A Song For Kilishi Written by Okello Oculi A trip from Abuja to his flat in the Westlands section of Nairobi was incomplete without packages of black-eyed white beans, egusi and kilishi. They were a vital part of Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem’s multi-cultural world. They were agricultural relatives which affirmed his Nigerian roots. Each time he ate in a restaurant’, he alarmed Kenyans with the huge amount of hot pepper he claimed made Nigerians loud talkers. He was recalled for me on 30th May, 2013 when told that palm wine was not served by Hilton Hotel in Abuja; but kilishi was available. A visitor was intrigued by that snack of red meat – most probably beef/donkey/camel – ‘cooked’ by raw sunrays. A rebuke that my patronising what is bound to deflate the reputation of Abuja Hilton as an “international hotel” was followed by a story mocking an African country which discovered the dignity of a rare local fruit after Queen Elizabeth asked for an indigenous fruit. It is not yet Uhuru for incomes for KILISHI. The Hilton staff had been non-religiously alarmed by my request for palm wine. He was less convulsive than a secretary in Kofi Annan’s office in Nairobi whose mission is to promote a “green revolution” in Africa. I had asked for “chaanga”, a drink made from maize or millet and popular with wananchi ortalakawa. Asking for tea or coffee was considered “civilized” in her eyes and appropriate for haloed offices associated with Kofi Annan’s reputation. That Annan’s revolution was anchored on grime and dirt in Africa’s soils was as irrelevant as protein nutrients in KILISHI. In 1971 we interviewed Egyptian officials and intellectuals in Cairo who had worked closely with Gamal Abdel Nasser, the charismatic leader who had died from heart attack. I noted a routine of welcome with a thick drink of coffee served in a small white porcelain cup. Its potency ensured alertness and no second helping. In my geography of crops, Egypt did not grow arabica or robusta coffee. Uganda grew both primarily for export. ‘’English Tea’’ and lager beer were what separated elites from ‘’people of the bush’’ or banana groves. A scheme to reverse this alienation from products of our equatorial soils was based on hiring dandy university students to drink coffee on open bazaars. Another thing I noted along Cairo’s streets was men playing draughts and chess while eating potato chips used to scoop out a paste of raw sesame/simsim. Uganda also grew sesame/simsim but boarding school indoctrination planted habits of consuming imported jam and marmalade spread on slices of bread made from wheat; not the cassava or bananas we grew. Colonial rulers eat our wits; empty pockets of farmers. No poet crafted songs for sesame. Americans later showed me that the groundnuts we grew, roasted and pounded to make soups, could be produced on a grand scale; and sold in supermarkets. Their imagination gave ‘’peanut butter’ dignity through farmers’ incomes The Americans are not very generous with teaching others some agricultural nationalism. They invented a way of ensuring a vast market for breeders of turkey birds by linking their meat to a national holiday. Turkey’s meat is stubbornly bland but the imagination of America’s women incited the trick of yanking out dead birds’ bowels and refilling it with a vigorous competition of herbs and spices to yield tolerable taste. The nearest trick to this American device for ensuring good income for turkey growers is the mad Spanish annual ritual of teams hurling ripe oranges or tomatoes at each other as they roam across towns to cheering crowds. Municipal authorities buy these oranges and tomatoes from local farmers – farmers with cheeky votes. In official Africa agriculture is an orphan with one eye and one leg. The one eye is focused on dollars from exported produce. The one leg remains rooted on cutting soil to grow cotton, tea, cocoa, palm fruit, sisal, pyrethrum, groundnuts, coffee, gum Arabic and maize for export. Items historically consumed by the people, such as: egusi, okro, bitter leaf, didinya, breadfruit, local berries, sweet bananas, matoke and plantain, tamarind seed (tsamia), etc., remain ignored by official budget allocations for agriculture. They are absent from election speeches by politicians. In fairness to Burkina Faso, the country produces a drink from tsamia. It competes with the local genius that produces zobo in Nigeria. In November 2012, a prize for creativity was awarded to a young Senegalese woman who discovered a local fruit for making a competitor with Coca Cola. But they remain voices crying in poverty and lack of agricultural industrial production. Nigeria’s media workers and elites are accused of owning tastes for whisky, brandy, champagne, vodka – Japanese Saki is not yet on the menu. ‘’Ten-course meals’’ with eaters being “waited on’’ by men in white tunics are said to be favoured by media elite in Lagos and Abuja climes. No complaints abound about absence of zobo, kunun zaki, mushroom, groundnut-butter-eaten-with-eggplant, plantain-wine, KILISHI, coconut-water or coconut-rice. The message is clear. With media intellectuals alienated from the horizon of local foods, it is little wonder that agriculture remains intellectually and politically malnourished and industrially stunted. Decades of military rule across Africa blocked political tongues of women who sell vegetables, gari, tomatoes, onions, and smoked fish or ‘’fine boy’’ under the lack of politicians seeking votes. They remained invisible. Bayero University officials, for example, drew budgets under shadows of groundnut pyramids but would not give Nigeria professors of industrial groundnut sciences. The University of Ibadan sat next to “Cocoa House’’ but would not stoop from teaching Latin to breeding professors of industrial Cocoa Sciences. Officialdom of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka saw palm trees yielding fruits and oils which, for decades, flowed to Europe’s industries but would not produce professors of industrial palm product sciences. No academic road had led to KILISHI. Honorary Degrees of Groundnut Oil, Cocoa Seed, and Palm Kernel offered by these universities would almost certainly be rejected unless President Barack Obama signals a wish for one.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 19:03:11 +0000
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