Writing with Flavors of Justice

Here is a great example of a revolutionary who didn’t count days but made the few years that he lived count, I have the most respect for the freedom of thought he expressed and actively put in practice. It was greatly empowering to read his critical collection of essays in book aptly entitled “ I Write What I Like”.

I agree that the most powerful tool in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed against themselves, thankfully I can also add to this thought that the most powerful and salient weapon in the hands of the oppressed against themselves is food illiteracy. In line with the same revolutionary thinking that led Steve Biko to write what he liked, I too write what I like with flavors and by extension cook and eat what I like. To summarize the goal of my work can be done with two simple words: Eat Well.

To say and mean the two word statement of “Eat Well” just might be the most powerful weapon in the hands of both the oppressed, the oppressor and the environment. Only after the two word statement gains traction in each and every person in the planet can the idea of a happy birthday have any meaning! Food illiteracy is an injustice that makes life untenable for us all. This day that marks the day Steve Biko was born is a perfect day for everyone to rededicate themselves to the cause of Food Justice/ Food Illiteracy with goal as well as we like. On my part, I am totally taking my own advice and writing through life with flavors of justice.

Thayũculture

Beauty As Life Worship

Beaty is a major part of ThayũCulture or more simply of Life Worship. The importance of general aesthetics is not only complimentary to good health but has broader reaches including poetic, prophetic and political. What’s even more interesting is that the love of beauty is not only the purview of mortals of men but also of deep interests to various deities going back to the primordial days. Among the most influential of such examples can be found in the stories of Homer. The two books attributed to him are based on the tale of a beauty contest gone haywire. The myth of the Trojan War, the basis of the two books by Homer, starts with a wedding on mount Olympus. All the gods and goddesses had been invited except Eris,the goddess of discord. For this dishonor, she crashed the party and threw an apple with a note that it was for the most beautiful goddess.

The otherwise peaceful event took a turn for worse when each of the three goddesses, Venus, Athena and Aphrodite, all claimed to be the most beautiful ones. Not even the biggest god of all was willing to settle to case, instead outsourcing the judgment to a Trojan herdsman known as Paris. As it turned out, the appointment to resolve the dispute of matters of beauty between women and goddesses comes the potential of suicide as serious possibility.

All the three goddesses resulted to bribery in an effort to influence the final decision by the poor herdsman. After weighing all the varies items and powers offered to Paris by the goddesses, the most attractive was, well, beauty. Paris chose the goddess who offered him Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the Greek world. It did not matter that Helen of Troy had been married to the King of Menelaus of Sparta, in addition to having an insurance policy on that marriage in the form of an oath to protect that sacred matrimonial bond by all other Greek kings. By accepting Helen as a price for voting Aphrodite as the most beautiful goddess, Paris essentially inviting the wrath of all the Greek kings and their armies.

The result of those two events led to a 10 year war. Nowadays a similar struggle continues in terms of human health as we mirror Paris and Aphrodite. We fight against our health with the bribe of wining the public approval of being our most beautiful versions of ourselves at a small cost of abandoning our inner and true health. To look beautiful and attractive to both the modern day goddess and gods, we will sacrifice anything.

The ultimate result is that we are suffering in name brand clothes, living and driving expensive houses and cars, but existing in the most corrupt and cheap bodies ever. I am thinking here about the washed bodies and the clean and expensive clothes worn on the day designated as the day of worship where I live.

Before you blame Aphrodite for our misery, remember that Adam ate the forbidden fruit and only then realized that Eve was naked for the first time. Poor eating habits causes all manner of shame, discomfort and distortions.

Talk about the need to be born again, but not as children or by the gods or goddesses, who seem to be infected by the same virus, but in Life Worship.

Verily, Verily I say unto you, seek ye the inside beauty of your health and outside beauty will be yours both now and forever. I am not just saying it from the mythology of the Greeks of yo, but from a lived experience of the power of Just Food we are growing in Gathĩngĩra. I would venture to say that that had Paris tasted our food, the story of the Trojan war would have never seen the light of day but instead we would have a love stories of the inner beauty more superior to the physical beauty of Helen.

This inner beauty has been visible to me and I call it I Am. For you are truly beautiful if your inside beauty shines so much so that it can be seen with the naked eye. Maybe the kind of beauty that is so powerful that it hides your nakedness. Maybe it’s that kind of beauty that weathered away when Adam ate the wrong food and immediately realized that he was naked. I Am health a product of Just Food, is the most attractive beauty and therefore a major component of ThayũCulture. In so many ways, modern day beauty is the reincarnation of Aris, modern day goddess of discord.

Njata Kereni

I created an exquisite Afro Futuristic recipe appropriate for the season of celebration of a Golden Bough. The Golden Bough is a most beautiful dinner concept I learned about from a IG friend I met in Berlin during the most difficult time in Kenyan politics in a long time. I happened to have been following the political upheaval from Berlin while at the same time having one of the richest combinations of food, history and friendship that made me feel as though I was amongst the African stars I used to stare at during my youthful years in Gathĩngĩra, my ancestral village. I can vividly remember my thoughts every time we stayed up late enough to catch the distinct sound in otherwise monotonous sounds of nocturnal lowly creatures.

I would always wonder how far the plane was from the stars. I silently wish that my fortune would improve as I grew older to make it possible for me to find out. That wish upon a star came true when I applied to college in the US. I still can completely refute the notion that my ideas about America were not primarily an excuse to fly closer to the stars.

Whatever the case, I will never know for sure. What I did quickly find out was that the people flying in a plane have a poorer view of the stars, unless they happen to be in the cockpit. It was such a disappointment. Luckily, a flight is like a marriage in one significant way. You get into both only with the view of riding to the end. 

Luckily, my desire to be closer to the stars became a bit more clearer as I flew through college, books and obviously my “coming of age” period in America. I was a bit wiser then to suspect that my attraction to stars in Gathĩngĩra was a symptom of my family history for attraction to justice and food. The stars, I later theorized, are the constant source of light in the clear sky.

Following that realization, food that shines like bright stars with flavors, colors and justice becomes my new obsession. But every now and then, I still do honor the moon for its feminine energy. Food too is, like the binary stars, is best when consumed amongst kindred spirits as they illuminate each other. This recipe celebrates my Golden Bough. It just so happens that just food, an air flight and my imagination of the Golden Bough all have one thing in common: only start if you intend to be in it to the end.

But every blue moon, the flavors of justice, a flight aboard a midnight plane and a Golden Bough experience might seek and pick you for a ride without much effort. Maybe we should call such an occurrence Magic Star or Njata ya Kereni.

Gigante: A Bean of Zion

Here is the latest addition to our list of powerful foods. This is Gigante beans originally from Greece. It is a bean 4 to 6 times larger than the regular bean, depending on whether it is soaked or not.

While I am not a big fan of focusing on the nutritional content of different types of foods as the first selling point, I do make exception for this. A mare one cup/36 grams provides you with 52% of your daily requirements of fiber, the highest I have come across. It is not by accident that I started with fiber, I have become quite curious about microbiome and its implications to our health. One scientist said that we are 1% DNA and 99% microbiome, strictly going by the number of each in a human body.

My biggest attraction to food is first whether it causes any harm to the body, its story and favor as combined set of parameters, and last but not least its nutritional content.

This bean is a favorite amongst Greeks and anyone who knows me personally or literally knows my fascination with Greek mythology, philosophy and drama.

This bush bean has a very smooth and creamy flavor that adds a lot of character to any sauce or just cooked as a main dish.

We are delighted to have this bean growing amongst cool and exotic crops in my ancestral village. It’s a perfect fit as I too write the stories of the villagers of my youth as titans, philosophers and masters of food justice. I have never shied from expressing my disdain at the disappearing mastery of food, creativity and stewardship of the land. The food culture has become blant, boring and neocolonial.

If you are interested in planting thing amazing bean we have named Zion, you don’t need to make a sacrifice to Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, grain or harvest. You just need to salute the ThayũCulture farmers of Gathĩngĩra and you too will be in possession of this portion from ancient times via the budding capital of Afro Flavors of Justice. We even have our own leaves for a crown for our heroes from a plant known to our forefathers as Gĩtiga Akũrũ ( meaning forever).

How appropriate for a farm that is the home of Afro Futuristic Conscious Cuisine to be in possession of this futuristic plant that our ancestors perceived as having the very spirit we endeavor to embody? The Greeks so priced the leaves of the olive tree that they used them to make a crown for the winners of the Olympics games. In the early days of those games, the crown was an award enough for the hero’s, besides have free food for the rest of their lives for Athenian Greeks.

You may wonder why this plant, whose English name is not even important to us as this is spiritual matter. That my ancestors were aware of the humanistic culture of having what I call a social system where the consumption of a farmers food without carrying wasn’t a crime. In that sense, everyone in those early days before the colonial era was a like a Greek champion with access to food all their life.

The name Zion also betrays our keen interest in the element of justice. The name Zion according to Greek mythology was a river that was formed after Persephone,the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, was abducted by this uncle and taken to the abode of the dead called Hedes. Demeter had left Persephone in the care of a nymph while attending to the needs of farmers in Spring just in time for planting. The nymph which had been left in charge of Persephone cried so much until the tears flowed like a river. That river was known as Zion. Karumo is our local version of the symbolic river that carries the tears of our village as it fights against the capture of the soul of our food sovereignty and taking by the globalist , the modern day Hedes.

The work we are doing with the soil and the plants has been with us for ages and our solemn duty is to make sure the Afro futuristic flavors, stories and by extension the microbiome and DNA will be forever.

Depending on when you come, you just might catch the goddess whose sweat, from the labor of love, inspires the constant flow of our beautiful stream next to our farm known a karurumo. I love that the bean of Zion is white like the ceremonial white paste known ira to our ancestors. Ira was believed to have protective properties. The name our ancestors gave Karuruma indicates a small water fall. The soft sound of this stream makes an unmistakable feminine sound of the modern day daughter of our ancestral mothers. These daughters are as rare as a Blue Moon. But there are there, and Gathĩngĩra boasts one of her abodes. That’s why it’s a perfect abode for the bean Zion.

As I reminisce about Zion Train, the one album with a theme of resistance by Bob Marley blasting the waves of this very space and interwoven with the soft sound of Karumo in days of my youth, I can see the connection between the Zion as a train and Bean of Zion and the stream coming with justice our way.

ThayùCulture

Elegant Midas Wash

On November 21st I shared one extraordinary lecture at the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam, Germany on a unsual topic for those in attendance.. The lecture was unusual in several ways. For a start, the audience consisted of two distinct groups. One group was predominantly German students in a food design students on one hand and a less coherent group of my mentees and young activists. It was the first lecture I had ever done where the fellows from my ancestral village participated.

The second surprise of the event was the opening of the lecture. Following introduction, I was requested to pause for a minute before starting my lecture. Little did I know that I was in for a surprise. The whole class, which was mostly White students, shouted along with their professor my indigenous customary greeting of “Thayũ Thayũ” in unison. It was a big surprise for me and the other Kenyans on board.

The third and probably the one most pertinent to the students was on the topic their professors had chosen from a list of subjects I could cover. I had a feeling that the topic that was mostly likely be picked from the list was the one that had something on design. Indeed I was right. The actual topic was on Food Injustice by Design. I used the opportunity to place women at the foundation of food sovereignty amongst my indigenous community but in terms of internal risks. I was very intentional in dissecting pertinent issues prior to the era of colonization. This is the hallmark of Afro Futurism as it takes a broad look from various angles to dissect to issue in a nonlinear fashion. I also borrowed liberally from Greek mythology knowing very well the power it holds a major influence on Western thought.

The presentation constituted of about 45 minutes of lecture and 15 minutes a combination of questions and answers and a few minutes in the end for some slides. There were three favorite slides which formed the gist of my lecture

One slide of sunset was sent to right before the lecture and I decided to add it at the last minute. I mean, I couldn’t resist it. The photo was taken in one of the three locations in Kitengela and it represented the unjust decline of cultural vitality necessary to ensure that the community would be here in the future. The light of the sun and yielding to the more demonetized light of the moon. The idea of blue moon kept recurring in my mind. That recurrence was in doubles. The blue Moon represented the force of my mother in ingraining the passion for honesty, humor and an uncompromising spirit in the quest of food justice. Blue Moon are represented something rare. Yet the sunset was just before the moon and darkness and would reign throughout night, only yielding to darkness.!.

The second slide was a picture of a certificate belonging to my mother for winning the first price in a national competition in Kenyan’s agricultural show. This was a symbol of excellence in every endeavor but especially in food. This slide was quite important in offering context of my discussion of women’s role in food justice according to my indigenous culture of the Agĩkũyū.

The last slide was of an important tree that was used to disown any individual who risked the security of the clan using a woman’s hoe. Showing centrality of women’s positions in matters of justice. The tree is known as Mũringa and was planted by my mother right next to the river as though she was making her presence ever present, as the resilient tree was most certainly going to flourish for ages. That tree has been part of my youth landscape and memories of my youth. . I often wonder whether it was by design or coincidence that my mother planted this tree where she did.

The rationale was based on the collective clan responsibility of an individual”s crime. Whenever a clan member caused the loss of another clan’s family member, the clan of the deceased would sue for compensation before the council of elders. If found 

guilty, the clan of the accused would be required to pay such a large number of sheep and goats that would the whole clan back in wealth significantly. That fact naturally meant that the clan couldn’t afford to bail out one truant family member. To shore up the wealth of the clan, the clan would meet and decide that for the sake of the vitality of the clan, it was more realistic to disown the family member. Remember that la lack of livestock meant that the clan wouldn’t be able to pay dowry for their young to marry and continue the lineage or bloodline. To avoid such a devastating situation, they would call the community to witness a very sordid ritual of denouncing a family member whose acts parallel what I call death worship and publicly denounce the offender.

Even more telling is how the ritual was conducted. A hoe that was used to cultivate the garden known as an mũro was thrown over a tree and the utter words so strong that a person once denounced would often leave the area and migrate elsewhere. In a certain book, I once read that in the beginning there was the word and I guess in my community, it was the other way around. In the end of a truant person would hear the words as the last sign of his permanent separation for his clan. This essentially notified the community that the clan was no longer responsible for the any further criminal offenses the accused would cause. 

I believe I have enough philosophical reasons to wonder about that, especially when you consider the fact that the name we use for mother, water and justice and intrinsically inseparable. The word for truth is “ma”. Maat anyone?

The word for mother is maitu, a composite word made of the word “ma” fot truth and “itũ” truth. Viewed another way, a mother is the fountain of truth. Where there is truth there is justice. There can never be any justice without good justice as the major foundation.

The kicker of the whole talk is that one student who fully understands this core indigenous principle has been buying food mothly from our farm where my mother used to farm and taking to Dubai where she works. She preserves the food to last her a whole month. On that particular day, she had taken her some of that food to Morocco for a one day assignment. She works for the airline and travels regularly. She is committed to upholding the important role of being both a mother but also the foundation of justice.

My mother, now resting in the world beyond the sunset, would probably smile her heart away if the story the “peace chorus” of “Thayũ Thayũ” from the students and professors and that a growing group of us are staying true to our motherly foundational truth, while reaching others far and wide. The barely audible of the boundary stream at the foot of our farm, known as Karurumo, is an ever constant reminder of the rhythm that marks our every step in this elegant dance of Justice. That dance is what I call the elegant Midas Wash.

Why Midas Wash, you may ask? In the Greek mythology, the Midas was so hungry for power that he wished to have the power to have everything he touched turn into gold. He realized the limitations of such powers when he touched his daughter and turned her into gold. The only way to remove the curse that costed him his daughter was to plunge his hands into river Poctolus. In the say sense, we see the waters of Karurumo as washing the modern day curse of the community sacrificing our environment and our health and that of the soil for money. Karurumo is washing that Midas style shortsightedness. But Karimimo is geared towards the Maitũ truths or a Midas Wash.

Thayũ thayũ Maitu

September in November

The year 1978 was a pivotal in my life. It was the year I made one of three moves that completely changed my life in ways I could have ever imagined. What’s interesting is that all those major moves can be captured by one word: September. Yet it’s not exactly for the reason that most people would think. Let me first briefly mention the moves. The first time I left my ancestral village for any other destination other than the capital city of Nairobi was to go to the lake side town of Kisumu with my cousin Maina.

I stayed there for almost a year and returned to my sweet home in Gathĩngĩra, speaking an additional language of Swahili, though poorly and also adding words of Luo, having picked them from my many hours of playing Akinyi, my best friend.Akinyi and I lived next door to us and we also attended kindergarten together.

Thes second move was to the capital city of Nairobi in 1978 when I permanently shifted my learning to Nairobi after only a 4 year stint in the village from the time I had returned. I moved to the city as it looked so clean and fun. I also didn’t have any farming chores in the city.

The third move was to the U.S., where I landed in Memphis on September. I ended up staying in Memphis for 12 years.

The first time I had had about a city called Memphis was while reading a music magazine at my oldest brother’s house. The article featured a popular music group known as Earth Wind and Fire. The group was very popular during those day and the most popular song in my view was titled September. It was a groovy song and a great beat for dancing. It was not only popular at the only club we frequented during the school holidays in a nearby town known as Kangema known as Social Hall. The song frequently requested by radio listeners too.

The song came out during my most energetic period of my life but its popularity didn’t last for long as Bob Marley and other popular music soon hit the scene .

What I later found interesting was that the composer and band leader, Maurice White was born in Memphis TN where he attended a famous high school named Booker T Washington. The college I attended in Memphis wasn’t too far from Booker T. Washington.

As I was going through my old stuff, I found an old CD of EWF and jammed it in my car. Those beats and words reminded of of the journey I have traveled and how it is connected to the three elements of EWF. The song September could as well be the theme song for that journey. This was especially deep as I thought about a long and enriching conversation with a Nigerian writer who heard my talk during my last keynote at the Afro Futuristic Convention in Humbug last week. I will be giving my 5th lecture in Germany this year at the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam. Our team from Gathĩngĩra,the village of my birth, and a number of other mentees will be in attendance. It feels like I am in groove of “September” all over again even though it’s November. This time the groove is Afro Futuristic Conscious Cuisine, an idea that is deeply influenced by my time in Gathǐngǐra, Memphis the Piedmont area. The lecture at University of Applied Sciences will be an important milestone that will equally apply the three elements of EWF. Gathǐngĩra will represent Earth, my message represent the Fire and Wind represents the force of change we all aspire to and more importantly the pollination of best ideas between my village and university of design for the ultimate goal of a just food system. Put differently, I dream that we can all have a September in November moment for a start.

I Googled the lyrics of the song for the fun of it only learn that the song was released on November 18. All I could say was “Ba dee yah!”. If you know you know.

Cooked In Mississippi

It was July 15 I989 in downtown Nairobi, on the top of a .building which hosted a sketchy bar joint off Munyu Road, where I first addressed a small crowd. It wasn’t anything long but it was a brief note of thanks and a catchy homily. Immediately after my remarks, one Nelson Myna 'daddikul', a long time friend and neighborhood hipster met me halfway from the mic stand and our seat and shook my hand thoroughly enough to suspect that had the event transpired today, he would have most likely given me warm hug. But that’s way back when hugs were only reserved to Muslims and women deeply immersed in Christianity.

Nelson’s first words were very clear and spoken with a particular emphasis. “You can be a good speaker” Nelson said. We sat down and tolerated the last few remarks from the elders before the space was soon turned into a dance floor and obviously out of bounds for anyone close birthday was within an earshot of 35 years.

We danced the night away under the stars. I had enough reason to celebrate as I had managed to convince my father into begrudgingly spend all his savings and also conduct a fundraiser amongst family and friends to fund my American dream.

The night was fun and the DJ was superb. But by morning the fun came to an end and Nelson and everyone else went their separate ways.

I really didn’t think about Nelson’s words until 6 moths later. But the kind of dance in my head was not the hip hop music we had danced to with Nelson in Nairobi. I now singing old African American Spirituals I barely knew at a rural church in Hernando, MS,. Mr. Hayes,a general contractor I had just recently met, shared Nelson sentiments. He had invited me to his church to give a talk. I accepted.

At the end the talk, Hayes passed a basket around and a collection was taken. I was surprised that it amounted to a whooping $22.67. I couldn’t believe it. That was the most money I had made. Halfway between the microphone stand and the exit door, Nelson’s words rang in my head as my hand pressed firmly on the outside of my right pocket. That it was a lot money was besides the issue, what was interesting was how I got the invite and where my American dream was fairing half a year on.

My Hayes had been in a discussion with an insurance agent about fixing a section of the church building damaged by a car that had slid off the road. The white insurance agent was noncommittal about accepting liability and was arguing that his boss in Nashville, almost 4 hours away, was best qualified to make the final decision. The disagreement went on for a while as I listened. I finally decided to politely weigh in. I asked the agent why he thought a man 4 hours away was more likely to asses the damage better than him. The agent stared at his shoes intensely for a moment and the he shook his head from side to side and then nodded. “You have a point there young man”.

The deal was over, the agent filled the paperwork, agreeing to cover the damage to the building. Speaking was my new American dream. It came during a time that the chances of finishing college was in doubt. Mr. William Hayes talked me up at every opportunity he could find. An ardent reader, Hayes also gave a copy of Mark Mathambane, Kaffir Boy. It was the first book I read in the U.S. Where I was read the at is a story for another day.

Yesterday I remembered Mr. William Hayes when I saw a jug with a collection for my talk at Grounded Ecovillage. Dough shared a lot of seeds and in addition raised a collection for our farming project in Kenya.

When I counted the over $130 dollars , I remembered Nelson and then said to my self “Yes Lord, Hayes Wily I am.”.

How much was an American dream worth to a daring young man from Gathǐngĩra 35 years ago that he was willing to face a White man in Mississippi and tell him exactly what was in his mind? Maybe Nelson would know. Perhaps it’s because I was born in the village of Gathǐngĩra, danced in Nairobi and cooked and seasoned in Mississippi.

Ngemi Keda

I prepared a beautiful salad made with 9 ingredients in solidarity with the inaugural Ngemi Na Ndũhio Festival as it was taking place . This festival celebrates and invigorates the Agĩkũyũ culture. The recipe is a representative of the Agíkùyù Diaspora and the different ways in which we are influencing our second homes and how we too are influenced by existing in a duality of cultures. My interest has always been the interpretation of that duality through food. The ingredients selected are 9, a very important number in the Agǐkuyu culture on many accounts. But my recipes is geared towards cultural practice of welcoming a newborn at birth, a concept also captured in the first name of the Festival. Whenever a child was born among the Agĩkuyu, the women would welcome the newborn with five ululating 5 times for a boy and 4 times for a girl child. Each ululation had a specific meaning. The boys got one extra ululation for courage as they were the gender that formed the security of the community. The other four ululation represented gift or talent, intelligence, upright character and wealth.

I used nine to represent the combined ululation for both boys and girls to represent a renewal of a nation facing many challenges. One of those challenges is that of food sovereignty. I dedicate much of my time on this issue. I was eager to support this great initiative for many reasons but also to both revisit the recess of my memory and its attendant nostalgia of the oldest keepers of our covenant with our ancestors whom I can remember from my childhood. Amongst those people are my grandparents. I am equally eager to share what we are doing on the ground to heal a sick nation following an elaborate effort by the colonial forces to turn these once proud and politically astute people into creatures of prey to hunted and exploited by foreigners.

At the center of this recipe is pomegranate fruit, accompanied by root vegetables and fruits. The other ingredients are pears, persimmon, rainbow radish, watermelon radish, purple beet root, parsnip and sweet potatoes. Pomegranate is the most influential fruit in the history of man. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself. We will cover that later. If we are to counter the oppressors narrative of an original sin that resulted from the wayward primordial couple eating a fruit, our journey might rightly start by eating organic salad whose ingredients are fit for the gods such as our ancestors and ourselves.

Either way I look at it, the 9 ululations are expression of both the need and the consequences of food justice. Any newborn is a symbol of the continuity of a certain lineage and the presence of peace political and domestic tranquility in the community to allow for the community welcome of a newborn. In other words each ululation must be an affirmation of food sovereignty. That is exactly why the number 9 is a perfect number for ululation as it is highest number that represents energy and constancy. If the sum of any number multiplied by 9 ends up being 9, food too is a constant in our existence.