Kilombo & The Great African Catastrophe

The sun delayed setting today in our village in honor of a most humbling connection. Professor Paulino Itamar was our guest. He is a professor at Federal University of Western Pará but also works closely with 9 Kilombo communities inside the Amazon Forest. These communities of Afro Brazilians, also known as maroons, are populated by Africans who escaped slavery during the painful period of African Catastrophe. Many of these communities were able to resist every effort by the Portuguese to this day.

Professor Paulino has officially invited me to Brazil to give a symposium at his university and also do an event with the Kilombo communities. I understand that these communities are eager to connect with other Africans, something they haven’t done for over 250 years. The communities are in the very interior of the forest and have only been recognized by the government not too long ago. I have spoken to one of professor Paulino’s masters class along with the late environmentalists Wanjiku Mwangi, Professor Sally Nyambura and Thiong’o wa Gachie.

The students shared some of their favorite recipes at the end of our presentation. Some of the students are eager to visit Kenya and also spend a little at our farm and we can reciprocate by sharing some of our recipes made with food that is as close as possible to the food that the first ancestors of the Africans the diaspora ate before they were caught up in the African Catastrophe.

On his part, professor Paulino shared a great story of a Black masquerade character known as FOBO. FOBOR appears at a festival parade and punishes powerful individuals who misuse their powerful positions or resources to oppress others. I was very interested in the story and even wrote a short essay about it. I hope to one day see the masquerade of Fobòr in person. How cool would it be to have FOBOR at my dinner.

In any case we are glad for opportunity at hand. I am focused at the series of dinners on our farm with the community and the African Diaspora.Those first dinners is what I call the Dinner of Return. It’s the closest concept I know to spirituality. By preparing the farm to grow such important food, we are acknowledging the Great Catastrophe in all Africans and all those who perpetrated it and continue to both benefit from it as well as keep it alive, albeit in different form. We then follow that recognition with action and gratitude.

Kilombos is our spirit of resilience and resistance. Just food is the fuel that drives that resistance. It is a common thread amongst all those who were against the Great African Catastrophe. We shall overcome. Today we overcame the divide across language, color and culture. In other words we ate as one and we ate Just Food. It’s the least we can do to uphold our humanity in a time of intense darkness. When I make it Brazil, I will light another star in our constellation of Beautiful Blackness that shine. My parents would be most proud of their work to hear that their dreams of freedom, justice and love is being felt as far as the Amazon. Mau Mau meets Kilombo again over the Dinner of Return. In honor of those who have fought so hard using their own marshal arts like capoeira and indigenous spiritual system like voodoo and Santeria, we killed a cock and uttered the peace refrain Thayù Thayú. One Thayü for the Professor and one for the Kilombo communities that have invited me to their community. When I make to Brazil, I will start the same way we ended and the Kilombo will close the best way we know how. The spirit of Kilombo is the spirit of food justice, an integral part of overcoming the Great African Catastrophe. A deep debt of gratitude to all the stewards who have been working on that for all the generations past and those yet to come and those support this vision from a far even though they might never eat a morsel of grain from these farms. To those generous souls, may the FOBO 0f the carnival called life smile on you.

The Chestnut Allegory

By Chef Kabui

Cape Chestnut is one eatery in Nanyuki that sets itself apart from other food joints that I have visited. When I say it is a different space, I mean it in every sense. Let me start by warning anyone with a closed mind and a faint wit that this restaurant is not for them. It is not all in vain for that person(s), for at the very least, they know not to waste their energy going there. However, they surely will miss the palpable love and warmth of the space.

The restaurant is owned and operated by two women, who are also partners. One is an American trained chef and the other is an Indian self-made chef. The eclectic combination of the two cultures, training and passion makes for a perfect recipe of food that adds value to an African culinary tour. I typically would not eat American or Indian food during my tours in Kenya, but this is one experience I truly appreciated. My hesitation to eat these foods are largely emotional as well as political. I grew up with Indian friends and later moved to America where I have been living amongst some solid American friends. In both of these instances, I have matured enough to separate individuals from their dominant culture. I am able to live and thrive in that duality of a White oppressive power and to have some honest friends who happen to be white. A similar binary holds in my dealing with Africans. I now understand, regrettably, that not all Africans desire freedom or are willing to pay the price for it. That ultimately leaves me is a point of discrimination. Yes, you read that right. 

“Discrimination” started as a positive word until it was politicized by the oppressors. These oppressors practiced an illegitimate form  of discrimination to deny other's their rights to their culture, wealth, labor, markets, education and health. Yet, the etymology of the word has nothing to do with injustices, but rather discernment.  In other words, discrimination is the ability to tell differences for the sake of making the correct decision or choice. 

I, therefore, appreciated the restaurant because it represented my food story outside the African experience. The first foreign food that I ate was Indian. The latest influence on my food thinking is American. I call these influences the stem. The root is African, and they all bear fruit that is a synthesis of African, Indian and American, which I call Afro Futuristic Conscious Cuisine. 

I have to confess that the above description is overly simplistic and only useful in my narration of this specific story. Had I enough time and space and patience on your part, I would indulge in an equally interesting exegesis about how each of the three cultural cuisines are equally interconnected at their root. African food is deeply influenced by Indians who came to Kenya to build railways in the late 1800s. America was founded as a result of Europeans desire for Indian spices. Africans had been trading with Asia long before the coming of Arabs and Europeans. 

The connections do not end with the cultural and professional ties of the owners of Chestnut, but also with the word “chestnut”. Chestnuts also have an interesting story for Indigenous Africans, Asians, Americans and even Europeans. The tree contributed greatly to the building of wealth in modern day America. Enslaved Africans were central in the gathering of the nuts for food from the tree, which was sometimes referred to as the “bread tree". Its valuable wood is rot-resistant (though that did not make it immune to an Asian fungus that attacked the American Chestnut tree species that numbered in the billions).  As a tree that starts to produce nuts at 40 years and can live to be 1000 years, it is a symbol of both food security and vulnerability. In America, Indigenous people knew how to make both milk and flour for communities that provided a major source of the starch. Now, science has proven that chestnuts are a superior source of starch and contain other minerals such as selenium. The name, therefore, has an equally complex history that spans a wide period and across cultures. 

The Chestnut Restaurant represents the positive aspects of this long history, that is, the resilience, the nurturing aspects and a healthy dose of uniqueness. The two owners took time to welcome me and share their vision and philosophy. They have a farm in Mauu that provides them with a bulk of their food. That means that they do not have a standard menu. Their kitchen runs around the season. 

One thing that you will not find there is anything plastic. I need not do anything except give a big salute. The restaurant earned a place in my crass heart. That is one team that I would love to collaborate with for a fine dinner because our history, philosophy and destiny are aligned.

I could not hide my excitement about what I was hearing about the restaurant. My sister Wanjiku from Porini had to be a genius to select this as one of the places in Nanyuki to visit. Thinking about the chestnut can create a cultural and historical thesis about food of the triple heritage of the cultures aforementioned. It has not always been fancy but we have enough good to build a culture that is as valuable, transcendent and futuristic as a chestnut.

Batian & Food Heroism

I'm restoring my ancestral food vibe in the space that first nurtured my understanding of what I call "Food Heroism". Food Heroism is a simple concept. It observes the foundational nature of food and of its central role in human evolution and civilization. Those basic lessons have informed my conclusion that of all the battles that have been fought, from the oldest recorded Western war epic of Homer over a woman named Helen, to the modern imperial wars fought over a black liquid known as oil, the most significant battle is one still to be fought. It's the gorrilla war--to recover control of our food.

I know that any battle has to have a historical context. Mine is partly personal, and partly global. Both of those two aspects can be deduced by the types of food that was growing in our farm in my young days. The person I am today, the values I hold dear, and the battles I engage in are deeply influenced by the crops that were grown by my family, and by the way they grew them.

As I am remaking my family farm in a more contemporary Afro Futuristic fashion, I am saving some of the historical food relics of my youth. One such crop that was a key consumer of our time and energy was coffee. I have saved 33 trees from my mother’s original stock, for memory's sake. They are a form of living cenotaph for my mother’s toil on the land. The type of coffee trees I am growing are known as "Batian", a fitting word from old English, meaning to fatten (in a healthy way, in other words, to feed in the purest sense), to make better, or to heal.

That was our holy food trinity of the past, the struggle and code of our ancestors. "Batian", to feed, to improve, and to heal is now the faded godhead I am determined to resore, as articulated in my cuisine by the word "Futurism".

The original coffee trees were all cut down. My 33 relics are all new young shoots from some of those originals. We look forward to having a few lbs of organic coffee for our experimentation. We used to believe that the coffee had to be sprayed with toxic chemicals to survive, yet we haven’t sprayed ours with anything, but we are already harvesting a respectable amount from the young trees. We don’t have to produce any set amount because we don’t owe anyone for chemicals and toxic fertilizers. Some farms near our own were destroyed in the quest for high productivity. Those farms are now death fields or junkies for drugs that killed the fertility of the soil in the first place.

Unfortunately for many, today's dinner plates are a testimonial of having lost the battle of Food Heroism. But as human history has shown even losing significant battles doesn't necessarily mean the war is over. We are working hard to win the war. The name Batian also happens to be the English name of the highest peak on Mt. Kenya, otherwise known as Kírínyaga. The mountain has deep spiritual significance in my culture. My ancestors were fascinated by the white snow on the peak of the mountain. My name Njathi is associated with a few things, among them the highest of the three peaks on Kíng’ang’a. The colonial period introduced the name Batian. The white snow is slowly disappearing due to the changes in weather and degradation of our food and environmental conditions. That disregard of our food has its roots in colonialism. Food Heroism can recenter our community.

With a name like mine, parents like mine, and a history to boot, I couldn’t escape my fate in Food Heroism. We are looking up to our food, from whence our health, our life and heroism comes from.

Campaign For Organic Shit

While appearing on Inooro FM, a Kenyan radio station where I am a regular contributor, Nderitu Waihura, the host closed the interview with a comment about the latest celebrity in my village. The new celebrity is breaking all kinds of records and neither of those records are in the marathon or any equivalent races. In fact the celebrity is not human. The interesting bit is that the big news is less of what it has done but everything about what it has not done. That sounds a bit odd, I know that. 

So it warrants a bit of explaining. About three years ago, we embarked on creating the best soil to grow our food for a learning farm and a food literacy center in Naivasha, Kenya. In designing the project, it occurred to me that I had to secure an organic source of manure if I hoped to succeed in my efforts. That came after some anthropological research on the ground about the level of literacy about the dangers and benefits of shit. Many of the farmers I talked to did not seem to make the connection between what they feed their animals and the quality of manure they would get. Many seemed to think that their manure was organic even though they were feeding their animals commercial feed which had been grown using toxic chemicals like Roundup. We went to great lengths to grow our own fodder and then acquired three cows and 9 goats for the purpose of securing organic manure. 

We raised the first batch of cows with organic food and until they gave birth to the first set of calves. The first calf was pure brown without any blemish. I named the calf MW or Mississippi Warren from my African American grandmother. Then drought and lie set in and we had to curl our herd to only one calf. That calf tested our limits, we spent over six times its value in securing organic feed. In the end, we succeeded in breeding it and in the end got a beautiful calf that exceeded all the labor we had put in. 

I received the news about the birth of our calf while on the campus of UNC Greensboro where I was doing a residency for a couple of days. Both Profs. Meredith and Plaxedes had worked so hard to make the residency possible but also to make it very convenient on my part. When I first looked at the picture of the calf, it was black and white and had a heart on its forehead. The first thing that came to mind was the kin relationship that Meredith and I shared. She had introduced me to a lot of people, including Professor Plaxedes, who is from Zimbabwe. I did not even think twice about the name for our third generation organic calf,  I named the calf MP, from Meredith Powers. 

The fourth generation calf will be PC for Professor Chitiyo. It quickly occurred to me that the acronym in Kenya stands for Member of Parliament, the equivalent of a state representative in the U.S. It was a bit ironic because many know that I am a student of political science and that my political views are not conventional. In fact we had a very intense political discussion during the same radio interview. I am however glad that our cows are getting radical love and attention. I especially love their names which extend from Mississippi to Zimbabwe and from White to Black.  Yet what turns many people’s heads is the price of this cow with the name of a Mississippi queen who once worked as a sharecropper and had little education, yet has a black and white calf named after a one Black and one White professor. 

Njenga later took my class with his wife about 9 months ago and it has transformed their health. The followed the class to the team even though it was quite pricey. They had to get rid of a lot of things in their house but they are much happier now. The two could as well be professors of food discipline. In fact, I have invited them once to share their experience with others, hoping that their discipline could rub on others.

 I wasn’t too lucky that time but I am still in the race.   knows the Njenga has been following Afro Futuristic food regiment with great results. He therefore knows the value of milk. He lives in Australia but will be in Kenya for the holidays. The Njenga family has offered to buy all the milk available for the same price he pays for his milk in Australia. That comes to about $8.00 dollars or KSH.1200. That is a whopping 24 times the regular price of milk in the village. The Kefir made from our goat milk will fetch about $10.00 or about KSH 1500. That instantly made both Mississippi Warren famous. No other cow in my village or in the country has produced milk which commanded a higher price as far as we can tell. Njenga will be in town for a whole month and will most likely consume enough milk to buy another heifer. He has been a great support of the project but he is acting out of conviction.

 Njenga is not trying to raise the price of milk by 2400 percent but making a statement that health comes at a cost. The radio host was surprised by the act and it got him and the listeners thinking. Njenga’s goal was achieved. He knows that we don’t sell the milk and it is used up by our student workers and our friends. Nobody felt more special than those who work on the farm. They had no idea how expensive the milk they consumed was. When they did the math, organic food made sense. They get 8 liters of milk a day, at a price of KSH 1200, Njenga would pay them KSH 9.600. It would take 192 liters of chemical milk or what I call fiat milk to gross the same amount of money as the 8 liters of clean Just Milk. That is very close to the first milk I drank as a child in my village. Yet today, it is practically impossible for me to find it. 

My friend Meredith had other Just ideas. She had been touched by the calf with a love symbol on her head. She has decided to spearhead a campaign in the name of  MP and to raise money to support the second phase of the project. Just like Njenga and a number of other regular supporters, Meredith has been following our journey from up close. I am delighted that our desire to grow food with clean shit is disrupting a lot of the bullshit in food. The discussion on radio was therefore based on the simple fact the milk and fodder for the queen of love and the queen of Mississippi have been raised without bovine version of Junk foods on one hand and the fact that Njenga, the king of discipline, believes enough about food justice that he is willing to pay a Just price for Just Food.

As my friend and colleague Don Thornton frie once said, you can’t eat without shit. In other words, we have to have manure if we expect to eat long term. Just like good government that we campaign to have, we have to campaign for Just shit. Our desire to spread love without the toxic byproducts in food is causing wonderful things to happen beyond our imagination. The next time you hear someone saying that they don’t want shit, ask them to try the organic version, it might be worth more than they think. 

Please consider supporting this initiative with love.  I don’t want to hear any excuses, unless you think that you can have Just milk without Organic Shit. 

No Suit Recipe

I had an interesting conversation this evening with a gentleman I was connected with by a dear friend. The discussion was about sizable speaking gigs. The conversation was a form of interview but quite cordial and relaxed. Towards the end of the conversation, the gentleman asked me how I dress. I calmly answered that I typically wear African shirts or a whole African attire. The next question was whether I own a suit. Being blatantly honest, I replied that I gave all my suits away years back and I got out of the suit and tie business from that point to today. My contact asked me if I would wear a suit if he would buy me one. My answer was in the affirmative but with a slight caveat. I didn’t mind wearing a suit if any superior logic could convince me that my logic to give away my suits was faulty. I then clarified that it’s not my inability to buy a suit that results in my wearing African clothes. It is out of a conscious, well thought out decision. There was a brief pause. Can I ask you why you decided against wearing a suit?, he asked.

I answered that it was done for two reasons. First reason is out of strategy. I wanted to demonstrate the message of my lectures in my dressing. My cuisine, research and my activism are all based on AfroFuturism. It is also the way I live, as inspired by the best knowledge and practices of my ancestors that had been despised for many years and much of which has already been lost. I then add the numerous other lessons from the global village. For me to wear African clothes is the most sensible act as it compliments my commitment to eat and live internationally. I typically don’t do things just to the sake of acting. I can’t pretend that it is justice to normalize a suit. What extra performance do I gain when I wear a suit? Where is it written in stone that you are only acceptable and worthy of being taken seriously only when I wear a suit. It goes without saying that we perpetuate injustice by the clothes we wear without realizing it. For that reason, I am disrupting that injustice of normalizing the suit while making other attires abnormal. The British in India and Africa were against the locals weaving their own clothes so that they could support the textile industry of the British. The first major industry that propelled the British into an empire was the textile industry. That industry was largely subsidized by cheap cotton grown in the American south by enslaved Africans. I see the same injustice continuing to this day when Africans spend so much money on name brands while the health conditions in this community continue to experience serious health disparities. He who feeds you and clothes you rules you. The majority of the cotton used to make clothes today is done using GMO cotton or cotton grown with the use of toxic chemicals that are harmful to the environment. It is an opaque industry that gives us so much fiat joy.

Secondly, I dress in a way that sends the message of a concept I call “RIOF”, which simply stands for ratio of inside to outside fashion. That is simply comparing how much one puts on themselves as compared to what they put inside themselves. Resources being constant, a negative RIOF means that you are investing more on the outside than on the inside fashion. The goal is to have the highest positive number. It doesn’t mean that we should go naked by any means, but it is a matter worth looking at closely. I understand that this is not obvious to everyone and it does not just occur to me. I arrived at this observation after much study. It occurred to me that many people were so concerned with how they look to others and nowhere nearly as concerned about how they actually feel and look on the inside. That kind of thinking has very detrimental consequences on our health, our culture and our environment.

There are many other reasons but that is for another day. The middle aged White male agreed that he had no superior logic but actually learned something. A deal was reached. Had the job required that I wear the suit just because, I would have politely passed on the job. I cannot normalize oppression. After all, many of the crimes committed today are done on account of orders and laws passed by people wearing suits , titles under their names and mostly religious. Closely behind those with suits are the farmers, soldiers and those in chef coats, they play a major role in the fiat system. The beautiful news is that we are the ones who pay and authorize all the above people as consumers. If we decide not to consume anything they produce with injustice, a true religion would have dawned. One that we all can agree on and benefit from whether we shout about it or not. That is the only religion I aspire to. It’s a religion based on justice for all. That is what I call life worship. Today was not in vain if I managed to get one soul to even consider that religion as a possibility. If he hires me, it will be based on how I have dressed my stomach and my brain. That is major progress for anyone, leave alone an activist Africa like me. My branded cuisine is my fashion for the inside and outside. It is antithetical to the injustice to any toxic fashion, textile, brands and concepts. It is a journey and I am just starting. That pride comes before a fall is a fallacy only fit for theatre. In politics, otherwise known the economy of living, pride is a potent weapon. I adorn mine with regal abandon.

An Indigenous World Food Day

Celebrating Wainya in Exile

Celebrating World Food Day at UNC Greensboro started in pomp and celebration by cooking with the students all day. I counted 28 students who spent some time in the kitchen along with the staff and the professors who spent the whole day preparing food and talking. The discussions in the kitchen were more meaningful to me and the students. Funny enough, the majority of the students did not show up for the keynote later in the evening. Many had classes and other commitments. To be honest I also suspect that they were exhausted. Preparing food from scratch in between classes is not a simple task. I say that because some students returned to the kitchen three times.

The kitchen smelled so nice that it would draw students from nutritional classes down the hall. The food was being prepared at a facility in the Nutritional department. Meredith Powers and a group of students still had enough time to make memorable artistic pieces using seeds and local foraged plants. I shared some of my seeds from St. Croix as well as Tamarind seeds. The theme song was Kwa Waing’a Ndigachoka and Water Got No Enemy from Fela. I counted 14 different nationalities presented. It was great to have two fellow Kenyans present.

If I was to price the true cost of the food per plate starting with the organic food to the labor and energy, the food has to be close to $120 dollars per plate. Everything was made from scratch. Some people claimed that they would swear by the vinaigrette, others by the drink and yet others by the Black Beans. It was the first time for many students to eat an almost exclusively organic meal. . Only one person mentioned meat as the event was vegan. Kudos to all those who put the event together. It was almost 9.00 o’clock when I got home and almost 11 o’clock when I stopped talking.

Yet the biggest accomplishment yesterday was that I celebrated Wainya,a famous medicine man from my region. This medicine man was slandered by the British colonialists and the ignorant Kenyans for political reasons. He would later be so reviled in our community that he became the embodiment of the devil. I am extremely ashamed to have sang the song that denigrated and vilified our own heroes. My sincere hope is that others will join me in celebrating food instead of denigrating its spirit by consuming things that are not food as food. Almost all of us are guilty of the same crime I committed as a young boy by singing hateful songs of praising their oppressors as their source of salvation.

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The world is equally at war and facing imminent destruction because of false ideas and promises that many have come to accept. Those false ideas have little benefit in the end for anyone. I can tell you that because I now know what many who still sing that song are slowly realizing. The salvation they were promised has utterly failed to materialize. Instead of waiting any longer, many are abandoning their commitment to such false hope. I may not know much, but singing the hateful song of the W word(Waing’a as the local version of the N word) I am resurrecting the dignity of Wainya as well as the dignity of those who are living today and the future in the country where Wainya once performed his craft in diligence. I am not aware of any such attempt, at least not on any American university campus.

The lecture highlighted the value of dignity as a component of food justice while also taking the first bold disruptive steps to expand the definition of food beyond just calories and flavor. The reductive thinking , truncated of any substantive emotions in growing, preparing, cooking and serving has come at a great cost to our health, environment and to education. That the food was prepared at the cooking lab of the Nutrition Department is quite significant. It turns out that it was the first time an organic menu of such a price tag had been prepared on that facility in the memory of those presently in charge.

That African food can lead the way in improving the imagination of what food is cannot be underrated. Given the contribution that Africa has made to the building of both the economic powerhouse that America is and the food culture as well, it is just right that when the time for giving spotlight comes, that we are right there in front. Surely the injustices we have suffered are too much and too long. Africa can’t just selflessly give to others for the sake of others, this go around we are giving to our sake and for the sake of others. The great news is that we are making progress. The gene is out of the bottle and I know that some of us will never go back where we once were.

I saw the evidence of that in the words and facial expressions of professor Hewan. Following my lecture in one class, one White student come over to see he could attend the next session which was for African students only, professor Hewan was very firm and polite in her response that the event was exclusively for a particular group only. The student understood and didn’t press the matter. But it was actually one African student who wondered if I wasn’t worried that some people would look at what I was doing as being reverse racism. I responded that when I was in college, there are things I wish someone had told me. That is what I am doing with the African students. If someone in my college days had called a meeting to talk about surviving in college as a minority white person in Kenya, I wouldn’t have attended. Nevertheless, Africans have to realize that they are complex people with a lot of issues to solve just like any other groups of people. Getting together to solve those issues doesn’t disadvantage anyone else in any way.

There was no better place to do so than in Greensboro where on February 1 1960, a group of 4 Black students attempted to interrogate a lunch counter at Woolworth. They had no idea how things would turn out. I am lucky to say I know that most people took something away yesterday, what they will do with it, only the gods know. In the meantime I am resurrecting the African wisdom, similar to what Wainya had, in contemporary times and getting some positive results while also getting recognition and pay which Wainya never got. In so doing, the next generation will be in a better space. A space with ample space for all, especially the indigenous people who have taken great care of the environment and still hold so much promise in healing our past wounds. But we have to listen, remember and celebrate those past heroes.

Cooking Power Across Cultures

It was a pleasure to participate in the choreography of an Afro Futuristic Food event at Eco-Institute at Sanctuary Farm with a group of wide cross section of food experts in diverse positions across the country. The group forms a committee that determines how a fund that a philanthropist made available is disbursed.

The event was a great opportunity for me to further my analysis of power. My life mission has been to understand power in its most nuanced form and how it affects inter and intra relationships. The topic is the only thing that rivals food in maintaining a curiosity that refuses to fade away.

I have become fairly descent is classifying just how health or unhealthy our proximity to power influences our health. Last week’s event was a great opportunity to see how people navigate this challenge.

The interesting observation was that the philanthropist who had made the fund available is such a big supporter of food that they wanted to come and assist in the kitchen as my assistant. I have noticed that happens quite often. I can’t remember when I last hired a helper to clean up or assist in cooking. In majority of my events, the same people who are the clients are typically the assistants in the kitchen.

To some this might be trivial. To me this is huge than I can explain. But I will still try. When I grew up in Kenya, restaurant food was not something special but actually less than third tier. Restaurant food was something you consumed because you had no alternative. The first option was always eat food that was prepared not by strangers but by those who cooked it. I have come up with a theory that a healthy relationship is power can be deduced from one’s relationship with food.

In Kenya of my youth, catering for large family events was done by the sub clan members. I know that as two major events were help in my honor for being bold enough to attempt to attend college in America without hardly any money or knowledge of the empire. I have several essays about that experience.

But nowadays, most families hire a caterer to prepare food. This is obviously a sign of progress and wealth to some but I have a totally different idea.

Last week, I had the opportunity to have chef Kelly Tylor,my favorite culinary school instructor volunteer to assist me. John and Christy Chi were equally active in supporting put the meal together. The guests then lined up and cleaned up.

You are welcome to take any position but these people have a very close relationship to both food and power. Those who solely rely on people whose only relationship with food is only transactional and about money are likely to consume low quality food and to have a less healthy relationship with food.

I shared the story about the cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey. The Cyclops know as Polyphemus ate humans and refused to offer the typical hospitality known as Xenia. Yet, Polyphemus was glad to accept the gift of wine from the same humans he was eating up. When Odysseus asked for a gift in return for the wine, Polyphemus replied that Odysseus would have the pleasure to be eaten last. When asked what his name was, he answered that Nobody was his name.

The wine that Polyphemus consumed made him so drunk that it was easy for Odysseus was able to pierce the one eye of Odysseus. Polyphemus was in so much agony and pain after Odysseus pierced his eye with a fired sharp olive wood. Polyphemus shouted for help from the neighbors. When the neighbors showed up, they asked Polyphemus who was bothering him. Polyphemus replied that Nobody was try to kill him. So the neighbors figured since nobody was bothering Polyphemus, there was no need of going inside the cave to rescue Polyphemus from Nobody.

When we don’t have a healthy relationship with our food and those who prepare our food, we risk being cyclonic. It might just be that the cyclonic syndrome is at the heart of our lifestyle diseases.

Now you know why I don’t sell food, I sell idea and charge a fair price for those with a healthy relationship with food. When someone asked me about a prayer before eating, I said that it is an insult to pray for food you know is toxic and expect anything else but suffering. Mine is not the healthiest but it is the closest I could get to it. It made me smile to see everyone trying something different. They picked the folks and started eating. Talk about power !

Internal Black Son Celebration

Today is amongst the most difficult days for me as an African, Black, Conscious, learned and living in America. It is one of the few days I would hope to disappear for 24 hours and unplug from social media to the extent that my absence would block or erase any memories of the International Son Day Celebration.

I see a lot of wonderful Black young men with their families on this day and I am conflicted. I am not sure that I can pretend long enough to forget that we are living in a country still wrestling with the aftermath of a long period of hate that somehow refuses to go away. At least that is what the nationally held belief is. But the reality is more grim than most are willing to admit or at the very least acknowledge.

The outcome is a national malaise and contagion of forgetfulness that results in an insidious slumber.

Yet every so often, one of those promising young boys becomes a sacrificial lamb to remind us of the national slumber under whose gaze we thrive. The Black Son knows no celebrations except a conditional one. In addition to the onslaught of poor diet, the Black son has other serious historical changes that refuses to abate.

This is not a thesis but a lived experience from my past alterations with the police. I went to jail intentionally. I stood up for my right and paid homage to all the education I have received, both formal and otherwise.

When the police tried to deny my right, I immediately figured that he was falling for my trap. I live a simple life and dress the part to fully understand the life of Blackness in America.

So the Raleigh police officer tried to intimidate me by giving me an unlawful order. You see a white lady had absconded with my cab fare. When I saw her again, I refused to give her a ride until she paid for the previous fare. She gave me part of the money she owed and I left. She called the cop and claimed I stole ten dollars from her. When the cop called me and asked me to meet him, I requested that we meet at the office so that he could verify that the lady had a record of habitually lying to African cab drivers. I was smart enough to know the weight of my words against a white woman. History is replete with such contests between Black men and White women, real or fictitious. The time was nigh and I was glad to take the bullet. So I refused to meet the cop anywhere else but at the office. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I called my brother and the owner of the cab company and told them that if they don’t hear from me in half an hour, they know where to find me.

Wisdom is a bitch. As I had predicted, the cop arrested me for having stood up against an injustice. The cop told me that he chose to believe the white thief because she was crying too much to be lying. That the office was right where the cop and I were, and the white thief was in the comfort of her apartment over ten miles away, it didn’t matter. My dear cop chose to use the old script when exercising his policing duties over Blackness. Jail was my fate.

I ended up having to be bailed out at a big cost and spending hours at the cell. I followed up with more work by going to court three times. The thief never showed up even once.

You can tally up the cost. Bitcoin was a few cents then. Those are costs that my son now will have to bear.

Yet, I did what I did for him and other Black boys. It was a small price to pay. His grandparents did it before me. They all took an oath to fight for justice. My son and I are products of the oath and no police can alter that. Not even the pain of death. Any price is fair for those who are possessed by liberty. That oath is our Big Colossus holding the torch in our heart.

That is his heritage. Now I can ask him to help harvest some Sunchokes, fresh Basil, Holy Basil, Chives, Parsley and Oregano from the backyard garden and cook some healthy food as a way of promoting justice in the only field he and I have absolute control of, food. I prepared a dish with Saffron, the most expensive spice for a reason. He knows the color of Saffron, its price, those are easy to tally. But the most important price for him to know is his own price, which is no price. At such a price, he has neither the excuse nor the luxury of keeping his eyes on the prize. The odds are against him and he and I have to have his back. I did once and I will do it again forever. He too has to toe that line of justice. That is how we rock. I celebrate my son every day and hope that others can find the courage to do the same. I am speaking from experience. I am speaking about my own personal experiences of life worship. Injustice, complacency and dishonesty is the recipe of death-worship. Nowhere is that case more blatant than in the act of consuming food that causes and supports early death. Celebrate by feeding your son life today and every single one except those days that you view him with the same spirit of the evil cop. For once fall in love with a healthy Black face forever. The only way to do so is to love life-worship. That is an internal force and a force to reckon with. I reckon you will internally celebrate the magic that is Black son.