Farming my way back home

It feels like I was bucked by a horse.
My thighs are sore and I have this terrible wobble.
I was farming into the night yesterday: tearing up clods of earth with my jembe, creating borders, mounds and pits to plant our seedlings.
I was frustrated that we are buying greens, when we can put these seeds into the earth and have our own. I went hard. A bit too hard maybe.

I was thinking,
Funny, my primary occupation,is farmer, just like my grandfather in Kakamega.
I am in America, and i work the soil, love the soil, pray pon the soil, like my grandfather is doing now, thousands of miles away.
And wow!
So much for that $50,000 a year college Degree...(you can take the woman out the land, but you can't take that land out the ...)
I was thinking about how therapeutic plowing earth, pinching soil, tugging at weeds, and designing this paradise is.
How natural it feels.
How it teleports me back home.
How I am suddenly in conversation with my mum, her mum, her mum's mum and the dynasty of women whose blood, love, memory and energy runs through my veins.
Ashei.

I don't know much about where I am going (professionally), but I know that farming is fundamental. {growing food is ) as essential as drinking water. It should be as common a practice.

At the moment, we have spinach, lettuce, collards, kales, cabbages in already. Theres tonnes of other seedlings germinating in the greenhouse, just waiting to be grounded.The workload is mounting, but the weather will not give!!!

It snowed today. Too cold for a grind. I was all ready to get the work in but, by now you know I don't play with Michigan cold. Hellurrrr!

I started farming proper, 3 years ago, at lilac community gardens, a parcel of land donated by Michigan State University to the city's food bank. I started because Baba Chiengbeng signed up for a plot of land, while we were still in college, but before he could get into it, had to go to Florida for a summer Yoruba program. I was initially reluctant about the whole idea, especially since the plot was a significantly long walk from our apartment, but somebody needed to water the crops.

He was an Agribusiness major so the farming came naturally. It took a minute for me, but you know, once you start tending to the garden you can't stop. You stumble into loving before you know it, and I was there every evening, after my work shifts, hauling water in jugs and buckets from rainwater barrels and sometimes even a borehole several meters away from the garden.

Only pitch darkness sent me home...

Farming (in America) was always, for me, an opportunity to grow the kinds of foods my mum would cook, that I couldn't purchase in the store, or most certainly not expect to find in the college cafeteria.  I grew as many heritage crops as I could find with a vengeance. I grew a forest of black eyed peas at lilac, together with tomatoes, some other greens and pumpkins (malenge). Black eyed peas leaves are a delicacy in Western Kenya. Nyummmmz. Pumpkin leaves are delicious too, as are sweet potato leaves, African Spider Plant aka Saga, Huckleberry leaf aka Managu, nettle, and a few others I discovered and planted in Detroit.

Food is so important.

It is so powerful and healing.

Especially when you are far from 'home' and far from family and loved ones.

And then when you get into the soil, and start growing...you can't stop. It's exciting. It's intensive work- but its great work. It's not oppressive-work. It's loving work.

Today, as I am feeling my way through life, I am glad, excited, and affirming of the fact that I am continuing the work of many of my parents and ancestors. I am glad that I am touching the earth and swinging my jembe, and kneeling on this hallowed ground.

I am connecting dots.

I am understanding many things and accepting many things.

I am not alone.

I am not powerless.

I walk with thousands, and thousands, and thousands....

When I bend down and pray upon the earth, I call so many who have done so before me.

And when I lay that seed in that earth I lay it with love and say thank you. Grow well. And I lay it gracefully, make sure that it is comfortable, warm, cozy, and has access to all it needs, all that I can give, and all that I can not.

I praise the sun.
I praise the darkness.

I praise those that teach that we are all one, human and animal and plant and earth.
I praise those who teach that time is bending, is fluid, is malleable.
I praise those who liberate minds and spirits.

I pray for consciousness.
I pray for peace.
I pray for harmony
I pray for an end to the bullshit and the madness.
Whether it call itself capitalism, nationalism, tribalism, racism, sexism, colorism, religion, fiat money, corporatism, white-savior complex, white supremacy, (name that evil), (name that evil)

I pray for all of this and fling my hoe back onto the earth and keep on working.

Do you know the badass who eats squirrel meat ?

Squirrels, in my business, are pests.

They cause a lot of mischief in our garden, nibbling at this and the other, or digging up some beets, gnawing off some shoots, and frustrating our labor.
Further, and even more vexing, is their persistent nesting in OUR ROOF. We have an old house, and this roof has seen way better days. The squirrels find their way in every winter, and cause a frackass, running in the crawl spaces above the living room and kitchen, and occasionally, we have heard them between walls.
Abeg.
Baba Achieng set traps. Drowned a few in the Detroit River, then decided, we need not buy any more meat with the high population of members in our immediate vicinity.
Abeg.
Eyes rolled but he persisted, arguing that we needn't be pretentious about slaughtering them, yet we do the same to all the other animals we eat.
Sure enough, He spent almost a whole afternoon skinning that unlucky muther and the darn ass thing was plopped into a bowl, my bowl, and it was suggested that I was to continue.
"Here's a recipe," he passed his phone to me.
Ok.
Trust, it was from louisiana, where a few weeks prior, when I was in New Orleans, somebody driving by called at us asking us whether we knew the guy who sells possum. Lawd.
I just doused the squirrel in vinegar.
(To disinfect it)
Plenty of sea salt.
(To disinfect it further)
And Baba sprinkled Cayenne.
Two days of marinating in the fridge, I volunteered to throw it in the oven, before it went bad.
Clobbered off its tail and head.
I dont know why those were still attached to this day.
Flung open the oven door, and threw that carcass on a baking sheet.

Maybe 2 hours later,
After I was sure that it was falling off the bone,
And all vermin germsies gone,
Pulled it out,
Chopped off some meat and munched.

Aisay, It wasnt all that good, but more likely coz of the excessive vinegaration than the squirell's own doing.
I couldn't dig in good coz it was all just yucky thinking of squirrel...

The internet said squirrel meat is pretty tasty when i checked.
Tasted more like liver. Liver isn't bad, to me, but I wasn't going to kill no squirrel for such a lean carcass that tasted like liver.

Baba got cold feet too.

Ate some. Threw out most of the leftovers.

We agreed we will wait till summer, bbq season, when so much meat is on the grill, across the street at his mums, and maybe throw one in at the end, and see what everyone thinks.

There too many of them here anyway.

"no natural predators" baba says, "reducing their population (by any means necessary) is..." as lion in Tinga Tinga tales says, "nature's way"

Dear Lupita

With a little over $1000 mostly gifted, host families I either searched out on couchsurfing, facebook, or was connected to by friends, I took a month long journey down south, hoping that I would return surefooted about my next career move.

I was with my one and a half-year old baby, Achieng, and we bused down sometimes 20hours straight city to city, firstly to Chicago, then to Dallas, Houston, and NEW ORLEANS.

Among so many other things, I was done with Detroit winter, the crippling and xenophobic nature of US immigration processes, post-undergrad stress disorder, stay at home mother stress disorder and miss my mum in Kenya stress disorder. Because my student visa was expired, I couldn't go back to Nairobi, but I still had to get away.

I missed the brunt of Michigan Wintergeddon, feasted on sunshine, the warmth and love of strangers-turned friends, and the vibrance of New Orleans living.
I told people all the way down south, you know what, I want to be Oprah. Why you here? Trying to figure out how I'mma be the next Oprah Winfrey.
I want to make a living talking to people about everything. About life. About Pain. About Pleasures. Politricks. Transcendence....

I want to be Maya Angelou. Why you here? Trying to figure out how I'mma be the next Maya Angelou.
I want to be Tracy Chapman.
I want to be Nina Simone.
I want to be Thandiswa Mazwai.
I want to be Simphiwe Dana.
I want to be India Arie.
I want to be Bill Maher.
I want to be Sauti Sol and Just a Band.
I want to be Wangari Maathai.
I want to be Steve Biko.
I want to be Boniface Mwangi.
I want to be Benazir Bhutto.

I want to be human.

I want to dabble in the beautiful things in life. Music. Color. Fiery Activism. Love. Magic.

I digress.
I wasn't fixin to write that whole list, but hey.
It is painfully difficult and paralyzing.

Folks who live up north all their lives are out of their mind. I know that for sure though.

I watched your speech, at the Massachusetts Conference for Women, this morning.

I surrender.

I am tired of living in aspiration.

I am not "giving up", or shutting down my desires.

I have written them, shouted them, worried them, wondered them, cried them, shared them, prayed them, and now I am throwing them in the wind.

Maybe I am where I need to be right now.

Maybe the timeline in my imagination is wrong.

Maybe, I already am all of those things, those people, those aspirations.

Maybe, I am ok.

Maybe, I need to be present in now.

Maybe, the magic is here now.

Here with all these uncertainties.

Here on this page.

Here in my hands.

Here on the land we farm.

Here among our friends.

Here in Detroit.

Maybe because of this deathly cold even.

I wanted to give you a hug.
Listening to you.

I thank you.

I hope we will get to meet and vibe someday.
Some place simple and homely,
Maybe even here in our lil ol ruggedy farmhouse.

I will be sure to get it cleaned up first though.



See LUPITA SPEECH here: https://youtu.be/_LKpTHa2VoU