An Indigenous World Food Day

Celebrating Wainya in Exile

Celebrating World Food Day at UNC Greensboro started in pomp and celebration by cooking with the students all day. I counted 28 students who spent some time in the kitchen along with the staff and the professors who spent the whole day preparing food and talking. The discussions in the kitchen were more meaningful to me and the students. Funny enough, the majority of the students did not show up for the keynote later in the evening. Many had classes and other commitments. To be honest I also suspect that they were exhausted. Preparing food from scratch in between classes is not a simple task. I say that because some students returned to the kitchen three times.

The kitchen smelled so nice that it would draw students from nutritional classes down the hall. The food was being prepared at a facility in the Nutritional department. Meredith Powers and a group of students still had enough time to make memorable artistic pieces using seeds and local foraged plants. I shared some of my seeds from St. Croix as well as Tamarind seeds. The theme song was Kwa Waing’a Ndigachoka and Water Got No Enemy from Fela. I counted 14 different nationalities presented. It was great to have two fellow Kenyans present.

If I was to price the true cost of the food per plate starting with the organic food to the labor and energy, the food has to be close to $120 dollars per plate. Everything was made from scratch. Some people claimed that they would swear by the vinaigrette, others by the drink and yet others by the Black Beans. It was the first time for many students to eat an almost exclusively organic meal. . Only one person mentioned meat as the event was vegan. Kudos to all those who put the event together. It was almost 9.00 o’clock when I got home and almost 11 o’clock when I stopped talking.

Yet the biggest accomplishment yesterday was that I celebrated Wainya,a famous medicine man from my region. This medicine man was slandered by the British colonialists and the ignorant Kenyans for political reasons. He would later be so reviled in our community that he became the embodiment of the devil. I am extremely ashamed to have sang the song that denigrated and vilified our own heroes. My sincere hope is that others will join me in celebrating food instead of denigrating its spirit by consuming things that are not food as food. Almost all of us are guilty of the same crime I committed as a young boy by singing hateful songs of praising their oppressors as their source of salvation.

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The world is equally at war and facing imminent destruction because of false ideas and promises that many have come to accept. Those false ideas have little benefit in the end for anyone. I can tell you that because I now know what many who still sing that song are slowly realizing. The salvation they were promised has utterly failed to materialize. Instead of waiting any longer, many are abandoning their commitment to such false hope. I may not know much, but singing the hateful song of the W word(Waing’a as the local version of the N word) I am resurrecting the dignity of Wainya as well as the dignity of those who are living today and the future in the country where Wainya once performed his craft in diligence. I am not aware of any such attempt, at least not on any American university campus.

The lecture highlighted the value of dignity as a component of food justice while also taking the first bold disruptive steps to expand the definition of food beyond just calories and flavor. The reductive thinking , truncated of any substantive emotions in growing, preparing, cooking and serving has come at a great cost to our health, environment and to education. That the food was prepared at the cooking lab of the Nutrition Department is quite significant. It turns out that it was the first time an organic menu of such a price tag had been prepared on that facility in the memory of those presently in charge.

That African food can lead the way in improving the imagination of what food is cannot be underrated. Given the contribution that Africa has made to the building of both the economic powerhouse that America is and the food culture as well, it is just right that when the time for giving spotlight comes, that we are right there in front. Surely the injustices we have suffered are too much and too long. Africa can’t just selflessly give to others for the sake of others, this go around we are giving to our sake and for the sake of others. The great news is that we are making progress. The gene is out of the bottle and I know that some of us will never go back where we once were.

I saw the evidence of that in the words and facial expressions of professor Hewan. Following my lecture in one class, one White student come over to see he could attend the next session which was for African students only, professor Hewan was very firm and polite in her response that the event was exclusively for a particular group only. The student understood and didn’t press the matter. But it was actually one African student who wondered if I wasn’t worried that some people would look at what I was doing as being reverse racism. I responded that when I was in college, there are things I wish someone had told me. That is what I am doing with the African students. If someone in my college days had called a meeting to talk about surviving in college as a minority white person in Kenya, I wouldn’t have attended. Nevertheless, Africans have to realize that they are complex people with a lot of issues to solve just like any other groups of people. Getting together to solve those issues doesn’t disadvantage anyone else in any way.

There was no better place to do so than in Greensboro where on February 1 1960, a group of 4 Black students attempted to interrogate a lunch counter at Woolworth. They had no idea how things would turn out. I am lucky to say I know that most people took something away yesterday, what they will do with it, only the gods know. In the meantime I am resurrecting the African wisdom, similar to what Wainya had, in contemporary times and getting some positive results while also getting recognition and pay which Wainya never got. In so doing, the next generation will be in a better space. A space with ample space for all, especially the indigenous people who have taken great care of the environment and still hold so much promise in healing our past wounds. But we have to listen, remember and celebrate those past heroes.

Cooking Power Across Cultures

It was a pleasure to participate in the choreography of an Afro Futuristic Food event at Eco-Institute at Sanctuary Farm with a group of wide cross section of food experts in diverse positions across the country. The group forms a committee that determines how a fund that a philanthropist made available is disbursed.

The event was a great opportunity for me to further my analysis of power. My life mission has been to understand power in its most nuanced form and how it affects inter and intra relationships. The topic is the only thing that rivals food in maintaining a curiosity that refuses to fade away.

I have become fairly descent is classifying just how health or unhealthy our proximity to power influences our health. Last week’s event was a great opportunity to see how people navigate this challenge.

The interesting observation was that the philanthropist who had made the fund available is such a big supporter of food that they wanted to come and assist in the kitchen as my assistant. I have noticed that happens quite often. I can’t remember when I last hired a helper to clean up or assist in cooking. In majority of my events, the same people who are the clients are typically the assistants in the kitchen.

To some this might be trivial. To me this is huge than I can explain. But I will still try. When I grew up in Kenya, restaurant food was not something special but actually less than third tier. Restaurant food was something you consumed because you had no alternative. The first option was always eat food that was prepared not by strangers but by those who cooked it. I have come up with a theory that a healthy relationship is power can be deduced from one’s relationship with food.

In Kenya of my youth, catering for large family events was done by the sub clan members. I know that as two major events were help in my honor for being bold enough to attempt to attend college in America without hardly any money or knowledge of the empire. I have several essays about that experience.

But nowadays, most families hire a caterer to prepare food. This is obviously a sign of progress and wealth to some but I have a totally different idea.

Last week, I had the opportunity to have chef Kelly Tylor,my favorite culinary school instructor volunteer to assist me. John and Christy Chi were equally active in supporting put the meal together. The guests then lined up and cleaned up.

You are welcome to take any position but these people have a very close relationship to both food and power. Those who solely rely on people whose only relationship with food is only transactional and about money are likely to consume low quality food and to have a less healthy relationship with food.

I shared the story about the cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey. The Cyclops know as Polyphemus ate humans and refused to offer the typical hospitality known as Xenia. Yet, Polyphemus was glad to accept the gift of wine from the same humans he was eating up. When Odysseus asked for a gift in return for the wine, Polyphemus replied that Odysseus would have the pleasure to be eaten last. When asked what his name was, he answered that Nobody was his name.

The wine that Polyphemus consumed made him so drunk that it was easy for Odysseus was able to pierce the one eye of Odysseus. Polyphemus was in so much agony and pain after Odysseus pierced his eye with a fired sharp olive wood. Polyphemus shouted for help from the neighbors. When the neighbors showed up, they asked Polyphemus who was bothering him. Polyphemus replied that Nobody was try to kill him. So the neighbors figured since nobody was bothering Polyphemus, there was no need of going inside the cave to rescue Polyphemus from Nobody.

When we don’t have a healthy relationship with our food and those who prepare our food, we risk being cyclonic. It might just be that the cyclonic syndrome is at the heart of our lifestyle diseases.

Now you know why I don’t sell food, I sell idea and charge a fair price for those with a healthy relationship with food. When someone asked me about a prayer before eating, I said that it is an insult to pray for food you know is toxic and expect anything else but suffering. Mine is not the healthiest but it is the closest I could get to it. It made me smile to see everyone trying something different. They picked the folks and started eating. Talk about power !

Internal Black Son Celebration

Today is amongst the most difficult days for me as an African, Black, Conscious, learned and living in America. It is one of the few days I would hope to disappear for 24 hours and unplug from social media to the extent that my absence would block or erase any memories of the International Son Day Celebration.

I see a lot of wonderful Black young men with their families on this day and I am conflicted. I am not sure that I can pretend long enough to forget that we are living in a country still wrestling with the aftermath of a long period of hate that somehow refuses to go away. At least that is what the nationally held belief is. But the reality is more grim than most are willing to admit or at the very least acknowledge.

The outcome is a national malaise and contagion of forgetfulness that results in an insidious slumber.

Yet every so often, one of those promising young boys becomes a sacrificial lamb to remind us of the national slumber under whose gaze we thrive. The Black Son knows no celebrations except a conditional one. In addition to the onslaught of poor diet, the Black son has other serious historical changes that refuses to abate.

This is not a thesis but a lived experience from my past alterations with the police. I went to jail intentionally. I stood up for my right and paid homage to all the education I have received, both formal and otherwise.

When the police tried to deny my right, I immediately figured that he was falling for my trap. I live a simple life and dress the part to fully understand the life of Blackness in America.

So the Raleigh police officer tried to intimidate me by giving me an unlawful order. You see a white lady had absconded with my cab fare. When I saw her again, I refused to give her a ride until she paid for the previous fare. She gave me part of the money she owed and I left. She called the cop and claimed I stole ten dollars from her. When the cop called me and asked me to meet him, I requested that we meet at the office so that he could verify that the lady had a record of habitually lying to African cab drivers. I was smart enough to know the weight of my words against a white woman. History is replete with such contests between Black men and White women, real or fictitious. The time was nigh and I was glad to take the bullet. So I refused to meet the cop anywhere else but at the office. I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I called my brother and the owner of the cab company and told them that if they don’t hear from me in half an hour, they know where to find me.

Wisdom is a bitch. As I had predicted, the cop arrested me for having stood up against an injustice. The cop told me that he chose to believe the white thief because she was crying too much to be lying. That the office was right where the cop and I were, and the white thief was in the comfort of her apartment over ten miles away, it didn’t matter. My dear cop chose to use the old script when exercising his policing duties over Blackness. Jail was my fate.

I ended up having to be bailed out at a big cost and spending hours at the cell. I followed up with more work by going to court three times. The thief never showed up even once.

You can tally up the cost. Bitcoin was a few cents then. Those are costs that my son now will have to bear.

Yet, I did what I did for him and other Black boys. It was a small price to pay. His grandparents did it before me. They all took an oath to fight for justice. My son and I are products of the oath and no police can alter that. Not even the pain of death. Any price is fair for those who are possessed by liberty. That oath is our Big Colossus holding the torch in our heart.

That is his heritage. Now I can ask him to help harvest some Sunchokes, fresh Basil, Holy Basil, Chives, Parsley and Oregano from the backyard garden and cook some healthy food as a way of promoting justice in the only field he and I have absolute control of, food. I prepared a dish with Saffron, the most expensive spice for a reason. He knows the color of Saffron, its price, those are easy to tally. But the most important price for him to know is his own price, which is no price. At such a price, he has neither the excuse nor the luxury of keeping his eyes on the prize. The odds are against him and he and I have to have his back. I did once and I will do it again forever. He too has to toe that line of justice. That is how we rock. I celebrate my son every day and hope that others can find the courage to do the same. I am speaking from experience. I am speaking about my own personal experiences of life worship. Injustice, complacency and dishonesty is the recipe of death-worship. Nowhere is that case more blatant than in the act of consuming food that causes and supports early death. Celebrate by feeding your son life today and every single one except those days that you view him with the same spirit of the evil cop. For once fall in love with a healthy Black face forever. The only way to do so is to love life-worship. That is an internal force and a force to reckon with. I reckon you will internally celebrate the magic that is Black son.

Food & Romance

My Japanese Ginger is finally in full bloom. You can literally see the pollen inside the flower. This also happens to be the season for pawpaws. It has become a ritual to make a Fall solstice dinner using these two ingredients. Afro Futuristic is about getting the best ingredients with the most eclectic flavors. 

The recipe I make with these ingredients and French Lentils is called Ngwíkoraha. 

The name is inspired by a combination of Charles Darwin and a Gíkùyù proverb. 

I am not the only person who has been fascinated by this flower from Japanese Ginger. It looks like a form of orchid. Darwin was so puzzled by the fact that Orchid flowers did not smell. He went to his grave with the belief that orchid plants do have a scent. 

We now know that the orchids attract their pollinators, not by their scent, but with the shape of the flowers which mimics the sexual organs of their female counterparts. By the time the insects realize that they have been duped, pollination has already taken place. 

I therefore see some similarities between the orchid and Japanese Ginger except that they do have a scent, or I think they do. I should know them by now as I have been growing my patch of the plant for the last six years. They grow better every year and thereby produce more flowers every year. 

 I also looked at the cost of a single plant of Japanese Ginger on would cost me in a 2 gallon container online. One of the sites had a price of $39 dollars.The seller did not indicate if the Japanese Ginger was actually organic or not. Whatever the case might be, it would be reasonable to compare a salad and dish garnished with the sexy flowers compostable in cost to an expensive bottle of wine. But I am not a big buff of fermented grapes because I prefer to do my own.

I had never been served Japanese Ginger before I grew my own. But that did not deter me from trying. Eating high end food is not something new that I am inventing, it is part of my culture as well as a family heritage. There is a clan in my culture called Ambui who are known to brag about wealth and romance. A man from that sub-tribe would talk in jest amongst his colleagues and say that he would not die while digging yams but rather handling calves. That is a way of saying that he is wealthy enough to marry another wife who would bear him more children even in his old age. In cultural lingo, such talks where a person brags about his wealth or prowess has a specific name. It was referred to as kwÍraha. It was a common practice amongst good friends while they socialized over honey mead and meat. I am greatly interested in such matters as most people are as aware about the fun part of elderhood amongst our community, but traditional men in general. There also happens to be a very close intersection between food and fun. 

Yams for example were very closely related with sex and romance. The man of the family had his own garden where he would plant yams. The yams itself was trellises upon a special tree known as Mùkùngùgù. The tree and the yam are synonyms of any close relationship. It was a common idiom that every Gíkùyù understands.  The harvesting of the yams takes a lot of work and the process was very secretive in the old days. A man would go to the extent of harvesting the yam at dusk while naked. The idea was to keep everybody away while he is digging his yams. No man wanted other people to know which yam was dug as someone could come behind him and dig from the same hole he had dug. Since a man only dug out some of the yams in one whole and left others for another harvest, it would be extremely difficult to know if someone happened to come behind the owner of the yams and dug some in the same holes that had already been dug on the same day. For that reason, the whole process was a secret of the owner. 

Out of the nine sub-clans of the Gíkùyù, Ambui were the junior to the Anjiru. I happen to be from the Anjirù, the oldest of the nine daughters who formed the nine sub-clans. The sub-clans were known for their hard work and knowledge of the plants. So if the younger clan of Ambui would claim that they were wealthy enough to marry more than one wife, I am pleased to share more ways of ensuring that the Ambui have a challenger from the Anjiru. We too are not just older in age but also in “kwíraha”. I know I can expect a lot of love from my Ambui friends but I just can’t wait to see what kind of comeback I will get. 

While enjoying the preparation for my recipe, I remembered the Gíkùyù proverb that states that “Ngwíko ya arùme ní nda”. Loosely translated to mean that food is as intimate to men as sex. The orchid-like flower of Japanese Ginger makes a recipe that is intimate to me in more ways than sex. It is both flavorful, organic and original. But I would be dishonest to claim that having a sexual appeal doesn’t raise the stakes for the recipe. It’s a recipe that hits many notes and senses. Food without imagination is bland, boring and unfashionable. But the worst part of it is that such a classification makes a recipe unfit to be classified as Afro Futuristic Conscious Cuisine. It’s a cuisine that is beyond just being futuristic,  it is also scientific & romantic. Can you imagine if all the nine clans would come up with their own recipes of romance, science and futurism.  Since I am a Münjirù, I have taken my first stab at it, the rest can hire me and I will do sisterly and brotherly food justice by them. Kwíraha is romance and so is the Japanese Ginger recipe by a Mùnjirù. How cool is an Afro Futuristic recipe that taste great, keeps one healthy but also predicts how I will die, not in poverty but in love.

KFC & The Devil

KFC & The Devil

I was enjoying a guided tour by two phenomenal local ladies named professor Nyambura and Wanjiku of the food scene in Nanyuki.. We visited Nanyuki Permaculture Institute first before heading into town. Once in town, we went straight to the only mall in town. Not knowing what to expect, I thought I was ready for anything. But once we drove inside the mall, I was shocked by the first visible sign I saw. We had parked our vehicle right in front of KFC. I literally froze. All kinds of thoughts, none of it positive, flooded my mind. In a mix of awe, disappointment and curiosity, I walked inside. I did not smell the ubiquitous smell of the chicken being fried in the back but felt sad as I stared at the ugliness of the corruption and colonization of our food.

I was dismayed to see Kenyans lined up with their children in tow anxiously waiting their turn to poison themselves for a fee and a flirting moment of ephemeral high from fake flavors and hidden costs. I lined along for a while and pretended to be equally naive and ignorant of the business at hand. But even pretending has its limits. It was too much for me to handle. I was especially taken aback by the number of people behind me, especially when I considered the size of town I was in. It was not a major town and yet the numbers were high. Once inside, one of the attendants asked me if she could help me. I replied "where is the bathroom? She politely pointed in the direction of the bathroom. I headed in that direction.

I wondered if there could An be such a thing as a holy toilet and sinful toilet. All over a sudden, my urge to use the bathroom disappeared. I am now convinced that even if I died inside a KFC or any of it's partners in food crime, my body will probably not rot. My mind is so immune to these demons that my armor can not be penetrated. My greatest joy is to spread the that amor. I conjured an image of just food on the cross with McDonalds and KFC on each side to represent the two thieves.

As though to get an antidote for the poisoned environment, I walked into a healthy joint known as HealthyU. As I was looking around and enjoying the breath of fresh air, I saw a small bottle of Manukau Honey. I was amazed. I picked it quickly, just to touch it. I looked at the price. The bottle of 250 grams costed $40. That is probably half the monthly wage of a typical wage earner.

There you have it. These are the best of times and the worst of times, or at least some may think. The reality of the matter is food injustice makes all of us unjust in the end. We cannot grow KFCs in the world and expand organic Manuka honey indefinitely. One will have to give. If KFC gains momentum then we will have to contend with a small devil which we may call kfc or Killing Families Consciously. Fed long enough, the small devil will grow into a father devil that will become KFC. That is not something I am at all comfortable with. In the meantime, not all are worried about the food devils, big or little, as we already have a solution for it. Food literacy smokes all those devils regardless of size or color. In my small way, I have formed a regiment under the same title of Kabui Food Class(KFC), or if you like the real KFC.

That would be the easiest way to tell the story of my life: struggle for Food Justice. Afood, Amen and Thayù

Abaai & The Thieving Birds

.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?

End of July Prayers

chef Kabui

Ten foot Jerusalem Artichokes are all the evidence I need to prove the power of organic compost. The scraps of organic food from the kitchen are feed to earth worms, and they produce black gold. Most people use leaves that the city collects from people’s yards at the end of the Fall Season until the next Spring. As most lawns in the US are treated with herbicide and weed killers such Roundup, it is logical to assume that literally the whole pile of leaves are contaminated.

But the kicker starts even before urban houses are built. The first two things that home building companies make money on is selling the trees that they chop down and the top soil from the lots. After the houses are built, a small thin carpet of grass is laid on the dead soil left after all the top soil has been sold. That means that you have to constantly add chemical fertilizer to the grass to make it into the perfectly green lawn we all have become accustomed to. That means that that grass is terrible for composting, and worse for our environment.

For that reason, I bring back my banana peels and other fresh fruit peels to add to my compost. If I do dinners elsewhere and there are any waste vegetables, I carry them home, too. That is another reason why I will only cook organic food. That is the only way it would make sense. I tried to do a bit or inorganic cooking and it was disastrous. I want to live without any more guilt. I am old enough to know better. I now know that I can either make money or make sense, but I haven’t figured or seen anyone making both.

The biggest benefit is the lessons I learn along with my children. They just don't know yet the value and usefulness they are absorbing. My daughter was in charge of making the garden this year. It is her connection to who she really is and where she comes food. It all bows down to food. Food is our life, prayers and our being. Instead of saying Amen, we say Just Food, even at the pain of death. Death to Fiat Food. Thayù

Even you, Brutus

Njathi wa Kabui

Last week I attended a graduation of an important person in my family. I noticed that the parking lot was full of clean and expensive cars. It would have been unimaginable for such a festive celebration to celebrate 8 years of schooling during my time. I can remember the last day I finished my high school exam. My celebration, if you would call it that, was to do what I had always done at the end of each session. I left the city for my family farm in the village. I would spend the holiday with my mother helping out at the farm. I would also immediately reconnect with eating food we had grown ourselves. But that was then.

I parked my car and proceeded to the auditorium. Upon entering the auditorium, the importance of the occasion was made very clear from the sartorial code observed by the students, occupying the center stage. Parents, teachers, and other supporters were filling the seats, anticipating the graduation ceremony. The excitement was palpable.

But it was not the center stage that got my interest. Rather it was a long and well decorated table, conveniently placed near the back wall, directly facing the podium. The graduates sat in front of the podium and the parents occupied the sides and the back. Essentially, the long table was situated behind the parents. I really liked the set up.

But when I went for a closer look, I noticed that the well-decorated table had nothing on it except neatly sliced pieces of cake, on decorated paper plates.

My stomach churned. I wondered what kind of education system we are putting those students through. It was the clearest sign that such an education system is obviously divorced from reality. There is a health epidemic in this country as in much of the globe. The world is in the midst of a long pandemic, where almost an equal number of people are suffering from the crises of too little and too many calories. You would think that such a problem would be the easiest one to solve. All those eating too much would have to do is ship the those calories to those who would gladly relieve them of their surplus. But the solution is not so simple. To believe otherwise would be both naive and woefully misinformed.

One aspect of the problem we have at hand exists in a blind spot. The other stems from our Western national identity. We thrive on fallacies that, once debunked, would pull down the foundation of who we are. That is not easy for anyone. We might just realize that we are not be as powerful as we want to think, nor as just as we assume that we are.

Learning takes humility. A lot of people outside of the U.S and the western model are suffering, just so that we might enjoy cheap resources such as oil and manufactured goods. The biggest impact of our insistence of being the center of consumption in the world is that our health has become cheap. In other words, exporting dollars, manufacturing and weapons has left us vulnerable. Eating poorly is the price we have had to pay for being a super power. In the end, we all are becoming losers. Those who are exploited for our comfort become twice poor, as they have less resources. Such victims imagine that if only they touched the hem of our garment, they would be whole again.

We “first-worlders” too, become poor twice, by killing our industries and our farms on one hand, and we become the Republic of Poor health, divided and depressed.

How can we teach children about everything else and not teach them about food? What kind of education failed to teach these children to avoid the truck that is coming their way, head on? The lifestyle diseases that America, and most of the “advantaged” world experience today, are tied to food, directly or indirectly. But our education system, intentionally or unintentionally ignoring food literacy as a foundation of essential general and cultural knowledge, is nothing short of subtle suicide.

As I stood behind the students and the long table of cake slices, I remembered the story of Julius Caesar, the one man who changed Rome from a republic to an empire. In 44 B.C., Brutus and his comrades stabbed his step uncle and his benefactor. All Julius Cesar, is reputed to have said was “Even you, Brutus?

How appropriate was it to have the cakes behind the graduating class. I couldn’t resist making the connection between the desert and the daggers that ended both the life of the first Roman emperor, and the friendship between Brutus and Caesar, not to mention the other accomplices. That betrayal sealed the fate of Rome, and its metamorphosis into some holy empire.

In 2023, the Afro Futuristic spirit in me silently asked our trusted western educational vanguards, even you, Brutal adults?