Upon returning to the U.S, I ran into an African American Facebook friend at Whole Foods where we often ran into each other. He is a foodie and a local jazz musician in his 70s. For a long time, I thought that he was retired as I would often find him, his wife and a friend seated down for extended periods at the restaurant section of Whole Foods supper market. We would always speak briefly, mostly about food and Africa. Then I saw him and his band performing at Irregardless Cafe, the first vegetarian restaurant in Raleigh and realized that he was still active at his age.
The owner of Irregardless is a colleague and a big supporter of my work too. He has always contributed money whenever I have had small fundraisers for small projects or organizations. One the night I saw my friend's jazz group performing, I had been invited for a dinner by the restaurant owner and his wife. I enjoyed some great music and conversation that touched African American culture as well as the Jewish culture of the couple. It was a lovely night. Jews, African Americans ,then and now Africans, have an interesting history in the South and in the country. My college friend was Palestinian and I felt fortunate to have known friends from conflicting backgrounds. I could listen to various sides and then make my conclusions. There is a great divide between generalization of cultures and individuals personalities, politics not withstanding.
Food is part of that history as my friend, @thecookingene, has clearly proven. The now famous author Michael Twitty actually worked together several times at the North Carolina Museum of History not too far from Irregardless Cafe. The event where Michael and I were both speaking was the annual African American Cultural Festival.
That's the backdrop of my recent meeting with my friend at Whole Foods.
When he spotted me, he walked over with a slight limp and a smile on his bearded face and gave me a dab from a far as a salute to our friendship and an acknowledgment of the Corona era. The very next words out that came out of his mouth truly shocked me, he leaned slightly as though to keep our conversation a secret. " I saw your post on FB about COMRADE BOOK HOUSE, where is it?", he asked. I told him it was in Kenya. He seemed clearly disappointed. We spoked briefly and we parted ways.
As t quickly occured to me how central books and food have been in my sojourn in America and even before that. When in Memphis, TN, Kimet Bookstore was an African American joint located across campus. Bruce and Tony operated the bookstore throughout my years in college. Funny enough, when the bookstore sadly closed down, Tony opened a restaurant in the same neighborhood. I always stopped by the restaurant on Elvis Presley Avenue to say hello to my old friend.
Upon moving to the Triangle, two African American bookstores provided me with a welcoming intellectual sanctuary. Blacknificent Bookstore in Raleigh and The Know Bookstore in Durham were extremely important to my continued growth in activism. I used to host a Saturday workshop on Civic and Cultural Literacy as a community service. It was during that time that I got tired of theory and decided to do something practical. The same group that used to attend my lectures started a gardening program. We built a garden in the backyard of most of the members of the group.
The change in tactic came from my observation that majority of those who came to the lectures were interested in improving their health. It also bothered me that the bookstore had a restaurant which was not serving the most healthy food.
Blacknificent on the other hand was a strictly vegan space. I would later host a big dinner there after I had attended culinary school. It was actually one of the first spaces I could host a sizeable event when I was starting out as a food activist. The old ties of Literacy activism came in handy.
As I walked to my car, I couldn’t help mourn the eventual closing down of the Black Bookstores locally and nationally. They are such important cultural pillars. I now know better than underestimate the power of small things such as COMRADEBOOKHOUSE. The distance from the cash out register, inside Whole Foods where I was talking with my friend to where my car was parked could probably fit twenty bookstores the size of COMRADE BOOK HOUSE. Yet someone thousands of miles away was curious enough to stop and enquire about it. His inquiry brought back a flood of memories in a way he would have never expected or predicted.
Thanks to Dr. Nyambura for the interview and Njukì's COMRADEBOOKHOUSE for publishing it. Hopefully my wise elder and foodie will join me on my next visit to COMRADE Book House and play an African American tune of resistance in support of local Comradery in the struggle for a new dawn. Whatever the outcome, I was reminded that my going to the healthy food store where I met the elder and my meeting with Njukì Gìthethwa and Dr. Nyambura is a testament of the work of a mighty army of comrades from various cultures that have fought tooth and nail, to keep the spirit of Food Literacy and Sovereignity from going the way of three of my favorite bookstores. Eating well has never felt so precious.