Miseducation: First things First

If I had any chance of undoing bad eating habits, i had to replace them with good habits from the past. I had to think more about how i grew up...
Even though i grew up in a very busy and congested city,we had a garden. Nigeria was colonised by the British and as colonisation goes, you learn that certain things you do are "babaric" and must change. Living in the city and growing food in your property was looked down upon but my father who was highly educated and way ahead of his time assured me that " we hail from a family of farmers... you can never take the farming instinct away frompeople like us". He grew everything at the back of our modest house": corn, plantains, bananas, mangoes, papaya, chilli and every time of green leaf vegetable you can think of. He started it initially alone but i looked over his shoulders. As he was a busy working man, gardening time seemed to be the only time i could get his undivided attention. In fact he talked to me about some of his challenges too. As a result on Saturday or Sunday morning when i go into our garden, I tend to take only one of my daughters because it gives us alone time to talk. When you have one of your kids alone in conversation, one tends to see more of their personality.

I learned a lot about my tribe, it's past struggles, his thoughts about it's future etc.
I come from a very small lakeside villiage in Eastern Nigeria: Oguta. We are extremely hardworking, driven and humble as a tribe. Family is HUGE for us in a way that many may not even understand. We believe that it it is the responsibility of THE success ful member of the family to ensure the success of the others:There is no word for cousin, sister/brother in law in my language. Everyone is simply either your brother, sister mother or father. This can get alittle confusing for outsiders so you can consider yourself fully acquainted with a family when you can easily identify the "blood mother, father brother, sister and yes cousins. I know many who didn't even realise that their "uncle" was rtealy their dad's cousin: I am even guilty of this!I think the reason might be two fold. Labelling was seen to be isolating, and alienation could put one at risk of marying a relative no matter how extended.

Although my village clan was small in population, it was big on land.We lived in smaller spaces but our farms were big. We took farming seriously solely because we grew what we ate. Traditionally my people are tall with slim builds. They panick if they feel sluggish during the day; For them it means illness. They eat a hearthy cassava and deep green vegetable soup with about 1lb of fish in the morning. They leave for the farm, markets, or even office work. Lunch at noon is not common instead a lot of snacking on fruits occurs until about 5pm when families converge to cook for dinner...

In my next blog, I'll tell you how dinner goes. Meanwhile I'll be posting information on building a raised bed.

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