While appearing on Inooro FM, a Kenyan radio station where I am a regular contributor, Nderitu Waihura, the host closed the interview with a comment about the latest celebrity in my village. The new celebrity is breaking all kinds of records and neither of those records are in the marathon or any equivalent races. In fact the celebrity is not human. The interesting bit is that the big news is less of what it has done but everything about what it has not done. That sounds a bit odd, I know that. So it warrants a bit of explaining. About three years ago, we embarked on creating the best soil to grow our food for a learning farm and a food literacy center in Naivasha, Kenya. In designing the project, it occurred to me that I had to secure an organic source of manure if I hoped to succeed in my efforts. That came after some anthropological research on the ground about the level of literacy about the dangers and benefits of shit. Many of the farmers I talked to did not seem to make the connection between what they feed their animals and the quality of manure they would get. Many seemed to think that their manure was organic even though they were feeding their animals commercial feed which had been grown using toxic chemicals like Roundup. We went to great lengths to grow our own fodder and then acquired three cows and 9 goats for the purpose of securing organic manure. We raised the first batch of cows with organic food and until they gave birth to the first set of calves. The first calf was pure brown without any blemish. I named the calf MW or Mississippi Warren from my African American grandmother. Then drought and lie set in and we had to curl our herd to only one calf. That calf tested our limits, we spent over six times its value in securing organic feed. In the end, we succeeded in breeding it and in the end got a beautiful calf that exceeded all the labor we had put in.
I received the news about the birth of our calf while on the campus of UNC Greensboro where I was doing a residency for a couple of days. Both Profs. Meredith and Plaxedes had worked so hard to make the residency possible but also to make it very convenient on my part. When I first looked at the picture of the calf, it was black and white and had a heart on its forehead. The first thing that came to mind was the kin relationship that Meredith and I shared. She had introduced me to a lot of people, including Professor Plaxedes, who is from Zimbabwe. I did not even think twice about the name for our third generation organic calf, I named the calf MP, from Meredith Powers.
The fourth generation calf will be PC for Professor Chitiyo. It quickly occurred to me that the acronym in Kenya stands for Member of Parliament, the equivalent of a state representative in the U.S. It was a bit ironic because many know that I am a student of political science and that my political views are not conventional. In fact we had a very intense political discussion during the same radio interview. I am however glad that our cows are getting radical love and attention. I especially love their names which extend from Mississippi to Zimbabwe and from White to Black. Yet what turns many people’s heads is the price of this cow with the name of a Mississippi queen who once worked as a sharecropper and had little education, yet has a black and white calf named after a one Black and one White professor.
Njenga is another great friend I met through my appearances on Inooro radio. He later took my class with his wife about 9 months ago and it has transformed their health. They followed the class to the T even though it was quite pricey. They had to get rid of a lot of things in their kitchen, pantry and even the bar, but they are much happier now and I haven’t heard any regrets. They also don’t eat anywhere else except at their home. The two could as well be professors of food discipline. In fact, I have invited them once to share their experience with others, hoping that their discipline could rub on others. I wasn’t too lucky that time but I am still in the race. knows the Njenga has been following Afro Futuristic food regiment with great results. He therefore knows the value of milk. He lives in Australia but will be in Kenya for the holidays. The Njenga family has offered to buy all the milk available for the same price he pays for his milk in Australia. That comes to about $8.00 dollars or KSH.1200. That is a whopping 24 times the regular price of milk in the village. The Kefir made from our goat milk will fetch about $10.00 or about KSH 1500. That instantly made both Mississippi Warren famous. No other cow in my village or in the country has produced milk which commanded a higher price as far as we can tell. Njenga will be in town for a whole month and will most likely consume enough milk to buy another heifer. He has been a great support of the project but he is acting out of conviction. He is not trying to raise the price of milk by 2400 percent but making a statement that health comes at a cost.
The radio host was surprised by the act and it got him and the listeners thinking. Njenga’s goal was achieved. He knows that we don’t sell the milk as it is used up by our student workers and our friends who have been supporting us during the incubation period. We have already had one workshop for composting and we have organic seeds available to the community.
However nobody felt more special than those who work on the farm. They had no idea how expensive the milk they consumed was. When they did the math, organic food made sense. They get 8 liters of milk a day, at a price of KSH 1200, Njenga would pay them KSH 9.600. It would take 192 liters of chemical milk or what I call fiat milk to gross the same amount of money as the 8 liters of clean Just Milk. That is very close to the first milk I drank as a child in my village. Yet today, it is practically impossible for me to find it.
My friend Meredith had other Just ideas. She had been touched by the calf with a love symbol on her head. She has decided to spearhead a campaign in the name of MP and to raise almost $33,000 to support the second phase of the project.
We are building a local seed bank, living quarters for staff and completing our only house.
Just like Njenga and a number of other regular supporters, Meredith has been following our journey from up close. I am delighted that our desire to grow food with clean shit is disrupting a lot of the bullshit in food. The discussion on radio was therefore based on the simple fact the milk and fodder for the queen of love and the queen of Mississippi have been raised without bovine version of Junk foods on one hand and the fact that Njenga, the king of discipline, believes enough about food justice that he is willing to pay a Just price for Just Food.
As my friend and colleague Don Thornton frie once said, you can’t eat without shit. In other words, we have to have manure if we expect to eat long term. Just like good government that we campaign to have, we have to campaign for Just shit. Our desire to spread love without the toxic byproducts in food is causing wonderful things to happen beyond our imagination. The next time you hear someone saying that they don’t want shit, ask them to try the organic version, it might be worth more than they think.
Please consider supporting this initiative with love. I don’t want to hear any excuses, unless you think that you can have Just food without organic research. Reach out if you feel moved to act.