Code Noir_Foam
Keti Koti / African Rice Legacy
This is how it happened
On the day they took us away
walking single file along a dirt road
The sun was red that day
Before we were dragged from our land
I had a vision and said to my sister
‘Braid my hair before the harvest’
Three moons ago we planted rice
And we took bets on who would spread the seeds the farthest
When you eat
and taste the sweet
And bitter of our history
I want you to remember me
And understand that I did this to set each of us free
As my sister raked her fingers through my hair
Preparing my scalp like soil before the seed
I heard a whisper
I felt fire in my belly and my bones shivered
I was in the mouth of the ocean
Her waves like widening lips towering over my head
Lapping up everything in her path with a 1000 tongues
She swallowed us and I knew no up or down
Just a swirling sensation and a sinking sound
My jaw clenched and I tasted my own blood
Back in our living room I grabbed my sisters wrists above my head
“put rice seeds in with the last braid”
She looked me in the eye and didn’t question what I said.
“When you eat
And taste the sweet
And bitter of our history
I want you to remember me”
How African rice made it to the Americas
Is the story of black resistance to slave trade voyages
Traditionally it was the women who were the farmers
Tending the land in consult with the elements
These skills fed the families in their villages
Matu Alisi, Plaka Aleisi, Black rice, forest rice,
African rice is diverse and robust
Having been cultivated over generations
Resilience is a must
For climates may change
And soils may shift
But moving with nature is an indigenous gift
With agricultural intuition it matters less where the seed is planted
And more who has the skill to tend to it
From braiding down hair that defies gravity
To growing crops with the same natural authority
West African women were experts in cultivating their own autonomy
For to be resilient is to return season after season with adapted strategy
These minds traveled across the Atlantic on slave ships
The bodies that made it over came equipped
With the grit required to not only arrive
But to revolutionise the way crops grew in a World that they said was New
And who knew that the first to escape would survive by their old ways and become the Maroons?
And of course at first they struggled with food
Until a woman farmer with promising braids showed up to aid
In mediating between the land and the seed
To meet the community’s need and nourish a future only intuition could see
When you eat
and taste the sweet
And bitter of our history
I want you to come on a voyage with me
Two taps on the edge of the pot
Before setting the wooden spoon down
Adding water bit by bit until the onions are brown
Listening for a sizzling sound as aromatics swirl into your nostrils
announcing their flavours one by one
like a premonition of an imminent dance on your tongue
The tangling tastes gather fragments of our history
In the family of ingredients harm simmers into harmony
Salt washes in from the sea
leaving the land its seasoning
Imagining the story of each precious commodity that journeyed to your plate
We give thanks for the miracle of rice as homegrown reparations
Surely, that’s fate.
“The tangling tastes gather fragments of our history,
In the family of ingredients harm simmers into harmony”
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