The role of indigenous food in celebrating heroes and ancestral wisdom
In addition to a national flag and a national anthem, almost all countries have heroes and founding ancestors who are celebrated religiously as part of rooting current generations to their source and sense of identity. Indigenous food may not be mentioned in the same breath as flags and national anthems, but indigenous food baskets have always been an integral part of the way people celebrate their heroes and their past. In Zimbabwe, every August, the demand for finger millet, pearl millet, sorghum, legumes, goats and sheep always increases thanks to the Heroes Holidays. Over the past few years many African rural and urban households have started riding on heroes’ holidays to remember and celebrate their family heroes through feasts characterized by indigenous staples.
Connecting young people with ancestral wisdom and globalizing traditional medicine
Using territorial markets as main sources of food with cultural significance, heroes’ holidays have become powerful avenues for reconnecting young urban people with the roots of their ancestors. This has also become a way of reviving traditional medical practice and indigenous knowledge systems that have been threatened by formal education systems and modernization for decades. If China can globalize Chinese medicine, what prevents African countries from also globalizing their abundant traditional medicine? Indigenous medicinal plants that only grow during the rainfall season are now beginning to be domesticated and planted throughout the year in cities and irrigation systems. Preserving medicinal trees and sacred forests that way is set to increase resilience and enable local communities redefine sustainable development. In keeping with agroecology and African values like Ubuntu, food and medicine are part of every community. By separating food from medicine, industrial agriculture has created more problems than solutions. Thankfully some African communities are determined to reverse this challenge through embracing agroecology which is seeing them reviving local forests, rivers, wild animals, indigenous fruits and indigenous vegetables.
Who would have thought that it is possible to see nurseries of indigenous fruit trees in urban orchards that have traditionally been brainwashed to plant foreign flowers and trees like Jacaranda and Eucalyptus? Celebrating departed ancestors within cities is seeing some urban households creating shrines made from indigenous trees, mimicking rural settings. In addition to Africanizing their homesteads through planting indigenous trees, several urban people are bridging the knowledge gap by educating their children about the names and uses of diverse indigenous species. In a silent effort to replace exotic trees and exotic vegetables with indigenous species, many urban households are relying on territorial markets as major sources of indigenous fruits, seeds and seedlings. Besides reviving traditional practices, by growing indigenous plants in urban homesteads, most of which have plenty water, people are aggressively taking health, food and nutrition security matters into their own hands. However, urban planners are yet to connect with this fertile vision.
Cultivating a sense of place
Inspired by important national rituals like Heroes’ holidays, Africans, both in the diaspora and home, have started using social media to rediscover the powerful intangible value of having a sense of place and being rooted in a particular physical community from which your ancestors originated. No matter, how sophisticated, social media and digital technology may never provide the satisfaction and self-worth that comes from being rooted to one’s source. People need something that feels more rooted in their physical community. That is why connecting young people’s voices with their ancestral voices and wisdom is gaining more attention thanks to agroecology and several indigenous practices that had been marginalized by colonialism and various forms of slavery.
The significance of appreciating the meaning of a resilient food system
Building resilient economies requires policy makers who understand the deep significance of a sustainable food system. Indigenous food is not just food but a vehicle for spiritual healing that also enables people to reflect on their histories and make sense of universal needs that are much deeper than food as just a source of nutrition. The collective well-being provided by indigenous food in territorial markets and rural communities is opening more reliable pathways for addressing challenges brought by modernization such as physical and mental health which cannot be treated in modern institutions like hospitals.
By broadening food baskets, territorial markets and heroes’ celebrations provide space for marginalized human perspectives and local wisdom which the world needs for achieving sustainable development. The seasonal nature of diverse food commodities found in African communities and territorial markets empowers policy makers to align their decision-making processes with ecological and seasonal rhythms. For instance, when indigenous fruits are in season, they should influence how local authorities decide about allocating trading space to market traders. This means local authorities like municipalities, rural district councils or counts have to start aligning their governance structures with the rhythms of nature, rather than industrial time.
To be truly African in ways that express wishes and norms of the departed heroes, parliamentary procedures in each African country should be guided by seasonal cycles, ecological indicators, and intergenerational wisdom. This should be possible because many African countries have reached to traditional wisdom by making traditional leaders like Chiefs part of the Senate. Instead of using these structures for partisan political purposes, African decision makers can benefit from indigenous and ecological wisdom held by Chiefs and other traditional leaders. More importantly, if the essence of Ubuntu is fully embraced by policy makers, traditional leaders should lead heroes’ celebrations and rituals because they are the custodians and stewards of culture, tradition, forests, animals, ancestral voices and the environment. That is how the governance of food and natural resources can begin to shift from an extractive mindset to a caretaking mindset whose best practices should be carefully handed over to future generations. Heroes’ celebrations, backed by what happens in African territorial markets and rural communities indicate there is something to be said about the power of going back to the roots and staying connected with the past in navigating the present and future.
Charles@knowledgetransafrica.com / charles@emkambo.co.zw /
Website: www.emkambo.co.zw / www.knowledgetransafrica.com
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