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