My Food odyssey Between NC and U.K

My Food Odyssey

I am humbled to be heading to Elon University for the 3rd time on a two-day residency. I am especially thankful to @omolayonkem for a long and productive relationship of mentorship and collaboration that started at Elon. She and her late brother treated me to a special dinner over 5 year ago while they were in town. I have followed Omolayo as she went from Elon to Nigeria as a volunteer, then on to graduate school at SOAS and then to Ireland where she settled with her family.

I am especially thankful for her recommendation for me to speak at SOAS during a World Food Program at SOAS. It was a memorable experience. My experience with the panelists as well as the African students as SOAS was greatly enriching. Yet being in England was very difficult for me. Being around the people there was even more difficult. I couldn't keep my mind from the painful history of my family and the falsehood of what outwardly appeared like a prosperous society. The British colonial rule devastated my family and my country in irreparable ways. Food features prominently in that agony. Whether the role of food has been big or small, I have made a conscious decision to understand that painful relationship through the lense of food.

Abdullah, the Moroccan driver who picked me up from the airport, told me an interesting story of a rich man who was so obsessed with his wealth that he wanted to be buried with all of it. I wanted to stop him midway to as if the person was an Egyptian Pharoah, I held on my question. He looked me and asked me if I knew how the family got around losing their inheritance. I was even in the mood to guess. Abdullah turned back slightly and faced me in the backseat of the Mercedes cab and announced that the family buried the man with the a check of the value of his estate. I felt as though Britain then, and America now are like the man in the story, they want everything for themselves. Indigenious people are being infected with the same disease of valuing objects over life.

Omolayo is my hero for she exemplifies what Africa lost and badly needs: self-love, dedication and excellence. Empires lack that too

INdiGENOUS Liquid Blockchain

Almost everyone with average education or general literacy knows about Bitcoin  and that BlockChain technology behind it. In case that technology is new to you, take heart by pulling a seat and a cup of tea.  I say that because this post is neither  about Bitcoin nor Blockchain technology.  The technology in question is an indigenous liquid that is the innovation equivalent to Blockchain. Yet few have heard about it, leave alone talk or write about it. I am not any better or at least good enough to talk about others. That's why I should talk about myself first.

It was in the early 1970s right before I started school. I had all the time to play around our ancestral farm and to interact with all the plethora of senior elders who were deeply versed about all matters related to our culture. One day will aimlessly following Awa Mùkurù(my father's oldest brother) around our farm( he was a great storyteller and I loved spending time with him), he pointed to a particular plant mid-sentence  and told me that the plant was known as "kìgwa Kìa Arìithi" (shepherds sugarcane).  Before I could even sneak a question about the purpose of the plant with a funny sounding name,  Awa mùkurù went on to inform me that the plant was the one used to make tea before the coming of the missionaries and the proselytization of Chinese tea, later mislabelled as English tea. Walah, we too had our own tea that was phenomenally tasteful as well as sustainable. 

Today I made the tea of my ancestors and unblocked the tea that had been chained into my past for over 45 years. The flavors were so rich and the act so valuable that I can only compare it to the innovation of Blockchain that allows trustless transactions and also adds a bit of the old content in the creation of new blocks, hence blockchain. In my case, I am being connected with my ancestors through tea that was local and just. The tea that was introduced by the British was stolen property of the Chinese. That tea was the subject of the most expensive espionage when Robert Fortune was able to successfully sneak out tea plants from China and thereby broke the Chinese monopoly on the popular drink. For a long time, the Chinese had refused to sell tea in any other form except in processed form. After 1848, the British managed to grow the tea in Ceylon and other parts of India and were soon able to control the global tea industry.  

Those of my ancestors who acquessed to growing and consuming tea stolen from the Chinese were accomplices to a crime of handling stolen products and then victims of another crime of having their own tea sentenced to oblivion at the cost of stealing the fertility of their own land for colonial enterprise. I find it rather ironic that the Chinese were at least the ones who made the cups, spoons, sugar dishes and kettle that were necessary in the cooking and serving their tea during my youth. While the utensils in my village are still largely manufactured in China, there is growing interest in Chinese medicine. In other words, the consumers of stolen tea are now suffering from the consequences of the foreign diet and looking for help amongst the Chinese and Asian who were part of the tea triangle in the 1800s.

The biggest capital investment by the British in Kenya by 1903 was the railway from the coastal town of Mombasa to Kisumu. The project drew a lot of criticism from many circles that it was labeled as the “lunatic lane". Surely, the whole tea business doesn't rank far from being a lunatic drink. In addition to normalization of processed sugar, it made tea a cash crop in my region. That has had a negative impact on food security, our water quality, forest cover as well as the growing of food for the international market that is skewed against my community.

A bigger irony is that I am consuming this tea in the American South for the first time. The South has its own fractured history of stolen flavors and labor from Africa. I hope to cook this tea at my next residency at Elon University next month in celebration of Black History Month. 

While the tea has been dormant for years in my psyche, it will rise rapidly and be consumed at institutions of higher learning by the next generation of warriors of food justice..

Feast & Fermentation

It's travel time for me and that means it's time for what I call "Trafofosu": Travel Food for Sustainability ". The travel industry is notorious for being an industry marked by sensless pollution. It serves horrible food and causes plenty of polution by using single-use plastics. It has gotten a little better but that is a far cry from what it can be.

For that reason I made enough food that would last me through the 27 hours journey from North Carolina to Nairobi Kenya.

That allows me to enjoy some flavorful and healthy organic food without the use of plastics.

This time I went overboard and cured a small piece of organic pastured lamb as a condiment to accompany my mostly vegan travel foods. It was full of flavors and wonderful memories of my family’s past annual festive seasons in Naivasha where pastured lamb was the centerpiece. It was a great appetizer of what I expect my next few weeks will be like.

I am taking my tired body back to the source of my strength and joy: home. I expect to be rejuvenated while also nurturing that space, family and community with interesting stories and flavors from new places that I visited this year.

Food, family and flavors executed sustainably with love and justice are the reason for this season. I am loving old age as I have noticed that the older I get , the more I love LOVE and that love is simple and uncomplicated. I now truly believe that death is largely the consequence of the misapplication of positive human emotion. My simple goal for this trip and beyond is to keep things simple and on the positive Indigenous Vibe!

Food Catastrophe

The Kikuyu are anarchic and difficult people to tame. For this reason, we must strike deep into their cultural roots. Perhaps then we can force them to conform. I mean of course to strike at their language, their religion, their cultural and historical reserve, so that we can neutralize their ability to develop, to distinguish themselves, or to prevail. Thereby removing them as an obstacle to our strategically vital plans in Kenya, East Africa and the Africa to all this neuralgic territory of great strategic importance for the politics of the U.S.A “ Henry Kissinger 1954

Here is an honest view of the Western establishment in regards to my community during our era of "Catastrophe ". The dark cloud set upon this proud people in the late 1800s. The British wanted the land that my people lived on as part of their empire. For over 200 years, the battle has been raging on. At least in the hearts and minds of those who are in the know. America joined the fray after 1945 following the great war in Europe that spelt the end of the British Empire as the ultimate global Power.

Here is the declaration of war on a free people during a time when it was fashionable to openly share your war tactics as the noble savage who was the "enemy " was considered to be outside the literary world. It was therefore safe to discuss war matters even within an earshot and be relatively safe.

Unfortunately many fell for the tricks of the oppressors and even became useful agents at the hands of the oppressors. Others knew better and invested their energy in fighting against the injustice of colonialism. Once the oppressed learned the language of oppression, they celebrated in all manner of praises for having the tools necessary. But many got stuck with the tools without using them that they became toys.

That is partly how our food and culture become unjust. Now to get "Just Food" in a war few can dream of wagging, leave alone winning. Think about that and notice how the template is almost universal. Everywhere food is fast turning from "Just Food" to "Fiat Food". What most people are familiar with are the consequences of that shift. It takes the form of lifestyle disease, climate sabotage and most placid of all, illogical culture.

By illogical culture, I mean the engagement in things that look benign and even celebratory but which causes harm to our lives and environment. In other words, we celebrate the very things that causes death. That is what I call the culture of "Death Worship ".

There are fewer areas where this culture of Death Worship is as prevalent as in the food culture. Anthropologically we evolved into humans as a result of the vchanges in our diet. But that can be a little far for many to both remember or even stomach, no pun intended. The narrative that majority of the people in the Western world and areas under its influence is the story of Adam and Eve, which incidentally starts with food or rather eating if you like. Yet the underlying messages in the two narratives are the same: what you eat determines who you become. The message is loud and clear, that human beings are always creating themselves at the point that every morsel enters their mouth. That simple realization could as well be one of the biggest discoveries of any weapon of mass construction, destruction and even deconstruction.

Think about how many churches have been built in any average country over the years, then add the staff that run the whole enterprise and then add on top of that, the the amount of time that whole enterprise has managed to get humans to invest in attending regular activities. The value of such an investment has to be astronomical. It is therefore clear that those interested in controlling others have found food to be an effective ways of usurping power. Nothing can be more catastrophic that the loss of control of food from an individual, community ,nation or even as a species level. That act of loss of control is what I refer to Food Catastrophe. That catastrophe is the foundation of my analysis of Food Justice as an indigenous person. It’s an easy concept to comprehend by breaking down the word justice into into two words of Just and Ice. Food can there been either just and life-giving or ice and life freezing. To eat well then must mean to exercise power in the most elementary levels and the most advanced level possible. It is freedom per excellence. Anything short of that is a catastrophe in the making.

While the choices we make are individual choices the options have to be decided by some and the ability to determine the choices available creates a lot of hidden powers. The masses however are fascinated by the choices to the extent that they easily overlook the most important aspects of the arrangement. Once the masses accept to cede the power to determine what constitutes as food and how it is produced and distributed, they create what soon becomes cultural masters and ultimately gods. Those gods and masters will eventually have the power to determine who lives and who dies.

How else can you explain a people so particular about what they wear, where they live, where they work, what religion to ascribe to, what teams they support yet care less about what role they play in this primordial duty we have of contributing in human evolution through food?

This is one catastrophe we cannot afford to just pray about as that has caused others to prey on us as Henry Kissinger points out in the quote above. My take is that the loss of control of our food and by extension the adoption of a Fiat Food culture, meaning a culture of eating food that is not Just, results in negative evolution. In other words, we evolve backwards and life becomes a burden that in neither unsustainable nor unenjoyable. I call the process towards such deplorable state as Death Worship.

African Flavors Across Generations

Holidays are just moments of the year when we get to push the boundaries outwards and also turn our hearts inwards in equal measures.

Today my children wanted me to prepare a story in a plate. Instead it turned out to be many stories in a saucer.

The first story was of my first holiday dinner in the U.S., back in November 1989, in South Haven Mississippi. My name is Njathi Kabui, and I am from Kenya. As a young adult, I had a dream to immigrate and attend college in the United States of America.

I had been in the U.S for barely 2 months. I had been married for less than one month, and was unsure just how long I could survive in a system that was so alien to me that I couldn't compare it to anything I had imagined. Yet no one knows what tomorrow brings or takes away.

I compared that dinner event with the last food event held at my village five months prior to that date, for a fundraiser for my college fund. The women in my family cooked outside, behind our house, until 3:00 in the morning. They went home and took a nap before waking up, then prepared for the fundraiser that afternoon at the local primary school.

Many people from the community showed up and contributed in cash and “in kind”. One woman brought some eggs for auction, while my my aunt donated a goat for the same. It was an amazing sign of generosity. In the end, we collected about the equivalent of what I charge now for one hour of work.

My children will never know that kind of life. They will never know what life in the village feels like. Whenever they visit, they are outsiders looking in. Such is life. But what it does offer is the re-creation of a version of the flavors that marked that era. Those flavors are unforgettable. I therefore prepared a small serving of pastured lamb with a rub I made, and fermented with fruit of the African Sausage tree. It was baked in the oven, and the skillet was deglazed to sauté a mixture of 4 types of greens, straight from our backyard here in North Carolina. Those home-grown greens were, namely, Swiss chard, lacinato kale, curled leaf Kale, dandelion and sorrell. I added Shitake mushrooms to the greens, then added some shredded purple radish. The portions were small, to remind them of the challenges ahead. We then made an herbal tea from some of the roots from the backyard, and sweetened it with honey. I made chickpea pie, with only 6 ingredients. These were: chick peas, banana, avocado, maple syrup, and blue berries, and a pinch or two of cinnamon. It's one of my simplest recipes but yet the flavors couldn't have been more eclectic, even across the generational divide between me and my children. My dinner was just a prelude for a bigger dinner. It was also a harbinger of things to come in the next 33 years, and beyond! Today marks my 33rd Thanksgiving, here in the U.S.

GMO Culture

Fela Kuti, while playing at a concert in Detroit Michigan, opened the show by introducing his song entitled "Just Like That". He said that in Nigeria and much of Africa, you could be sitting down and watching television and the electricity goes off, just like that; you could be taking a shower and the water runs out, just like that; you could be walking down the street and the cop arrest you, just like. That is the type of brutally honest lyrics that Fela was known for. The concert was about two and half hours long but consisted of only 4 songs. Fela had every reason to raise those issues. It was barely a year since his release from prison following his prison sentence in 1984 on some trumped up charges of possession of foreign currency.

Well, just like that, Kenya food sovereignity has been gone off, arrested and ran dry just like the electricity, water and Justice that Fela Kuti sang about.

I find it hard to comprehend just how reckless we as a species have become about life.

I remember that six years before this performance before Fela's concert in Detroit, my oldest brother came home with a single record from a group I had never heard. The single was Celebration by Cool & The Gang. The single was an instant favorite. It is one of the song I still sing from memory to this day. The first few lines went something like:

"There's a party goin' on right here

A celebration to last throughout the years

So bring your good times, and your laughter too

We gonna celebrate your party with you

Come on now

Celebration

Let's all celebrate and have a good time

Celebration

We gonna celebrate and have a good time

It's time to come together

It's up to you, what's your pleasure

Everyone around the world

Come on!

Yahoo! It's a celebration

Yahoo!...."

Funny enough when I first heard of the company Yahoo, I read it in the same tone as in the song.

The B side of the single was "Morning Star". Thr contrast between two artists that mark my formative years, but whose influence has lasted all these years.

Yet it is not difficult for me to comprehend the deterioration of our continental and global fortunes. Very slowly I have witnessed one the fastest growing religion is Death Worship.

Under these awkward dispensation, our culture appears as a self-sabotage affair where more and more people seek to engage in unsustainable practices that leave us poorer. Ironically, more people wish blessings upon me than any other time in my life. Yet even simple things like burying family members have become big business. That has made me very suspicious of prayers in general but more so during funerals.

I can’t possibly comprehend how people who are wealthy enough to send their child to universities, buy new cars, houses and even take vacations all of a sudden become poor once a relative dies Just Like That. Just like that, a person is free to make irrational decisions about health and how they spend their life on earth in service of the system that is killing us without second thoughts. My indigenous understanding amongst my people was that death is a private matter. The equivalent of fuck you was wishing that someone will die alone and before he blessed his family with a game plan after their death. According to that view, life and stability were paramount. Your send off was your business and that of your family. No one can mourn you except those who you had sacrificed your life for or were related to in blood or in bond. It's a fake affair to mourn someone you didn't know or care about. If you didn't see me in life, why see me in death? If you didn't enrich my life while alive, why impoverish others in death. I can’t imagine the opportunity cost of the resources spent in fulfilling the wishes of the dead by my community that is seriously unhealthy and food insecure. Truth hurts, but we can't continue in this way.

I remember when growing up, the burying of the dead took on a different turn. A preacher had to be present as a given. That meant that Africans had to bury their dead only by the help of outside culture that was antithetical to local values. Then the body had to be pumped with toxic chemicals that would pollute the water table. We were all over a sudden wrecking the environment in life and in death.

How many birthday gifts have changed hands over the same period that has accelerated our climate sabotage? How did we manage to feel so good while wrecking the planet we claim is ours? Who do we include in that collective "ours"? It is ridiculous when you think about just how entitled we as a people have become. We deserve to live well and be happy without regard to cost or responsibility. That is the same idea behind slavery and Colonialism.

Such a culture is the equivalent of GMO seeds. If we can't eat well, we can't live well certainly can't die well. That is the making of poor people who are scared to fight for justice. In this case, justice is working for what we want and paying for what we use. The results of such a culture is the dimming of the We all have become like the politicianswe complain about, Just Like That. The way we live promotes deficits. Its a form of life that dimms "The Morning Star " and any other star, Just Like That. Surely, fear is not for man.

GMO As A Virus

On Monday, Kenya's newly elected president lifted the ban on all GMOs. That means it's now legal to grow or import GMO seeds and food into the country. Quite a number of people have reached out asking for my feedback.

The irony of it is that I have been speaking out about the politics of food for more than 20 years. I have utilized every possible platform I could access.

I have been pushing organic and heirloom seeds as the only viable option for a planet that is on it's deathbed.

I have kept relatively mum on the issue as there are many others who are more qualified to offer their opinions too. I have had the opportunity to make mine. To what degree I have succeeded in an open question. But I have to appreciate the fact that in my lifetime, I have seen the issue of food move from obscurity to the center of national discussion.

Beyond just talking, I have been writing about food as intelleIctual propaganda, meaning that I take simple ideas about food and situate them in centers of power where they haven't typically featured. In so doing, food issues gain more prominence. I am acutely aware of the negative connotations that the word propaganda bears in the minds of many, but the etymology of the word propaganda simply means to spread or make known.

When I am not writing, reading or speaking about food matters, I am practicing farming and cultural regeneration with a small team of progressives across various continets in what I call the coalition of the disgruntled and restless.. The team is a whole story for another day. In my language, there is a popular saying that says “wa maì nì wa maì na wangù nì wangù". That translated means the day of fetching water is only for water and the day for “firewood” is for firewood. More on the firewood later, today's discussion is on “water".

That means that I don't speak or write from a theoretical perspective. I haven't made a dime from my farming endeavors but profit has never been my motive. My farming is for practical research and survival. Thanks to the support of friends that value and share my ideas, we have come a long way.

My latest project is in my village where I am setting up a model farm that I am calling the Shrine Farm. Fella built his shrine and we are better because of it. I am building the farm that will awaken our consciousness through food.

Here is a group of women I am supporting learn the art of making traditional baskets that is disappearing. These baskets were quite common in my young days, I watched my grandmother almost magically turn the inner bark of a shrub popularly known as Mìgio, a favorite goat food, into fibre after first carefully chewing that thin sliver of bark that looked like a petticoat. She would then roll in on her thigh, periodically spitting on it to keep down the friction. She would then proceed to make the most beautiful basket with the fibre. Let clearly state that all this events took place without funfare. There were no big rituals around the whole process because, looking back, life itself was a ritual to my grandmother. So every day was marked by ritually engaging in the business of life.

Then a virus came upon the next generation and they lost the rhythm of the ritual of life. In fact the virus caused a sort of cultural rheumatism where my people became averse to the ritual of life. That generation started worshiping synthetic rituals of greed and efficiency.

The baskets that were living repository of the microbiome of each generation started disappearing as the community opted for cheaper baskets from who knows where.

Luckily, I am in possession of one of those baskets from my village that is over 60 years old as a testament to the power of the ritual of life.

Just like the virus of efficiency and convenience killed a whole ritual of life, GMO will contaminate the very body we possess and turn the ecology of the body into a biological ghetto: a creation of a ritual desert at the behest of corporate greed. Such a body will be useful for the service of corporate profits.

Funny enough, while the topic of GMO was raging amongst Kenyans everywhere, the Icelandic nation TV featured my interview talking about food literacy.

If anyone wore a mask during Covid or even got vaccinated against Covid, you may want to consider doing the same against GMO. The consequences of the GMO is far worse everything being equal. I do the work I do because I treat anything that damages our health as a virus. You too may want to consider making a similar move.

Check the interview below

https://www.ruv.is/sjonvarp/spila/kastljos/32276/9jpre8

(last 6 minutes)

NO DEVIL ON THE PLATE

I was grateful for an opportunityto give a lecture at the Democracy Festival in Reykjavik, Iceland for 2022. The lecture was followed by a conversation with Guðrún Soley, a cookbook author, media personality and activist, during the question and answer lecture at the Democracy Festival in Reykjavik. I spoke about the connections between indigenious governance and food amongst the Agìkùyù. Little did I know that the subject of language would come out of the conversation. Soon after my lecture a person in the audience let me in into the secret.

It pleased my heart to learn that I was standing on the shoulders of elder and a teacher of several generations,professor Ngùgi wa Thiong'o, author of Gìkùyù book, Caitani Mùtharabai-nì ( Devil on the Cross). It is one of my favorite of Ngugi's many books, along with Decolonising The Mind. I wondered if it was a coincidence that I choose the theme od Decolonision for the residencywithout knowing that Ngùgi's book was the first to be translated from indigenious language of Gìkùyù into Icelandic. As an unintended payback, Guðrún gifted me a signed copy of her cookbook written in Iceland. That means that I either have to translate the cookbook or simply acquire a copy of Ngugi's book in Icelandic as a companion. It will be interesting to have the two copies in our village library in the near future. It will be on sign of the finitude of food.

Professor Ngùgi was invited for the event marking the launch of his book. I met with a professor who was present at the event as well as the translator who did the marvelous job. They all spoke very fondly of the whole event as well as the broader work of professor Ngùgi. I felt so much like an intellectual child of Professor Ngùgi with my work around Decolonising African Food, whose work has propped me along the long journey since my youth. Hopefully the journey will continue.

Along the musical work of Fela Kuti, I am deeply indebted to these two Africans in making me comfortable in my African journey that eventually included the journey into both indigenious and Black self hood. My knowing that I was walking in the footsteps of Professor Ngùgi made me more comfortable in what was otherwise unfamiliar territory. Thanks again to residency at the Nordic House Iceland! Thayû !