Food And African Queens

As the Spring season was getting fully underway, I could see all the signs from my small backyard garden that the year is most likely going to be one of bountiful harvest. The strawberries were at their peak and the Russian Kales and Dandelions were ready for the first picking. The neighbors' trees had been hanging over the back part of the small garden and thereby making it difficult to grow anything in the back part. I had spent the weekend cutting down the branches obstructing the sun but I was forced to take a break on the third Saturday for a good cause. Anne Hrrison had invited me to participate at the ribbon cutting ceremony to officially open Simple Gifts Community Garden at its new location. I had been a member of that garden going back to 2008. In fact, some of the strawberries and mint I was growing in my backyard came from the first site of the garden off of Highway 55. I did not have to think twice before accepting Ann’s request. It was not the first event I had done at the garden and I always appreciate any opportunity to share with my community. But when I checked my calendar I realized that I had another event to attend later that afternoon. Since our community garden is about 20 minutes away from Cary Theater where the afternoon program was being held, I figured I would be able to make it to both events. 

I therefore showed up at the community garden with everything ready to make sure that I will be there for the shortest time possible without compromising the quality of my message and flavors. The plan was to give a brief talk as I shared a recipe from my cuisine. 

 While the community garden had moved a few minutes further than the previous location, it had moved from one main entrance to our neighborhood to the other main entrance on Tingen Street.  I arrived at the community garden just as the official program was getting underway.  The garden was right off the street and it was almost a replica of the first garden. The same old fence had been erected and the beautiful tiny shed with a steep roof and colorful decorations on the side was the sole building on the slightly inclined piece of land at the very end of Tingen Road. The cars had been parked on both sides down the winding road like a jigsaw puzzle and were getting longer as more and more people showed up. My station was set up to the right of the entrance, right next to the power station where I could get power without the need of an extension cord. Two assistants helped to set up the station quickly in order that we could be all set before the program started. I headed to the main entrance of the community garden where the guest of honor was scheduled to cut the ribbon. There were about 50 to 60 people present and I quickly noticed that there were only two people of African descent. The community garden has always been largely caucasian but it has always attracted a few more people of color than were present. As I waited for the program to start, I had a few minutes to catch up with members of the garden I had not seen in a while. The garden had been inactive for a few years following the sale of the land where it was first established. The ribbon cutting program was simple and straightforward and did not take much time. It was during the ribbon cutting that I noticed that the other person of color in the crowd was actually the town’s mayor. I had never met him before.  He was casually dressed, with a pair of jeans and a colorful shirt that was untucked. But it was his shoes that really caught my attention. He had some golden boots that were glittering in the Spring morning sun from afar.

The brief remarks were made by Anne, and his assistant before the ribbon was cut and the program brought to an end with a prayer from the pastor of the local church where most of the members of the garden worship. As I walked back to my station which was about 20 meters from the entrance, I ran into the pastor whom I had heard Ann Harrison talk about many times. I introduced myself and remarked that it was a pleasure to see a pastor at a garden because the Christianity doctrine is based on the error of wrong eating. I continued to offer the same challenge I offer to most preachers concerning the idea of having a resident chef who deals with food literacy for the congregation. It is the only way to avoid the repeat of a serious religious problem which has caused much pain to people all over the world, regardless of their religious affiliation. Though I did not have enough time to elaborate, I was thinking about the amount of trauma that indigenous people have had to suffer as a result of the simple idea of an original sin. As I walked away, I could hear the pastor saying that she had never heard anyone put the matters in that way before. I stood by the station as I announced that I would be starting my program in about five minutes. 

True to my word, the people assembled in front of the station and attentively listened to my words with anticipation. I had enough stuff on the table to raise the curiosity of most people. But as I started my speaking, I thought about how odd it was that an African chef was speaking in front of an almost exclusively caucasian group of gardeners. It could be that the two men of African descent were probably more known both locally and internationally than the average person in attendance. It was equally interesting, considering the history of Apex town that mayor Jacques was in a position of political authority while I was in a position of authority in food literacy. As I looked at the crowd brimming with the bright sun of Spring, my mind quickly scanned the treacherous history that Africans have endured in the South over the centuries. It was a major cause of the trauma I was about to speak about. But that history too was replete with success stories of heroic triumph, especially in matters of justice. Fewer stories could easily capture that complex history than a street that was on the exact opposite of the street we were on. The Simple Garden Community Garden was on the left side of the end of Tingen Road, a street that starts from Salem street about two to three miles away. At the intersection of Salem and Tingen is a street that captures this complexity. That  street is currently named Justice Heights and it has had that name for less than five years. That street leads to what was the African American part of town and it is the neighborhood where Mayor Jacques grew up. The street’s former name was Lynch Street. Who in their right mind would think that it was a great idea to name a street lynch? 

 It wasn’t hard for me to make a case for the need of an overhaul of our approach to food. I could feel the weight under my shoulders as I knew that the topic I was discussing was one that required more time than I could afford for what was a fairly small program. So I started out by lying that I would only speak for about five minutes, knowing very well that it was practically impossible to even scratch the surface about such a complex problem and one without set procedures for analysis. Every statement I made seemed like a vocabulary. If the pastor herself had never heard that the consumption of bad food was at the center of her faith, I had my work cut out for me. I still took a stab at reaching as many people as I could by stretching the five minutes to the limit without causing another sin. I have to admit, that while it was an easy case to make, it was still a difficult and emotional task. I then bribed the attendees with a sumptuous meal that symbolized what just food could look like. I could see the spirits in the crowd lift up as they tasted Black Eyed Peas dish served with an eclectic salad made with tropical fruits of mangoes, combined with apples, pears, beets and watermelon radish. It was a wide spectrum flavor and a great way to conclude my presentation. I also served a tea made of holy basil, hibiscus flowers, fresh lemon and ginger. Everything was well choreographed to align with the message. I continued to emphasize my message as I prepared the food and also as I served. 

One of the ways in which I established how well the message sunk was by how many people come back for seconds. Though I had more than enough for the number of people present, we ran out of food as well as the tea. I felt a sense of relief looking at the empty pots and the smiling faces of those hanging around the station. One of those people was Mayor Jacques. He introduced himself and gave me positive feedback about what he had tasted. We exchanged phone numbers and agreed to meet up and discuss ways in which we could improve the level of food literacy and justice in the community. It was time for me to head out and I requested my assistants to help me load my tools of trade. I was off to the next appointment. But the idea of trauma could not be left behind. I drove past all the cars tightly packed on each side of Tingen Street. 

I headed straight to the Home Is Distant Shore Film Festival in Cary, the next town over. I have been attending the festival now for a while and even participated on the panel last year. This year was the best of all the ones I have attended. Interestingly, the last and most impactful of the features was a documentary about Chef Adegnimika Carrena from Benin. The amazing documentary was followed by a panel of local African and African American women that was moderated by an equally powerful fashionista Ciata Kromah from Liberia. It was as if it was a dream. I sat through the whole documentary wondering if I was dreaming. The main feature in the documentary was about the life of chef Adegnimika from her first ten years in her life in Benin to the being adopted soon after her father passed and the trauma of living away from home. That topic of trauma is what I have been writing and speaking about as the main topic for this year and next year. As the panel started, I looked at the three four ladies seated on stage with the banner in as the backdrop with the title of “Borders of  Belonging: Stories of Immigration and Identity. Four countries of regions were represented: Ghana, Benin, Liberia and the American South. I looked at Ciata Kromah and chef Adegnimika and they were both dressed in fabulous outfits with orange or bright yellow that reminded me of the sun. I too had a bright orange shirt. All this reminded me of the golden shoes that mayor Jacques was wearing that morning. It occurred to me that the two colors dominated the men in the morning and the women in the afternoon.

 My friend Aby Rao put on one of the best selection of short films since I have been attending this Festival. Aby and I share an interest in community activism and once tried to have a food show at the same theater where the message I would be sharing on stage was equally reflected in the flavors that the guests would be tasting. It was a brilliant idea but the logistics of the food preparation made it difficult to execute. 

Soon after our meeting with Cary Theater, Cary Park reached out to me with an interest in doing a food event at their wonderful location. It took quite a bit of going back and forth but we finally agreed on doing a presentation around food and pollination. 

So when I showed up at Cary Theater from an earlier talk that morning, I had all sorts of ideas swirling in my head from my collaboration with Aby Rao to the complexities of living in exile as an African. But the predominant idea was the symbolism of the golden shoes that the mayor of my town, mayor Jacques Gilbert, had been wearing during the Simple Gifts Community Garden I had just left. Ann Harrison, the garden manager, had invited me to be part of the program. The mayor was the chief guest and therefore had the honor of cutting the ribbon. Mayor Jacques is an African American in a town that is 74% Caucasian and 9% African American. Only the mayor and I were of African descent. A lot of ideas were flowing in my head but that is a story for another day. Yet I could not miss the ironies of the opportunities and challenges that we face as a people in terms of the historical trauma we face as a people, and by extension as a country and globe.

Upon entering the theater, I noticed Ciata Kromah seated at the end of one row with bright African fabric with yellow as the dominant color. Later on I ran into chef Ade who also had similarly bright colors. Chef Ade and I knew each other but had never met before. We had much in common and shared a deep interest in African food and food justice. It was therefore a big surprise when I learned that a short documentary about her life was the main feature. In the documentary she too raised the same issue I had raised at the community garden. 

Ciata Kromah moderated a panel of three African and African American chefs in the region. It was a truly emotional scene for me. There were three  African countries of Benin, Ghana and Liberia  in addition to the American South represented in the panel. Those places represent a significant sample of regions that were significantly affected by the history of enslavement. Ghana was once called the Gold Coast for its enormous amounts of gold that ultimately ended up in the West and opened the region to the trade of slavery.

Benin on the other hand was the site of great trauma as recorded in Zora Neal Hurston last book titled “Barracoon, the Story of the Last Black Cargo”  that touches on the experience of one of the victims of the Amazon warriors. Stanley B. Alpern did an equally extensive study of the evolution and reign of Amazons from the mid1600s to the end of the Dahomey kingdom in 1894.  His book, “Amazons of Black Sparta: The Women Warriors of Dahomey”,  narrates the story of the king’s all female regiment that was critical in leading the raids and capture of  neighboring Africans that would be traded as commodities. The name of the Amazons warriors was a curious one as it was first written in Greek Mythology. Homer first wrote about these women warriors but not in much detail. Homer mentioned that the Amazons warriors were defeated by the Athenians. The tale is considered to be a myth but was repeated every year during the annual public funeral done in memory for all the Athenians who had died in war.  While Homer and Herodetous left accounts of the Greek Amazons, we know that those stories were myths. But the African Amazons were real. As I looked at chef Ade, I couldn’t help but remember the Greek story of queen Penthesilea who fought against Achilles in a fierce battle in bid to help Troy following the death of  Hector, their most powerful warrior. It was as if the story first written by the Greeks was being played out in real life on African and American soil.  

Ciata Kromah represented another country that suffered the most recently from the complexities of the long relationship between Africa and America.  Liberia was formed as a country that would be a home for the former enslaved Africans. Some Christians and politicians alike had been instrumental in advocating for freed Africans to be repatriated back to Africa following their emancipation. Liberia was a replica of the U.S in its design. The country’s constitution was based on the U.S. constitution and there are two major reminders of that historical connection between the two countries. The flag of Liberia has one star just like the American flag which has more stars representing the 50 mainland states. There is also a town in Liberia named after the 15th U.S president, James Buchanan. But the plan of creating an African country based on American ideals mimicked some of the negative aspects of American history such as the division of the country along class lines. Those African Americans who returned to Africa dominated political power to the detriment of the local communities. The country slid into a brutal civil war which led to hundreds of thousands of deaths but also a traumatized generation of children who were used as soldiers. Trauma is our history.

As I headed home it occurred to me the possible symbolism of important events I had witnessed. The mayor's golden boots were an antidote to the “Achilles heel” in the struggle for power amongst Africans, especially men. The African and African American women chefs were symbolic of the modern day Amazon warriors. The story of these warriors was first by Homer about 1200 B.C.E. The Amazonwomen were greatly feared and were believed to have been the descendants of Aries, the god of war. That chef Ade was from Benin and the daughter of the country’s late commander, couldn’t have been a coincidence I could ignore. 

To combine these modern women chef warriors and conscious political power of the likes of the mayor can be a game changer, especially if you add a Kenyan with the uncompromising spirit of the Mau Mau in that mix.  I headed home a happy soul  to have toiled yet again for a brighter day and eager to accordingly hasten that day of a universal Royal Jelly. It’s coming y’all. I could feel it. We had endured so much treachery and survived our betrayal and incompetence all within living memory. I remember the recording of an ethnographer who interviewed one of the last living Amazon warriors in Benin. While walking on the side of the road, the old hunched warrior heard a sound of what appeared to her as the sound of a rifle being cocked. She immediately went into warrior mode and rolled over into the nearby ditch. She cocked an imaginary rifle and made the war cry of the Amazon warriors. The war cry is now recorded and it went as follows:

The blood flows,

You are dead,

The blood flows,

We have won,

The blood flows, it flows, it flows,

The blood flows, 

The enemy is no more.

The above war cry was a reminder of the dark days of injustice at our hands.  Now that we understand that unjust food is our original and ultimate sin that leads us to death , we should all raise the battle cry for the war against the enemy of unjust food  and the enemy will be no more. The demolition of the old order would open new possibilities for building a more just society and future. The army of African descendants could be instrumental in that process. I couldn’t resist thinking of the whole team in terms of construction of a new house. The most common piece of wood in the construction of modern houses is a 2 by 4 and that is the exact formula of the above team of 2 men, and 4 women. The two men represent African and African Americans while the modern Amazon women constituted 3 Africans and 1 African American.

Yet I remembered mayor Jacques golden shoes, then noticed my golden shirt that represented the energy of the sun that connects us to my Kenyan ancestors who fought for liberation. My region did not participate in the Transatlantic slavery web but we ultimately ended up being part of a colony and later a country whose coastal region was also notorious in capturing Africans for the slave market. That is the energy I felt I was adding to the space. It was a day full of intense emotions but nuanced with the bright light of small victories that are harbingers of what is possible. 

As I left the Theater, I walked briefly at the Cary Pak where I will be presenting in a couple of weeks and reflected on my topic for that day and its connection to trauma. I saw bees all around the flowers in the park. It occurred to me that bees had solved the problem of trauma through food and did so a long time ago.  The bees while making a honeycomb makes one of two compartments with odd shapes. While all the eggs in the honeycomb are all from the same queen. The oddly shaped comb gets a different diet of Royal Jelly. All the bees that collect that type of jelly know not to feed it to all the bees but only those inhabitants of the odd combs. That is how queens are made. America is a comb of worker bees, the majority eat a poor diet and the royal members of the country eat the equivalent of Royal Jelly. Afro Futuristic Conscious cuisine is the modern day Royal Jelly that brightens a dark past with sunny flavors for a people in exile in a country whose cuisine is itself  exiled by food illiteracy. It was truly a day of Royal Jelly. I know that as I took the golden boots by the mayor and the bright colors that Africans had on represent a new dawn of possibilities. But first we have to change the type of “comb” we have in our head for it will determine what we seek and ultimately what we eat. The “comb”most of us are in is that of Death Worship or Trauma. We have to shift to having combs of Life Worship which rely on “Royal Jelly “. But we must first forgive the injustices of the colonizer and the enslaver but we can’t forget the foods and flavors that kept those injustices turning us into worker bees. We will never be kings and queens again as long as our appetites are shackled. 

Come and See Carmen Tea

One can be forgiven for thinking that the type of my latest recipe of Carmen Tea is honey wine. Yet the flavors and looks remind me of Mùratina, as honey wine is popularly known in my culture. The flavors are soft, soothing and floral. It is made out of one fresh finely grated mango, 1 tps of freshly grated ginger, 3 tsps of dried Tulsi or Holy Basil , 1 tsp of fresh grated Dandelion root ,4 Tsp of Maple syrup, 5 to 6 cups of water. Add all the contents together and ferment for 2 to 3 days. 

I brewed this tea as a celebration of what is to come out of a recent friendship with enormous potential. Since my ancestors would brew Mùratina to celebrate marriage, newborns and victory, productive collaborations will demand such high regard as more and more people become victims of political and religious subterfuge. That kind of toxic environment results in fiat relationships whose focus is to feed our addiction to death worship. 

Whenever I see one who is immune from the pervasive epidemic which plagues many of us, they stick out like a sore thumb. I am brewing this as a charm and also as a sign of gratitude for all that are fighting so hard everyday just to be normal.

Such acts are so important that they are literally on a “come and see” or what I can now call Carmen Tea level. That is exactly why I chose to use my long forgotten crystal tea glass and make a toast with a free recipe to my friends, for whom I wish the same experience and light. What you will not be forgiven for is failure to try a real flavor that you think can bring about a new Ranaisance we desperately need. Thayù

IMF’D Soup

I get really excited when I hear big words thrown around that would make great examples of non sequiturs. One such phrase that comes in vogue periodically is Structural Adjustment. The phrase is quite popular with the IMF and World Bank. One can be excused and even believed if they associated the phrase with the colors of Black, Yellow & Asian colors primarily. I know the three examples are not one would expect as Asian is not a color, but that is exactly what Non Sequitur means in Latin: does not follow. So I am just staying true to my theme.

My point is actually very simple. There are certain policies by two of the world’s influential financial institutions on a global level. The two institutions which were formed after the second major White War, that changed the history of war in the west by modifying the designation of a war that was known as the Great War into WW1 or what I call White War I. That part of the story makes sense. The war of 1914-1918 was the greatest war that had been fought thus far and it made sense to name it in that accordance. So I can imagine what a shock it must have been for an even greater war erupted amongst the so-called civilized countries that resulted in the death of 65 million people over a short 7 years. Many more were damaged for life and their numbers will never be known. By that time, many countries in the global South were not liberated but were in the throes of vicious colonialism marked by violence that was invisible to the world. Many of those who died under that injustice were never counted and no monuments erected for the sake of remembrance just like their counterparts who died during the two great wars. It should therefore not come as a surprise that two economic institutions were designed with the bias of the times. Besides the Marshall plan that was designed to rebuild Europe, including Germany which had started and driven the costly war, the IMF and World Bank were equally flawed in their goals and design. Their stated goals were to be lenders of the last result to ensure that no major shocks would rock the global economy due to the failure of one or a few countries. The reality did not follow those lofty goals. In fact the two bodies did not prevent the global economy from experiencing shocks as planned. What happened was that instead of ending the possibility of a war that was so big that it was named as a World War, it started an era of a world of war. I am not trying to insinuate that wars are  new phenomena but the reality of the matter is that the instruments of war are quite new. Whole economies would become weaponized to the extent that hardly any guns or soldiers are visible in the modern war. Instead, weapons such as seeds, food, used clothes, debt and local markets all become tools of war. Nothing is spared in this new era of subtle violence where the victims of the modern violence can purchase painkillers from their oppressors to help withstand the extraction of blood from their own bodies. 

In the end, those who are being oppressed slowly adjust to dealing with their oppression the best way they can. There is a deity of war that the oppressed have access to with great hope and investment of both time, money and hope. Yet the only thing that drives that whole industry is not any tangible results but habit. Many oppressed people have strangely adjusted that their lot in life is to be ignored by the deities that determine the fate of those who dwell on this end of the cosmos. That has become culture, and a negative one at that. It is a hard reality for the human species with such an attractive story of having overcome great trials in their history as  species and an almost equal tendency for flawed missteps to accept one narrative of being losers and to build a culture around those shameful habits. 

Structural Adjustment is one such shameful concept. The term structural adjustment sounds like something that an engineer might be engaged in. A constructor could also have a small role of following or actualizing the design of an engineer or architect. But banks would mostly be useful in financing the project. But that is old thinking, WWII changed all that and a new era replaced the old order. Banking system became a weapon. While many survivors of the war from previously dominated countries were happy designing new flags and national anthems for their countries, another more sinister struggle was taking place that would change the history of war in the world forever. The new era of weaponized debt makes mockery of all the hard-won victory of men’s desire for liberty. That almost universal spirit marks the history of all. It is a diabolical act of treason against those who have toiled so hard in an effort to vanquish the rule of the masses by those with inferior knowledge and motives. The ubiquitous word that has come to symbolize that kind of government has been the word democracy. This word that was practiced by many indigenous cultures but popularized by the Athenians is fast losing its original meaning. When I hear politicians telling lies and the masses falling for those political subterfuge, I am reminded of the most famous funeral oratory speech in the Western world by Pericles in 431 BC, almost 2455 years ago.  The speech was given after one year of fighting in the Second Peloponnesian, the Greeks version of WWII, except that theirs took about twenty years longer. Pericles could never have suspected how long the battle he was leading his country in would take. In fact, he had no idea that he would not live to attend another memorial for the soldiers who had died in the war.  Pericles and his sons would die the following year from different types of war as we will find out.

Our focus is on the great speech that was given in the town of Kerameikos, a popular leafy neighborhood in Athens that was named after the porters who used to make clay pots from the great clay found there. 

That region of Athens was quite appropriate for such a famous speech as Plato too would also open his school, The Academy, not too far away from that location. We know just how influential the works of Plato are in the many disciplines but especially that of political science. Interestingly enough, one of the most famous of Plato's works to come out of the Academy is aptly entitled, the Republic, a work of fiction that based what was called the city of the greatest necessity, whose main theme was the definition of justice. I can’t say for sure whether Plato knew how far reaching his works would go in time, but I can say that the matter at hand today is very similar to the matter that Plato attempted to address in his time for our own countries are indeed modern polis of great necessity. Much has been written about the speech by Pericles but I will reduce my remarks to only three points that relate to our current predicament with the IMF. 

The age of Pericles was known as the golden age of Athens. The first point worth mentioning from Pericles was that he started out by clearly stating that he would not make any reference to the heroes of previous battles but rather would focus on the principles of those who had fallen in the previous year but would focus on principles of those who had fallen. The two most interesting points that Pericles made was that mind expansion through the education , arts and theater in Athens made Athenian soldiers better fighters than just having military training. Such highly educated Athnians had the “..highest regards for the bravest spirits who had the clearest sense of pain and pleasure of life and did not on that account shrink from danger” He continued to emphasize that the soldiers had such a love of their city that they could not stand the idea that Athens would fall in the hands of anyone else. Pericles actually thought that the Athenian taste and superior sensibilities made them unusually brave. He felt that those who were left behind should equally toil on behalf of such a well deserving city. So far so good. Athens as depicted by Pericles sounds like a city I would gladly offer my life for. 

Pericles then negates most of the great points he made when he offered his advice to the widows. Pericles stated that the highest honor to the widows was not to be mentioned at all by men, whether positively or negatively.That is where Pericles lost me and where the golden age had so clearly articulated started to lose its glitter. That is literally ghosting the widows who would live the rest of their lives without their loved ones on the day when those loved ones were being honored. How does one honor the brave soldiers by ignoring their spouses? The first two points are very progressive and the last one makes for the non sequitur theme. 

The first thing that came to mind is that if those soldiers were brave enough to not to run away from danger, those who were left behind should equally celebrate their spouse. I had this image in my head of the Athenian who ran 26.1 miles to report the victory of Athenias and wondered how much longer the journey of the widow would be knowing that she would never reach the love of her life again. She had to settle for living a life of her own with nobody to share any victory with unlike the Athenian soldier who had to run back home to share the news of the victory with the city he loved. That statement by Pericles must have felt like a sharp dagger going through the hearts of the widows. I say that because that is how I too feel about the IMF policies of structural adjustments. What most people might not understand is that the term structural adjustment is not a non sequitur, it is actually a recipe of exactly what the goal of the IMF is. These financial institutions have ghosted mostly Black, Yellow and Asian countries just like the widows during the age of Pericles. Women had a very limited role in the democracy of the Athenians. Yet this is the standard for what democracy is. The modern version of democracy apparently has undergone a structural adjustment from the original Athenian democracy. The modern democracy has seemingly changed but has retained its original state to those who are brave enough to peep behind the thin veneer. Modern democracy includes women in the Western world but other races have taken the role that women in Athens occupied in their political establishment. While it is done below the radar of those not highly educated in political matters, those outside the ruling races are outside the privileges of modern political establishments. But then if you look deeper, you realize that while power is dominated by a certain race, not all those from that race have equal power. Power is actually in the hands of very few people. It is for that reason that I have come to the conclusion that power has truly undergone Structural Adjustment. There are certain architects of power, and engineers of social classes that have designed a global system that  placed enormous power at the hands of a few, mostly men, of a particular race. 

While Athenians were proud of living in the city that prioritized education and bravery, I too are lucky to be living in the city on the hill with similar attributes. It doesn’t matter that I don’t belong to the ruling class, in fact, it might be a source of greater joy as I am able to evaluate the country I live in from a more realistic position. I would hate to be in a position where I am so drunk with power that I lose a sense of reality to the extent that I can’t see danger coming. That is exactly what happened to Pericles, at least going by his speech, he was overconfident about the power of Athens and its ability to win the war against the Spartans. Yet barely a year later, Pericles and his sons were dead from the plague and that bad fortune would only get worse ultimately culminating with the loss of the war against the Spartans. So the same people whose intellect made them brave were ultimately defeated by the unsophisticated and uneducated Spartans. Democracy suffered a great blow and many actually blamed the same democracy that Pericles was touting as the beacon of hope, along with its most famous opponent Socrates. Dictators took over at the behest of Spatans and the golden age of Athens, or the age of Pericles came to an end. Food is today in the same position that Pericles and Athens were in 431 BC. Food has mostly been adulterated as food, those that could afford whatever type of food that was within their means knew that they were eating just food. But the same education and progress that Pericles lauded Athenians for has come to bite man on a global scale. Yet the struggle to liberate the food from the hands of a few dictators who are hellbent on controlling it is in a similar fate as the Athenian widows who were best not talked about in terms of good or bad reasons. The modern man is largely oblivious of the crime of food that is turning life into a slave of the medical system. Unfortunately, many will only find out that the substances that they have been consuming and which they so much revere for taste and flavor were fiat food that threatened the very existence of life on this planet. Unlike the imaginary city in Plato’s Republic, the globe today is a city of great necessity of just food.   If ever there was a cause worth dying for, the struggle of just food. I can only imagine the kind of structural adjustment that has taken place in the world to change the food system from one of Just Food to one of Fiat Food. 

The good news is that the end of one golden age is the beginning of the golden age for another ideology. Now that we have a system of structural adjustment that favors oppression and what I call death worship, there has never been a better time to usher in a new era that is truly golden. In the meantime, I have been preparing for exactly that kind of era before it gets here.  My preparation has been in establishing alternative ways of being that would complement what I call the golden age of Life Worship. There are many places I could start but I have chosen to start with food. For it is through food that I have chosen to understand the current unjust system and likewise to resurrect a more sensible system. To mark my celebration of the coming era, I made the kind of meal that would make such an era. The meal was life affirming, sophisticated in taste and flavor. But I had to give it a name. I started asking myself the one word that would symbolize the spread of death worship globally. It did not take long for me to conclude that my first pick would be the F word. It is the one word that fits all emotions, both good and bad. Since the global economic system has Fucked the rest of the world, I decided to promote the IMF into a similar status and therefore call my soup IMF’d. That literally means any structural adjustment by any institution that coopts those who will be disadvantaged by the negative policies to gladly engage and support such policies. That also applies to food. Those who are not food literate have been so colonized that they celebrate the consumption of food that any brave soul with sophisticated taste would be ashamed to admit having consumed. Yet that has become the modern day culture that is stemming from the west. It is the ultimate structural adjustment as simply changing from being ashamed of consuming dead food to actually celebrating it. It is a form of funeral oration we can taste.

The modern empire is actually being spread on the plate more effectively than through the barrel of the gun. Maybe that is why Kerameikos had eventually become famous and still more importantly, where the most famous funeral oration of the era and probably ever since was given. It would make sense that food might be a great place to rebuild that new era. My first diet is to first recognize the danger and the source of the death worship in the IMF. The best way to remind myself of that is by making a sumptuous soup and calling it IMF'd soup. Instead of the funeral oration similar to the one Pericles gave just before the start of the end of the Athenian golden age, I am making a marvelous soup that will mark first the death of the death worship. Instead of saying the F word, a word that is culturally impolite in my culture, IMF'd becomes a great replacement and a great symbolic reminder that we are in the age of transition. That age will be followed by one of independent and majestic food, the truly golden imf. That way those who are addicted to IMF can still feel at home as the only thing that will be different is which IMF one will be interested in. We will all have our own IMF, one for Life Worship and another for Life Warship. I guess it would be the biggest non sequitur to have two IMFs that have exactly the opposite meaning. The only thing that would be non sequitur after that would be to chose the IMF of Death worship is to be Fucked and to choose Death Warship or the fight against death is to be alive and present .

 To make all this simple, we can also simply replace the F in IMF with Fuck or Food. One promotes just food or life while the other supports sensibilities to screw people over. Our golden age will come through the plate highways and those food highways can’t carry junk. This might be the debate of the decade in the country of birth but also globally. 

Voodoo Justice

Religion is a very personal matter. The most serious error is the recent negative ethnocentrism as practiced in the organized transformation of other cultures to match those of the dominant and mostly various empires. Since religion has a whole organized system, any empire would find religion as a useful tool in both dominating and governing it’s empire if all those under its domination have similar values. Yet it was a slow process before we got to where we are. There are hundreds of thousands of religions throughout the world as there should be. But one person one day woke up and looked to the opposite ridge and thought that he was far much better off than the people living over the next ridge on many accounts. Maybe it was on account of their dressing, the way they farmed, the way they married and much later the way they worshiped. The last point of discrimination has been a major curse on mankind.

But unlike other major wars, the wars based on the differences of opinions were actually proxy wars over other tangible resources and less about what one person's style of worship was. Racism has and will always be aimed at appropriating labor and resources from one group to another. I know that being an African living in the American South. I have been practicing the religion of truth, power and honesty. It has kept me from a lot of traps or boxes that would cloud my view of reality. I certainly don't want to live in a perpetual eclipse between light and darkness.

It was a bit out of the ordinary that the topic of my last keynote was about Voodoom and food. It was an experiment that went rather well. The focus of my lecture was to set the record straight and shed some light on some seriously misunderstood concepts. I had in mind a phrase that I once heard on TV way back in 1990. The U.S president at that time was George Walker Bush. The U.S had just invaded Panama and its then president was captured and extradited to the U.S. While the president was giving an interview about the U.S economy, he used the world voodoo economics. I was still relatively new in the U.S and obviously didn't have a good command of the local terms. I however took offense as I got the sense that the term had not been used in a positive light. The audience laughed and the president looked least surprised from the reaction of the audience.

I relived that memory on a podium and set the record straight. I will summarize what I said by simply stating that it is unfair to have some religions holding special status regardless of how many adherents it may hold in a secular country. Religious countries are exactly that, countries based on certain regions. So if we are going to wish every religious group some warm wishes, we should do it for all. It is also worth noting that the reason that certain religions enjoy certain privileges is partly because of their decimation of other religions. Christianity and Islam have had a long history of war that has seen enough blood shed to form a river. It actually reminds me of the first river in Greek mythology to speak during the Trojan War when so many Trojan soldiers died and thereby flooding river Xanthus with blood. The river complained to the most powerful Greek soldier and expressed its displeasure with all the blood shed. And what were the Greeks and Trojans fighting over? It was a fight for justice for the most beautiful woman named Helen. Who started the war? Eris, the Greek goddess of strife and discord started the whole thing and the other gods and goodness jumped in on each side of the war. It is interesting just how things stay the same, to this day, men are fighting wars that have nothing to do with them but fighting for some more powerful beings that can't fight for themselves.

It is for that reason that I am more interested in those whose spirits are like that of the river Xanthus, who cry out to those with power to stop the bloodshed. I am therefore not one who sees value in wishing even the Voodoom adherents a great and happier worship. We have a lot of unfinished business that we have to handle that is within our realms that we have become too comfortable to sweep under the rug. I wish you a happy everyday, one filled with light and a desire to pull your own weight to make this world a better place for all, regardless of what they decide to believe or not believe. We have to act as though we all have one river and we have to keep it clean. Where one chooses to go after life on this plane is their business and not the river's or the rest of the world. Should I expect to hear Happy Voodoom from anyone from across the isle? Not too quickly, those who are on the other side wouldn’t be honest if they did so as they have too much blood on their hand that they have to atone for. You can wish me well when you are still delinquent on your moral debt. I would therefore prefer nothing if no recompense is on the table. It’s on that account that I say happy food to everyone on everyday!

As they say in my neck of the wood, we Move Regardless, and we move most majestically when we move in justice.

PASSION FOR JUSTICE: THE DARK HISTORY OF THE PASSION FRUIT

They say that not all that glitters is gold. But I say that gold, just like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. And in my conviction that justice begins with nourishment, I find traces of gold in the most unexpected corners.

During this season which coincides with Spring in certain areas and Easter in others, I have my own Afro futuristic reasons for celebrations. I have been taking cues from my surroundings too. This time, I was nudged by a subtle jewel in the world of justice, but one whose shine has been greatly compromised by its bloody history. This season has been one of resurrection of the kinds of passion fruit blooms that used to drive my older brother nuts whenever I would pick two blooms and then wrap them with the banana bark beside my ears.

I am talking about the passion fruit-a fruit which I have always had a passion for growing in my ancestral farm in Gathíngíra,in Mùrang Country for as long as I can remember. Back then, I used to pick up these flowers and admire their intricate design to the chagrin of Mùkono,,my older brother, whose value of the flower was a future passion fruit that I was jeopardizing. Nevertheless, his scolding did not kill my fascination with this plant, its flower as well as its fruit.

What I didn’t know then was that the story of the passion fruit held so much potential in the defense of food justice. The story of passion fruit is highly underrated as it is in the sameleague as the apple as an instrument of obliterating indigenous cultures and especially their food ways.

The apple is the fruit the devil used as the first junk food or first food sin in Judeo-Christian worldview. So while an apple a day keeps the doctor away, it has a history that even doctors cannot solve. One apple on offered by the snake resulted in the proverbial mother and father of Christian world being kicked out of the garden of Eden. Wherever that incident or story was told, it would have an impact on thousands of miles across the globe and for thousands of years to come.

When the Romans embraced Christianity as a state religion to save the declining empire by creating the Holy Roman Empire, the story of the apple and the snake followed the empire wherever their agents went. Similarly, that is how the story of the passion fruit would be dragged into the list of terrorist fruits. This is how it all happened. During the 1700s, the Catholic sect of the Jesuits were in Brazil vehemently trying to convert the indigenous people. That wasn’t obviously a simple act, though. It occurred to the missionaries that a beautiful berry with a color associated with royalty could be a useful ally in the spreading of the rule of the Roman(Catholicism?) over other peoples of the World.

So the Jesuit missionaries started associating the various parts of the fruit that were strange to them to the aspects of Jesus Christ’s passion. The five parts of the flower were associated with the various stages that Jesus Christ went through to demonstrated his passion for those he died for. From that point, a fruit that was locally known as The Flower of the Five Wounds by the Spaniards was later shortened to Passion fruit.

We know that the Spaniards in the Americas left Spain in search of gold and spices. The loyal family of Castile, investors and the church contributed to the first three ships of the Nina, Pinta and religiously named Santa Maria or Saint Mary. Even the naming of the ships demonstrated that the whole affair was a business. Following the various voyages, Columbus realized that land would be the greatest return on the original investment. That is how Spain acquired so much land and the Catholic Church acquired so many passionate followers in South America.

While plenty of gold was stolen from the Americans under the pain of genocide, food was also conquered. Those indigenous communities that survived still bear the mark of being colonized by bearing the names of the Spanish conquistadors. It is difficult to fathom for example how members of the ongoing genocide in Gaza would willingly carry names of the same people who are perpetrating the genocide. Yet that is what we have continued to do by failing to understand the power of history and its connection to food justice.

It is on that basis that we have decided to liberate this great fruit we growing on my ancestral land. We have always boycotted the food genocide that has been going on even in the best of times going back to the age of exploration and probably beyond. Some may think it as trivial to be so concerned with the name. Yet names are the first casualties of colonization and slavery. The first thing the western explorers did whenever they arrived in any area that had not previously been visited by any of the various conquerers was to name it and then lay claim to it. I have therefore proposed that we name the fruit Fobo or Ichure. Fobo is an Afro Brazilian character that appears in the Mardi Gras celebration which actually punishes mean rich people by whipping them along the procession of the Madi Gras. It also marks our connection with Afro Brazilians through class presentations I have done previously and the visit of professor Paulino to our farm last year. In other words, we are looking forward to creating egalitarian relationships around food, based on transparency and acknowledgement of the painful history of the genocide of indigenous people and their food ways. .

Alternatively, the localized name would be Dachua, from the words ichua and dare. Ichua is the Gíkùyù(my African language)word for hell and dare is our word for berry. That way, we pay homage to the science of the fruit and also the bloody history of the acquisition of the fruit as it made its way from the indigenous people of Brazil or other South American regions to our farm. The local team will vote on the best option for the liberated name.

I keep hearing that this year is the year of truth. In my books, no freedom will ever come any other way besides the way of truth. We can’t just be addressing the current wars while eating in a way that keeps the truth of previous genocides hidden in plain sight. We support freedom all over the world, especially in the way in which we eat and speak about food. It hurts and those who eat but are lazy to correct small things that demonize others are less likely to speak up whenever bigger wars are waged.

In Christianity, it started with the apple that condemned everyone who would be born hence. It made no difference whether you like apples or not, you were a prime candidate for being colonized by those who had authorized themselves as agents and doctors for treating the sin that had projected everyone in the world. Our food philosophy is clearly based on just principles and we are therefore not bound by such original sins but rather by the current sins of poisoning our heritage, corrupting the names of our foods and poisoning our environment and the future generations. Notably, this process has been made much easier by the declining literacy around food and the abrogating responsibility of our actions as we expect that someone else has our fate in their hands. The bloodbath has been going on for far too long and the level of pain has not always been equally visible. I am inspired by the increased level of resistance but I am still waiting for the protests and boycott against the massive genocide driven by poor food.

Whenever I say the words thayù thayù (an oath for peace) as a form of greetings and goodbye of our people, I literally mean peace in the way I live, the way I farm, cook, eat, study, treat history and spread that knowledge and seeds to future generations. In spite of its painful history this fruit can bring about a great lesson during a time of great crisis. Truly, that is my passion for food justice and the passion fruit holds great favor and promise in that pursuit.

My indigenous sensibilities regarding Easter

I have very fond memories of my early days in a small village known as Gathíngíra. The village has been so important that even after permanently moving from there at a tender age of 9 years and having lived in countless addresses, my deepest heart desires as well as my moral compass has been tethered to this small village in a manner that none else can ever hope to compete. 

When I think about the reading of my social audiometer that indicates the miles I have traveled and all the various people I have met, I think it would be sufficient enough to make a credible sample upon which I can base my assertion that Gathíngíra was a legendary village with vibes that are worthy of preservation or resurrection. It was so integral to the development of analytical thinking that has helped me survive to this day. It is the last place I lived a semblance of a sustainable living that was least corrupted by vampire culture that drives the empire of the day. By that, I mean that the major crisis we face in an age often labeled as Anthropocene or Capitalocene, has been largely brought about by means of changing the values of majority of the world’s population to adopt unsustainable concepts that temporarily benefit the architects of the empire but ultimately leads to our demise.

One of the main reasons I left the village for the city was precisely as a result of falling to the fallacy that all that glittered in the city was gold. There was all manner of well oiled propaganda that I was inundated with that I couldn’t have possibly seen the lies. So I left for the city and it has taken me a better part of 40 years of wandering in the urban wilderness. I have been working to return to the most sane place I have ever lived. While I have had the opportunity to travel to places I never even knew existed, I have grown more fascinated with my home village. It almost seems that all my travels and learning serves only one major purpose: understanding my first nine years of my life. 

Forty years ago on this day was the day I vividly remember entertaining the idea of attending university. I was in the first year of secondary and hadn’t really thought about university education as nobody in my family had graduated. But then my sister in law at that time was in her second year or so. One evening, my cousin Kapep came to visit us for the long holiday. That evening Njeri, my sister-in-law,  was making preparations for dinner, and a deep debate ensued between them. I was glued to the radio, the only electronic gadget we owned at the time. It was around dusk and I had just wrapped my evening chores of milking Kamore, our lovely and ever faithful cow. I was now free and was keen to follow the ongoing Safari Rally car race aptly planned to coincide with the rain season. I was a big fan of Victor Preston Junior and his Datsun 120Y. 

I was a naughty boy and never really made toy cars like many other boys but I negotiated with one of my childhood friends to get one such toy made out of a wire and I was keen to name it Datsun even without caring that it had been designed as a totally different model. As I outgrew the age of having wire toys of a car, cars continued to fascinate me. I can probably attribute this fascination witht he fact that there were very few cars in the village during my young days. We would hear cows driving on the road towards the direction of our home from miles away and run from the fields where we were either working or grazing animals and run to the road just to see a vehicle pass by. We would ensure to read the number plates and memorize them. It is ironic that I knew the number plates of some of those vehicles from those days to this day, yet I often have to check my number plates whenever I have to pay for the digital parking meters that require me to enter the plate number of my car.  Maybe the love of cars and advancements are deeply rooted in my DNA. I would later  be very surprised after I met someone with my uncommon name on social media.  We became friends and there is a chance, however small, that we could be distant relatives. The distant relative who shares my name shared an interesting story of  his uncle who was a popular driver around that time named Njathi.  In short, my interests couldn’t have been further away from matters of college and food. 

While I was listening to the radio commentary on the Safari Rally, I could simultaneously vaguely follow the conversation between the only two adults in the house even though it was a bit philosophical. It was during that time that Kapep used a word I could have sworn and bet with my life couldn’t have been an English word. The word was paraphernalia. I turned the radio down and asked Kapep to repeat the word. I expected Njeri to ask what the meaning of the word was. I was wrong. She did not seem to care about coming to my rescue. She seemed to have understood the word quite well and continued with the debate without any indication that I had interrupted the conversation. I immediately started designing a formula in my head to remember the word. I used the word paraffin, the only foreign source of energy we used in our house and gonorrhea to make sure that I would not forget the mesmerizing word.   I repeated the word as many times as I could silently to make sure that I could later find a dictionary and confirm that there actually was such a word. I have no idea why but the word sounded so strange that I could not get my mind off of it.

 I later managed to get a dictionary and looked up the word. To my surprise there it was and what did it mean? It meant  miscellaneous things necessary for an activity. I had lost that bet. Kapep was right and so was Njeri. But what I gained was a desire to be so learned that I would be able to engage in such conversations and make wrong betts thinking that words that were being thrown around were a mistake or from a different language. It also fascinated me that a person could keep what appeared to me as a very complex word in their head and actually use it so casually. I was hooked. I embarked on a totally different race. Safari Rally and Victor Preston Junior no longer held any sway over me. My new focus from then was the death of ignorance and the birth of knowledge. Just like the Safari Rally, it has been a long journey with twists and turns, but one of great adventure. I travel many miles and talk to many people, not about paraphernalia but about something that was so mundane at the time but yet more fascinating. I speak mostly about the kind of people I grew up around during my time in the village and the great lessons I carry to this day. 

Now that I managed to finally attend the highly coveted institution of learning during my early days and to achieve not one but several degrees, I thought that it would be nice to repay the debt of being being inspired by a word which I thought could probably never have existed by celebrating the people I owe everything I have done in life to. These people are like no other people I have lived among in many ways. But I will pick the one thing that was so different about these people. The group of people in my village were masters of astroprojection. They understood the simple idea of living like stars and the importance of shining and keeping its orbit. It is the only logical explanation I can come up with for having designed such a sustainable culture that projected them into the future. I celebrate the birth of a vibrant consciousness among my ancestors and the vigilant members of my village. But I also wail for those who fell for the lies of the empire that continue to push a holiday of celebrating a resurrection of a white person and concepts that continue to wreck our once functional community. 

More and more people are claiming a new form of resurrection while in actuality practicing death worship by living a life that is contrary to the values they claim.  That is what I celebrate and I commit to making a reality both in my village but also everywhere I go. My message is simple, build your heaven right here on earth. I saw a semblance of it and I know it can be done by human beings. What we can break we can fix, at least if you don’t wait for too long. We are all on a Safari Rally of life, some are speeding towards death worship and others towards life worship. Our food is like the paraphernalia for our craft, except that it is the cardinal tool that one needs to reach the two possible goals of either life or death. Just food resurrects life and junk and unjust food resurrect death. While I was watching My modern fascination is no longer with Datsun 120Y. I now know that such fascination is just for a while. Such ephemeral paraphernalia are dangerous to bet on in your life. Easter there is a time to resurrect my sustainable indigenous sensibilities with a bit of nostalgia and homage to those who lit my personal Safari Rally away from death and towards life in the stars but grounded in my ancestral village.

My Meditation on International Women's Day

By Njathi Kabui

There is no greater area where Western thought differs from my indigenous culture than on the issue of women. It would not be an overstatement to say that we should not celebrate International Women's Day without first acknowledging these differences. I am culturally in tune with both my culture and Western culture to know that women in these two traditions carry very different weight. Yet, there are fewer areas that the blatant obliteration of my indigenous culture wrecked more havoc than in womanhood. That doesn't mean that my Gìkùyù culture was perfect or should be the global standard. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. There are however great lessons worth noting and meditating on.

For brevity, let me point three distinct aspects I greatly admire and would gladly recommend today for their practical benefits.

The first and most amazing cultural practice was the ability of a barren woman whose husband died before the family having bore a single child to have a right to marry another woman. The second woman would have children on behalf of the barren woman. The barren woman would take the status of the late husband and the two women would raise their family without any prejudice. White women in America were being burned at the stakes for being witches around the same time. To this day, women's issues are deeply biased by sensless decrees that benefits neither women, children or men.

Secondly, women in my culture had their own hut which they shared with their daughters. The idea of a man and woman permanently sharing the same house had everything to do with colonial taxation on huts as a way of forcing locals into being laborers on British plantations in order that they may earn fiat currency for their tax dues. That practice caused many families to reduce the number of huts and thereby the annual tax bill. Having different houses or rooms for men and women might help the souring divorce rate.

Lastly, a woman was never married by a man but rather by the whole family. Marriage works better when the two families are closely connected. There two families entered into a blood alliance with each other. Such bonds were more supportive of the newly weds and harder to break. This is starkly different from the modern western marriages based on legal bonds that are based on a government certificate or a preacher's prayer. The history of the government and religious authority in the West have a checkered history of fiat culture and generally working against the interest of the common global citizens.

If I can use the oldest writings in Western tradition, the Iliad and Odyssey by Homer, we can learn a ton. The Odyssey, interestingly enough, starts with a wedding. All the gods and goddesses had been invited to that wedding except the Aris, the goddess of chaos. In retaliation, Aris threw an apple into the wedding premises that ultimately started a war and eventual destruction of the city of Troy. The whole book is about Trojan war. Well, an apple one day did not keep the doctor away, instead it caused the death of so many Greeks and destruction of the city of Troy. Aris, true to her nature, wrote that the apple she threw inside the wedding compound belonged to the most beautiful goddess at the wedding. The three major goddesses got into a contest with each other. Each goddess tried to bribe Paris, the judge, seeking his favor in the contest. Many deaths happened because of a spiteful goddess who offered another married woman to Paris as a gift for the vanity of being selected as the most beautiful goddess.

Amonst another Greek city of Sparta, the women fared worse. Married couples did not live together and the bride had to wear male clothes. It shouldn’t then surprise us that a culture that fences itself as being based on that of the Greeks would be so violent. That violence is bound to ultimately reach women. Such violence ultimately leads to a violent culture, country and globe. Like the Greeks, my village was divided by a different type of apple but nonetheless had a male deity. Our region was divided based on the church that was the first to camp in the area.

My oldest sister had to walk several miles to attend school at another village because the local village school was closed to her and my brother due to the fact that the Church of England discriminated against those families who were involved in the struggle for independence. The catholic church was more dominant in the next village and therefore accepted anyone that the Church of England did not accept. In other words, there was only one white way to learn and each had a religious gatekeeper. It is therefore no wonder that as Emperor Haile Selasi in a speech before the International League of Nations once said “ Everywhere is war”.

That is why as an indigenous man, I know that violence to women is violence to the whole world. The Greeks had a war that was started by the desire of the three goddesses' vanity of being the most beautiful and my village suffered violence due to the failure to follow the deity of the British who shed blood for the salvation of all. Yet few have seen that peace, especially the indigenous people. It is therefore hypocritical for the same people who have caused so much violence leading the call for peace, especially to those who have been on the receiving end of the violence and exploitation of the empire builders.

clarify that there is a great difference in how we look at this big day. That does not change the fact that many of the problems that indigenious people the world over are facing regarding women have roots in the injustices perpetrated on them by the biased western tradition. Like all traditions, there are some positive aspects and there are negative aspects.

I ought to clarify that there is a great difference in how we look at this big day. That does not change the fact that many of the problems that indigenious people the world over are facing regarding women have roots in the injustices perpetrated on them by the biased western tradition. Like all traditions, there are some positive aspects and there are negative aspects. Indigenious cultures the world over have their own adjustments to make as they remove any biases based on sex. Those gender biases, it has to be emphasized, are often and mostly if not always two ways. 

International Women's Day should actually last 9 days, 6 hours and 3 seconds. 9 days for every month that we  all spent in the womb, 6 for the average number of parents(including grandparents) and 3 for the three meals we have in a day. Each and every aspect mentioned above all has the testament of the power of women and the magic that takes place when it is complimented by the male power. 

The magic is also in the resulting balance, what we may call sustainability.  That we have major crises in the world is a sign of the imbalance of the relationship between the two sexes, but more of the women's energy. 

I am therefore in mood of meditation than that of celebration.  That meditation has allowed me to realize that we are fast moving towards extinction and the easiest way to get there is by causing inflation of womanhood, in other words by creating fiat womanhood.  In other words, by lowering the health and vitality of women, you lower the quality of everything about life exponentially.

One hundred uneducated and hungry women have a far more damaging impact on society than 1000 uneducated and starving men. Ironically, the Greek have one interesting story that can remind us that women can rise even in the face of the most severe bias. Antigone’s story is a great example. Her name gives away the whole tale. Her name literally means one of opposite opinion. Anti- opposed and gnom- opinion. Antigone refused to obey the king’s decree that her brother, Polyneces,  had aligned himself with a hostile neighboring city in a bid to overthrow the despotic ruler of Athens. The botched efforts led to the death of the brother of Antigone. The King decreed that the treasonous brother of Antigone should not be accorded a proper burial Antigone however disregarded the decree by the despotic ruler and accorded his brother the burial he deserved. 

Indigenious cultures have their own Antigone in their folklore. I know of numerous such stories in my culture. Today is a great day to meditate on each and every Antigone in our communities and support an environment that would nurture our women in a bid to restore sanity in our relationships, through justice. Nothing good will come out of any efforts that are not based on justice, equality and honesty. Any other way will lead us on the path of Polyneices, which literally means many troubles. One of those troubles is certainly our food. Having food trouble is itself many troubles in one. The unconscionable fact that those Polyneices food troubles are not experienced equally but have a both a gender, genetic, geographic and geopolitical bias. Those bias need to be antagonized just like Antigone did over 3 millenias ago. The Agikuyù have only to mditate on a bias going back about a century. It's therefore a huge bias to put all the women in one basket, pot or guard. Can you digest that?

My Quantum Calender of Poetic Flavors

In my indigenous Agikuyu culture, the Rights of Passage is such an important mark in a young man’s life that it really has no equivalent in modern Western tradition. I am tempted to compare it to the Jewish Bar Mitzvah ceremony which is an initiation of boys who have attained the age of 13 and are considered ready to partake in religious worship. But that temptation is quickly thwarted by the religious nature of Bar Mitzvah and the fact that the young men in my culture who go through the Right of Passage are still decades away from being qualified to participate in religious worship in any significant role. But I am not one of those Gikuyu folks who seem to think that it is such an honor to be connected to the Middle East as a sign of validation. The story of the Bible is quite problematic to me as it has a lot of baggage that those who are inside the faith are comfortably willing to overlook. That baggage has to do with the assumption of cultural superiority that is so close to the colonization of many indigenous people and also to the building of the Western empire. 

My interest in the indigenous Rights of Passage is that it is a way of marking time. In other words,  I am giving credence to the concept of having multiple calendars as a sign of tolerance and sophistication. That would allow me to stretch the concept of time to the rim of quantum combined with flavors. I am finding out that as I grow older, I have more time to reflect and to digest information and experiences in very different ways from the past. 

I am saying this as one who went through my own rights of passage myself . I was so excited about leaving boyhood and qualifying as an initiate such as having the privilege of dating and simply being respected.  But then I quickly realized that that right I had been so anxious to  achieve had its own set of challenges. I therefore quickly learned that in this life, not everybody is going to like you, be your friend, appreciate your kindness and leave alone reciprocating acts of sacrifice. My conclusion was to seek out those who were genuinely interested in being in your team and having you in their team. As it turns out, one develops a greater ability to access those one can get along with and the power to suppress the all common demon in all of such that promises convince and pleasure for short term fun while tarnishing delayed gratification as a curse. I love aging, if for nothing else,  for its ability to wear out that primordial demon. In its place I have a deep sense of gratitude for those who have equally overcome their own demons and develop an inner beauty only visible by the heart and spirit of those who have also initiated themselves into the same state through practice and discipline.

All the cells of my being celebrate whenever I run into such an initiate. They really don’t need to come out and verbally pronounce their accolades. Just by their conduct and sometimes just by looks, I can pick them. I will be the first one to admit that such occurrences are few and far apart for comfort. Yet I stay hopeful that the next such person is a call away, a flight of stairs up or down away or just a virtual introduction away. Thanks to technology, I can now add a WhatsApp group to the list of possibilities of places where initiates can be found. I am so happy to have met Namatsi through Kwetu Tahmeri. She is like a kitchen poet in my kitchen cabinet of my life, no pun intended. Humans are truly a microcosm of a government that, like cells, make up the whole country and ultimately the whole of humanity. It is clear that we will collaborate on some good work. It might be one or it might be many. The number or amount is not all that important, what is important is that the work will be important. It is on that account I perceived our relationship in quantum terms. Quantum particles defy general principles of physics in interesting was such as being in two different places at the same time. Having a quantum calendar of poetic flavors is similar to being ideological twin of sorts even though physically and biologically, we are connected in any tangible way whatsoever.

Since we both have deep appreciation of our culture and for African American culture of resistance, Namatsi reminded me of the closing of a poem of of of my favorite African American poet, Sterling Brown who is sometimes referred to as the Dean of African American Poetry, In the poem Odyssey of Big Boy, the reference of big boy reminds me of the fact that we are always children or that our childhood is ubiquitous throughout our lives regardless of what Rights of Passage we go through.  On the other hand, the Odyssey part of the title reminds me that a journey can cover a lifetime. Looked from that angle, the Rights of Passage might actually be longer than we typically expect it to last. Yet more importantly, it is not a one man or woman journey. It would make sense that we all need very solid accomplices along that journey. In the poem Odyssey of a Big Boy, Sterling Brown ends the playful poem with the wish that should the Big boy’s life come to an end, his only wish was that would want to be with ole Jazbo. I find the poem to be quite appreciated as the protagonist had a lot of fun with work and being promiscuous, including one married woman, who desired to be with his friend the most. That kind of relationship between friends is what I call quantum. It is a wonderful feeling to know that someone feels what you feel even without a word of communication. It makes my own odyssey across this rugged terrain bearable, especially in my own internal journey from boyhood to manhood. 

Odyssey of Big Boy

By Sterling Brown

Lemme be wid Casey Jones,
    Lemme be wid Stagolee,
Lemme be wid such like men
    When Death takes hol’ on me,
  When Death takes hol’ on me. . . .

Done skinned as a boy in Kentucky hills,
    Druv steel dere as a man,
Done stripped tobacco in Virginia fiel’s
    Alongst de River Dan,
  Alongst de River Dan;

Done mined de coal in West Virginia
    Liked dat job jes’ fine
Till a load o’ slate curved roun’ my head
    Won’t work in no mo’ mine,
  Won’t work in no mo’ mine;

Done shocked de corn in Marylan’,
    In Georgia done cut cane,
Done planted rice in South Caline,
    But won’t do dat again
  Do dat no mo’ again.

Been roustabout in Memphis,
    Dockhand in Baltimore,
Done smashed up freight on Norfolk wharves
    A fust class stevedore,
  A fust class stevedore. . . . 

Done slung hash yonder in de North
    On de ole Fall River Line
Done busted suds in li’l New Yawk
    Which ain’t no work o’ mine—
  Lawd, ain’t no work o’ mine.

Done worked and loafed on such like jobs
    Seen what dey is to see
Done had my time with a pint on my hip
    An’ a sweet gal on my knee
  Sweet mommer on my knee:

Had stovepipe blonde in Macon
    Yaller gal in Marylan’
In Richmond had a choklit brown
    Called me huh monkey man—
  Huh big fool monkey man.

Had two fair browns in Arkansaw
    And three in Tennessee
Had Creole gal in New Orleans
    Sho Gawd did two time me—
  Lawd two time, fo’ time me—

But best gal what I evah had
    Done put it over dem
A gal in Southwest Washington
    At Four’n half and M—
  Four’n half and M. . . .

Done took my livin’ as it came
    Done grabbed my joy, done risked my life
Train done caught me on de trestle
    Man done caught me wid his wife
  His doggone purty wife. . . .

I done had my women,
    I done had my fun
Cain’t do much complainin’
    When my jag is done,
  Lawd, Lawd, my jag is done.

An’ all dat Big Boy axes
    When time comes fo’ to go
Lemme be wid John Henry, steel drivin’ man
  Lemme be wid ole Jazzbo;
  Lemme be wid ole Jazzbo. .

Living in exile, we all need our own Jazbo as we are far from family but also quite different from our family. Namatsi the poet sounds and feels like Ole Jazzbo. Those in activism will most likely know the value of such a soul in our life. I was so touched that I made a recipe to mark that connection.Since I can write poetry to mark the connection, I marked the connection in the quantum calendar of poetic flavors. It is a great feeling to be mature enough to know that my Odyssey involves having quantum rights of passage across gender and culture. Who knows when Ole Jazzbo will come knocking into our lives. I will keep making flavors and hope that many of them will mark time and encourage friendships that are quantum and meaningful enough like that of Ole Jazzbo. In the same light, I hope to have a similar relationship with food too. In other words, I have a mission to cultivate and consume food that treats me so well that I feel like I am with Ole Jazzbo. In doing so, I will be creating the best worlds both inside and outside of my body. What a jazzy life that would be. A life of friendship and food justice has to be a life of true spirituality, or another way of saying flavorful, poetic , quantum existence. With such a life, time is no longer marked by the revolution of the earth around the sun but by the heart beats and vibrations that beat in unison as a form of singularity.