.I visited Mwea, the rice basket of Kenya, in a bid to understand the quality of rice in Kenya. It’ was the second time I have been to Mwea . The first time was back in 2010 when I visited the offices of the government body that supports farmers with training, and all sorts of extension services. I spent a good part of the morning, that day in 2010, at those government offices talking to workers in various positions.
My basic interest was to find out if there was any organic rice grown in Kenya, with an ambitious intent to push towards that goal if the answer was no. Everybody I talked to in those offices, regardless of their position, was fully convinced that it was impossible to grow rice without chemicals. Chemical fertilizers to sustain plant growth, chemical pesticides to combat the bugs wanting to eat the plants, and chemical herbicides to destroy any weeds.
Since my visit was in the middle of the season, I missed the opportunity to see the harvesting process. All I saw then, and had seen before and since, was the farmers flooding the rice paddies and the process of transplanting the rice seedlings. I later came to learn that the most tedious stage is guarding against the birds. My main escort at the government offices was a friendly Embu lady. As we discussed rice production, she was liable to paint the devil as a bird. Once the rice was approaching maturity, the birds would show up early each morning, in flocks so huge that they could easily consume a hundred pounds of rice in just a few hours.
The story of growing rice in Kenya was fascinating on two levels. The first one was an experience I had when I participated in what was called a “crop mob”, at a small farm in Moncure, North Carolina, 20 minutes from where I now live. Jason & Haruka, a young couple living in Moncure, managed to enlist over 120 people to help them set up the rice fields. It was the most powerful food engagement I had seen up to that time, and since then.
No money changed hands, and most of the people present that day didn’t know each other. Yet the amount of work completed was phenomenal. It's incredible that such voluntary cooperation could occur using incentives that had nothing to do with dollars. They were paid in good feelings and rewarded with the knowledge that they had improved their food system.
As I drove home from that so fulfilling crop mob event, which had been organized using social media, I thought hard about the day’s experience. The event was big enough to attract The New York Times to show up to cover the event. Food was going through a silent revolution and many were missing it. I wasn’t one of them.
I compared it with the cultural tradition called Ngwatio, my last equivalent of a crop mob in Kenya, when the village friends came to help dig a pond at a new farm we had recently moved to in Naivasha. There were similarities and differences. All the boys knew each other and no money changed hands. So here I was in America, reliving that most beautiful experience. I couldn’t have been much happier. It was like glimpse of home, but without the connection of knowing everyone.
I became very good friends with that couple, and also their loyal customer. From time to time, since that event, I would stop by unannounced and help out for half an hour, as we talked about food matters.
The rice from Jason and Hauka was the most expensive rice I have ever bought and consumed, but also the most flavorful. The rice we buy in the store is old, dried for storage and sale. Fresh rice, straight from the source as it was being hulled, is a much more enriching experience. Their seed crop was procured bu Hauka, who was a native of Japan. A pound costed more than a pound of organic pastured lamb from Whole Foods at $24. They later closed the farm, but I am so gratefulfor the chance I had to experience their legendary work in local rice production. It was the first time any rice, let alone that particular breed, had been grown in that region of North Carolina.
My excitement to visit the rice-growing region of Mwea was aimed at understanding the health implications of Kenyan rice, and the kind of culture that the rice was promoting. In the end, I did not leave encouraged. I was certain that the Kenyan community was headed in the wrong direction. Maybe that is exactly why the cultural practice of Ngwatio died, not able survive such a toxic environment.
As I drove along the farms in Mwea, I could see people working mostly just in small groups of wage earners. I realized just how alienating such a fiat food production system is, and how it displaces our values. The focus was not food literacy and togetherness, but just money. That level of disconnect prevented, as well, any knowledge or concern regarding damage to the food or the environment in which it was grown.
It was disheartening. The only thing I could remember to lighten my heart was the most commonly used word amongst my Kenyan government hosts during that 2010 visit. The word was "Abaai". I could have been excused for thinking that Abaai was a great legend amongst these rice growers. I mean a legend in the likes of Achilles.
As I drove home, I remembered the one act that Achilles, the Greek legend, was most guilty of, in regards to the environment and the water. I remembered that the river Xanuth was so angry at Achilles for killing so many Trojan soldiers that the river took the shape of a man, and asked him to stop the killing, as the river couldn’t take any more dead bodies and blood being dumbed into it.
In my own imagination, I invented my own similar legend, using the word Abaai. I fantasized one of the rice paddies crying against Abaai to stop causing so much blood shed to the community that would eat the rice grown with chemicals and the fires that burn the husks and the straw, at the end of the season, as seen on the photo. Like the Trojan war, that pitted the Greeks and the Trojans against one another, resulting in serious killings on both sides and no gain for either one, Abaai has turned into a goddess of violence, destroying the environment and the culture of Ngwatio, where no one will win this horrible battle, not even the thieving birds.
Is there any wonder why the rice from the paddies of Mwea, in the county of Embu, cost so little money to buy, but costs so much in damages when compared to the rice from Moncure? I didn’t buy any rice in Mwea, but if I had bought some, the true cost would be higher that $24 dollars a pound, when you factor in the environmental and health cost to the community. It is odd that when I was buying rice for $24 dollars for half a kilo, I thought I was buying the most expensive rice at the time.
The gods and the doctors who will eventually deal with so many deaths, from the dead soil, to the mutant birds, to the undernourished people breathing the smoked air will all bear witness by saying Abaai, maya Mathabu ní ma mana.! Haha hatirí Thayù.
Surely the end result of this type ofviolence will be the same lose-lose of the Trojan war. The nail on the coffin will cone from the Lai. Of disconnectedness that people feel with the death worship of fiat money. You cannot have food relationships if your transactions are only monetary, especially with fiat money.
Maybe Homer was right when he said that man, of all creatures, is the most agonized creature that walks or crawls the earth. We, like the men of Mwea are agonized for thieving ways, just like the birds. The big question is who will guard us, not from the thieving birds but from ourselves?