.  I am hoping to catch up with him at some point to hear his inspiration and taste his craft. If it passes my critical taste bugs, I will invite him and his team to a five course dinner centered around the gastronomy of my region. I have the whole thing figured out in my head. Talk about vanity!

To be fair, there are all types of excitement about the initiative even outside social media.  I have a slightly different interest besides just the vanity above. That interest is etymological.   The one question I have been trying to answer for some time is how the name of the brew came about. I have my theory.

The Gìkuyù people, like most indigenous people, kept their history in their names. But then attrition and time can cast the meaning of certain names into oblivion. I hope to rescue the etymology of the Muratina as I believe there is an interesting story and message.  In addition there are a litany of utensils that go along with the brew. Among the most popular utensils includes ndua, ndahi, kinya and  the ubiquitous horn. When you add honey, sugarcane and three-legged stools to the mix, the only other thing needed is the most important ingredient: the company of friends.  The three legged stools from those days are so precious both in look and in feel that I first thought they were made with the precious tree nicknamed tree of life or otherwise known as Lignum Vitae which is one of the few trees that that produces wood that has oil in it.

The first part of the question I had to contend with was similar to the chicken and the egg one. Since the honey mead is made with the loafer-like fruit of the African Sausage tree, the actual name of the brew literally translates to alcohol made with the African Sausage tree. Here is where plot thickens; I am aware that some names derive from the use of that plant.  One such tree that I can remember on our farm was known as Mùthabuni ( literally meaning the soap tree). True enough, if you collected a bunch of leaves and rubbed them together with a little water,  you would produce some foam.

I have  therefore been curious to find out whether the same case is true about Muratina.  I first had to think about the role of the brew in the lives of my people. Muratina is the only drink that was highly regulated. It was mostly consumed by old men for Social purposes but it was also very significant in courtship, marriage and other important celebrations.  It was rather rare for a man to drink the brew by himself, the same can be said about slaughtering of animals too. In short, food and brew was a communal affair as often as possible.  It was used for repairing broken relationships and cementing old ones.  Young people were prohibited from consuming Muratina anywhere near the elders.

The second source of a possible clue is a proverb that uses a part of the body whose name seems to be tied into the name of the brew. The proverb which takes the form of an admonition and a bit of reaffirmation, states that “kìnya kìrì itina níkìo kìigaga ( which means that a guard with a nice base keeps its stability). The actual meaning is that a person with good behavior gains success and responsibility. I would hear this proverb quite often being used to encourage good behavior amongst children or the youth. What I found funny is the use of the word buttocks in the proverb as the preferred symbol of the base of the guard. So the literal translation of the proverb would be that a guard with buttocks is able to seat upright. 

Some context is necessary here to appreciate the meaning of the proverb. Before the advent of modern kitchen utensils, guards and clay pots were the preferred containers for all household uses. Certain guards were very narrow at the base and had to be leaned next to a wall. One such guard was called Gítete and was used for fermenting milk. Gítete actually resembles the fruit of the African Sausage tree. But a much bigger guard whose base resembles a pumpkin could easily seat comfortably without any support. Now one can see the symbolism. A person with good behavior can live comfortably and one who makes bad choices is surely likely to suffer. The message was so important that the inconvenience of the use of uncomfortable words could not deter its use.

I therefore came to the conclusion that the same logic can be extrapolated further in the case of the close relationships between men or elders who used to drink Mùratina. If the buttocks of the guard allowed it to stay upright, why not celebrate such uprightness in the comradery amongst the elders?

I suspect that the name Mùratina came from mùrùna wì itina.  Mùruna means friend and itina means buttocks. The translation would then mean a friend that is solid to the test, upright and secure. The friendships in this case were just fraternal.

Here is a political analysis of the viral story about Mùratina. Economically, the brew does not have buttocks to compete in the international market. It would be an extremely difficult task for a local brew to make it in a highly competitive international alcohol market without the help of the Kenyan government and the support of the local market.

Alcoholic drinks are not like diamonds, gold or oil that can rely totally on being exported to outside markets. Alcohol is cheap to make and the margins are rather small. It is also a specialty item. If Kenyans can not first develop it for the local market successfully, it would be rather hard to make any significant inroad on the international league. 

Tea and coffee in the case of Kenya and cacao in the case of West Africa are examples of popular nonalcoholic drinks that are quite popular internationally but have not brought any fortunes to write home or here about. That the farmers and by extension the country have reaped little benefits compared to the importing countries is evidence enough to warrant all the doubt necessary.

I checked the price of coffee at the Whole Foods store close in my area and Kenyan coffee was the most expensive brand on the shelf. It was retailing for $12 dollars per pound. The last time I visited Kenya and talked to farmers in my village, they had paid a paltry sum of $1 dollars for 2.2 lbs for their chemical-intensive and back-breaking berries. That translates to less than 5% of the retail prices when compared to farm gates prices. Global power politics rarely has an unattractive head again to ensure that the gain is both one sided and that side just happens to be the side of the wealthy.

Back to the Mùratina story. If at all the brew is going to have good buttocks in the global market, it will need it's own “Mùruna ùrì itina" or a special friend.  That special friend will need to be a big person with enough influence and weight to throw around.   Only governments can fit that category of a big friend. Otherwise we can expect two things: either bottles of Mùratina that can't seat upright or another struggling company.

 The other option that is possible, but unlikely, is the Mùratina Republic that is similar to Banana republics in South America.  That term came about as a result of American obsession with the prices of bananas.  The obsession became so great that whenever workers would strike in order to get a small increase in pay, America would engineer a regime change and replace the presidency with one who would keep the prices of bananas wherever America wanted it to be. In 1954, President Juan Jacobo Urbenze was overthrown from office largely for his threat to the banana industry as well as his threat to Nestlé's powdered baby formula.

Those drunk with power and injustice are bent on making sure that the shelf life of Muratina is very short indeed. It is for that reason I love Mùratina in a mighty way and dream of it just slightly more. I guess my love of the brew, food and justice has buttocks too.

TODAY'S RADIO APPEARANCE ON INOORO FM

I will be speaking with Nderitu Waihura on Inooro FM from around 6.15 - 7pm Kenyan time and 11.15  am to Noon EST. I will speaking about the Post-covid global system relative the economy, food and politics.

Below is the link:

https://radio.or.ke/inooro/

What's the Catch in Food?

We all know about scams and ponzi schemes. So much so that it comes as no surprise to hear the question posed about the catch in regards to a sales pitch. In other words, the person posing the question is expressing two very important points. The first is that the seller and the buyer have different interests and the the seller has both the incentive and means to manipulate the power in aaction that might not be necessarily in the interest of the buyer at worst or at a minimum influence the decision making process.

That means that the buyer has to be ever vigilant. That however happens lesser often than is necessary. Whenever someone says that the food system is broken, they are actually giving a critical analysis of the consumer's ability to act in his best interests.

One simple way to rectify that is to recognize that their is a potential catch in every food decision you make. Asking the question about where the catch is should be both standard and organic.

Yet, simply asking a question without the ability and correct information is unlikely to result in any positive change. That means that gathering correct information is absolutely necessary. Correct information is the fertile ground upon which a just food system will have to be built.

Having said that, I can argue that we can't have good leadership without good eatership. The first vote is that of food. Failure to master that results in an unjust food system as well as political system.

Where is your catch?

ODE TO TASTE

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Japanese ginger is a great garnish in fine dinning. It doesn't produce a tuber underground but rather a cream flower that slightly resembles an orchid flower.

I found the story of orchids to be quite interesting considering that even Charles Darwin died with the hope that these sneaky plants had pollen or smell that was yet to be discovered. Darwin and his buddy and Alfred Wallace had nothing on the orchid. The plant figured that sexy is the best timeless advertising agent.

For that reason, some flowers of the orchids mimic sex organs of the insect it wants to attract.

If all chefs were flowers, I would choose to be an orchid chef. That is probably why I am growing the one garnish that closely resembles an orchid. Naivasha is the best place to grow such a gingerly flower. It had a history of licentiousness during the colonial times.

Then it graduated to the equally sinister reputation as the capital of petals of blood.

We are working hard to change that reputation to petals of taste. In the colonial days, there was a local joke in form of a questin whenever a man would meet a lady. The question was: " Are you married or are you from Naivasha."

As an orchid chef, my goal is that folks will ask, " Do you eat promiscuously or are you from Naivasha?".

Our first words will be wecome for one of the most eclectic and radical organic dinner. The garnish of choice for one of the multiples Afro Futuristic Conscious Cuisine dinner will be Japanese ginger whenever it flowers. The cycle of this flower will mark a special dinner of Renaissance.

Long live Naivasha,long live Japanese Ginger, long live orchid chef. That is my ode to taste.

Diet of Worms in Food Revolution

While flipping through a philosophy book about Martin Luther and the Reformation, I ran into a headline that captured my imagination. The headline of that chapter was the Diet of Worms. Before I could catch my self, I had already allowed my mind to label Martin Luther as a chef and reformer of medieval diet by introducing worms in the decrepit culinary tradition of Europe. I was obviously aware that Europe was at cusp of the most momentous transformation whose effect are with us today. These were some of the most important three or four decades in the history of food and justice.

The Diet of Worms was a gathering of leading clergy in the town or Worms Germany to decide the fate of the Martin Luther following his revolutionary act of writing the now popular 95 thesis that fundamentally changed the power of the Papacy and the Catholic church. This act was probably the most important event in the history of Christianity in the last 500 years. The character of Martin Luther would also inspire the works of an African American thinker and Civil Rights leader by the same name in America.

Columbus had landed in America a mere three decades before the Diet of Worms in 1521. Columbus took many new foods from the Americas back to Europe. Those new foods included corn, pepper, tomatoes, beans, cacao and avocados. While these foods had not exactly become European staples, the reformation and along with it the Diet of Worms was about to play a big role in forever changing the food of Europe and by extension that of Africa.

The story of Diet of Worms is significant to me because the global "Food Reformation " that followed the Protestant Reformation by Martin Luther with his 96 Thesis is literally written in blood.

Columbus acquired the new foods from the Americas at high cost of genocide and Africa received the same food at many times the initial cost in blood and plundered resources. In other words, our food history is marked with a trilogy of bloodletting that makes food justice an integral part of our shared past.

The production of foods continues on this bloodletting path globally.

There is the second part of the heading and one that ignited my interest the most. That part is the one about worms. When I first went on my own cultural voyage from my village in Central region of Kenya and the home of my Gìkùyù ethnic group to the shores of Lake Victoria, I gathered my own worm stories amongst the Luo community. During the onset of rain season, I would accompany my friends as they collected winged termites into bowls amongst a frenzy of crowed yards as each family tried to gather as much manner from the sky as possible. If there ever was a perfect example of diet of worms in my head, then that was it. I once followed my friend Akinyi to her house to see exactly how those flying termites would be turned into a meal. That is a story of another day.

What is interesting is that how such childhood memories of the beautiful Akinyi with her silver earrings and a necklace made of a twisted string attracted me to the heading of the Diet of Worms. I thought that the idea of eating termites was so strange until much later as a graduate student when I learned that my own people ate grasshoppers during the times of famine. In fact, there is a famine that is known as the famine of grasshoppers. Instead of my ancestors writing about it and putting the material in an elite library, they did what most indigenous people would do by adding it into their folklore. They did this by naming an age group after the grasshoppers. Since then, the name Ngigí entered our lexicon of male names.

The idea that Europe was dealing with the consequences of illegitimate religious power and exploitation of the masses, the indigenous community was living in harmony with nature. The ideas that are currently trending about the sustainability of eating insects in not new for many indigenous community. But those touting permaculture and a host of other sustainable ideas, it is important to remember that all those ideas are not new. It is a from of injustice to destroy the food ways of indigenous people and then go back to them later with new terms for the their old ideas sold as new and foreign.

The Diet of Worms was not about Europeans eating sustainably but about the efforts to subvert the much needed Protestant Reformation that broke the stranglehold of the Catholic Church on matters of religion. Five hundred and twenty years later, all of us, regardless of color, ethnicity or religious affiliation are at a crossroads. We are now faced with our own Diet of Worms, the case is not about protestant reformation, but about our food. The eternal damnation of a poor diet is far much more lethal to the environment than the toxicity of religious intolerance of the 16th century. If we do not do the right thing, we will all find ourselves in a hot pot as the the winged termites that Akinyi and I collected in our childhood days.

One of those changes is to eat in the natural cycle of the seasons like Akinyi’s community and practically as the age group of NgigÍ did. Please welcome Akiny and Ngigi as two stories of triump for the indigenous food and justice. When you add the story of the Diet of Worm, a balanced trinity is created that can potentially cleanse our curse from the bloodied history of the spreading of food by colonial and empire-builders. Many Africans and their benefactor are still deeply caught up under the same spell of food injustice driven for the benefit of the powerful and the detriment of the oppressed. Luckily, we all don’t need to eat a diet of worms to bring about change, what we do have to do is acknowledge the wisdom of those who were wise enough to live sustainably and then build on it.

Our diet of worm takes place every time we open our mouths and take a bit. Each and every single bit we take promotes justice or injustice. Now decide which side you are on, but you cannot be neutral. The price of a collection of poor choices is that we will all be a diet for the worms in our graves prematurely. As Billy Holiday reminded us in her song, Strange Fruit , any failure to act in the face of such a global calamity will be strange indeed. It would be strange indeed to have the whole globe wrapped in “Blood in the leaves and blood at the root.” How prophetic Billy?

A Tea of repentance & Liberation

CHEF KABUI

APRIL 9, 2021

A TEA OF REPENTANCE & LIBERATION

I have been thinking a lot about the story of tea this Spring. That is one of the incidental outcomes of the pandemic as we are stuck at home. That idea of being forced to spend a lot of time at home, means that we have enough time to look not only outtward but also inwards. That inward spirit got me looking at my backyard with different eyes. I noticed that I have a lot of eddible plants that grow wild.

The Spring seems to be just burgeoning with different species that are eddible within two weeks into Spring. Among the list of plants I found are chickweed, Dandelion, wild Blackberries and wild onions. There are two wild vegetables that are consumed in Kenya but whose name I am yet to find out.

I have enjoyed some of these early vegetables but that is not my focus today. My interest was the kind of tea I could make by incorporating some ingredient from my backyard. My search yielded Dandelion, Lemon Balm and young wild Blackberries leaves which made a great base for my tea. I added a few Blackberries, Tumeric, honey, fresh squeezed Pineapple and a fresh squeezed Lemon juice to complete this sumptuous drink.

I loved the floral flavors but also whole idea of creating a recipe that truly borders a repetance brew. I used the word brew because many of us have literally become drank with naivety of the consequences of our mindless consumption that is either the goal or consequence of capitalism. But the word brew touches on a another brew that is destroying the youth of my village.

As if to offer my libation to neutralize the two demons of addiction now emblematic of food, well and also brew: Injustice, I also decided on a brew that is a counter to the errant drink of the traditional tea. My tea turned out to be a thrill even to my children, who also happen to be my harshest critics.

As we enjoyed the tea, I took the opportunity to teach them about the history of tea. It was an eye-opener to them just like it was for me the first time I heard it. I especially couldn't believe how the tea leaves my mother used to cook for us during my youth in that magical land of Gathingira, the village of my birth, had their roots in China. It might be worth noting that my favorite metal cup with a nice glaze to it was also Chinese; and so was the ubiquitous neatly folded handkerchief I kept in my pocket as a village etiquette with British roots but more driven by my regular sneezing that was probably exacerbated by the increasing foreign diet in our food. Looking back, there were tell tell signs of a dietary coup in the offing. The coup had four things at it’s root and they were food, textile, God and language. Britain led the coup but China was a loyal sidekick.

The most interesting bit is how and who was responsible for spreading the tea leaves across the world to far of places including my little remote village.

The story started with the British explorers to China. Among the many things that fascinated these British explorers about China was gun powder and tea. Both would change the course of the world in ways few would have imagined in the early 1800s. Once the British explorers tasted the Chinese brew they were hooked. They took some back to Britain and soon after tea become the most popular drink in Britain.

The wealthy class couldn't get enough of the new drink. One has to bear in mind that beer was the default drink for workers due to the widespread problem of water contamination. Before long, politics of tea cropped into the trade. Britain realized that it could not sustainably keep buying the Chinese tea using silver and gold, the only two means of payment that the Chinese were willing to accept. They Chinese were also not willing to sell their cash cow by selling transplants of tea to the British, or anyone else for that matter.

The British were so adamant on growing their own tea that they finally decided to send a spy to go and steal the tea plants and sneak it out of the country. That was no easy feat. It took a lot of skills, courage and guile. The task was especially complications by the fact that the Chinese did not allow any of the foreign traders beyond the trading ports. Tea could probably rank as the first political drink of global proportion.

The story starts when the British East Indian Company decided to engage Scotish botanist named Robert Fortune in the espionage. In 1848, Fortune set out for a journey that would land him in Wu Si Shan Hills where he successfully managed to obtain the secrets of growing and processing tea. That is still the biggest espionage case in world history in terms of cash value.

The second tactic by the British was the introduction of opium in China in order to addict the Chinese with a commodity that the British had easy acess to. In so doing, the British would get opium from their colonies in India and buy tea with it instead of the more rare and expensive precious metals the Chinese were demanded as currency.

The Chinese did not fall for the trick laying down. The two countries went to war that is popularly known as the Boxer rebellion. The stakes were so high that it took a second Boxer rebellion to subdue the Chinese enough for British comfort. The chinese lost the war and opium flooded the Chinese market. One of the lingering consequences of the Chinese loss still lingers and continues to this day. That consequences was that of dividing the Chinese country into three parts of Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. That the seperation of Hong Kong was for only 50 years comes as no consolation to global security. Yet, it is the seperating China and Taiwan that carries the greatest source of global insecurity as it pits America and Chinese, two nuclear powers, against each other.

Once the Chines lost the war, opium dens become a common place in China as more and more Chinese became addicted to the drug. Many injustices happened and many lives were lost before the original Chinese drink could find its way to my village. Unbeknownst to my young taste bugs, I was partaking in the spreading the impact of the tea heist simply by drinking my mother’s brew. That simple and unassuming plant had made British East Indian company and Britain in general a lot of money, power and fueled its efforts to build a global empire. As evidence, we still call the chinese tea, British tea. British breakfast can't be complete without a brew made with the Chinese leaves.

Large areas in my region still grows tea to this day. The crops uses a disproportionate amount of land , leaving smaller area for growing food for local consumption. That fact of growing tea with chemical fertilizers, consuming sugar and eating gluten in bread for breakfast was a perfect recipe for the making of a regular running nose. The Chinese could at least take solace for their loss of their tea monopoly by appreciating the growth in their handkerchief market.

Tea gained such a stronghold amongst some farmers in my region that it was not a rare occurrence to have farmers growing tea on their farms but going to the market to buy food that would readily grow on their land but had opted to give tea priority over other foods.

Tea also uses chemical fertilizers that damage the ecosystem.

Apparently the ripples of the espionage that took place in 1848 are being felt thousands of miles from Wi Si Shan hills or Britain. While no Boxer rebellion has yet broken out in my village, the damaged ecosystem has been equally destructive. That damage is exacerbated by the unjust market that favor the foreign consumers to the detriment of the farmers of economically less powerful countries. That economic ecosystem of today is what we call global economy. Like the opium dens of old China, dens are now becoming common place in my home region.

Though these dens don't typically sell opium, the toxic cheap alcohol being sold is having somewhat similar results as that of the opium on the Chinese back in 1850s. It wouldn't surprise me at all if some of the chemicals used to brew sold in my village originated from China. It's rather ironical that the dens of toxic brews are coming up just at the Chinese are gaining in influence over the Kenyan economy. The Chinese influence may require me to come up with a recipe of yet another libation against a second form of toxic brew: debt. That is one libation that I am yet to come up with.

Food justice is more complicated than most people might guess. Once you are food-literate you will see the injustices stemming from food all around you. A tea of Repetance gains a whole new meaning, and flavor. As I sat in my backyard, watching the organic ecosystem of birds building nests, bees pollinating flowers and the countless other creatures instinctively playing their roles without anyone's urging or supervision. I wondered if at all it is possible for us to play our respective roles in the global ecosystem.

That thought immediately conjured images from as far back as 399 BCE. Those images were of Socrates drinking a cup of hemlock for his principled stand against fake gods and youth manipulation by the powerful. Many other toxic brews have been consumed since then. But the main reason we know about the story of Socrates is because Plato, a student of Socrates, recorded it in the dialogue of Apology. To accompany the ritual of the Tea of Repetance, I put my earphones and listened to Miles Davis tune, Bitches Brew and poured a libation to the ecosystem in my backyard but also to the courage of my ancestors both kin and otherwise who have struggled for an ecosystem marked by justice that was represented all the wonderful creatures both visible and invisible.