Seeds And Their People - EP 16: Keeping Indigenous Seeds in Kenya with Akoth Ambugo

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

Akoth Ambugo spends part of her year back home in her family's rural villages in Kenya and part of her year in the United States as a nurse and gardener. While in the US, she is learning to keep seeds, grow nutritious food, and feed the soil.  She hopes to revive traditional indigenous crop varieties and farming practices that are more in tune with the land and the health of the people.  She recently wrote: "This thing that we do is a return. A return to a deep and sacred knowing of wild things. That we all begin and return as seeds. This land, these hands, and these hearts all feel like a sacred alignment, weaving to-gather together. Here there is no sense of if, just is. Here I breathe in hope and beauty. This is what the seeds teach me, learning the path of patience and humility. Of fire and water in balance. Of the sweetness of my sweat and the delight of feeling my body toil for sanctuary. I eat with more awareness and gratitude. Because of the seed. The revolution has always been here and it is in the seed." SEED STORIES TOLD IN THIS EPISODE: Apoth/Ewedu/Molokhia/Jute Bo/Kunde/Field Pea/Cowpea Chinsaga/Dek/Spider Plant Sisal Besobela/Ethiopian Holy Basil Huacatay/Peruvian Black Mint Spilanthes/Toothache Plant Pili Pili/Apilo Moringa Bambara Groundnuts MORE INFO FROM THIS EPISODE: Newark Adopt-a-Lot Masanobu Fukuoka Natural Farm, Japan Tagetes minuta as a natural dye in Kenya The Kenya Cereals Enhancement Programme - Climate Resilient Agricultural Livelihoods - Cowpea Extension Manual Seed Savers Network, Kenya ABOUT: Seeds And Their People is a radio show where we feature seed stories told by the people who truly love them. Hosted by Owen Taylor of Truelove Seeds and Chris Bolden-Newsome of Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden. trueloveseeds.com/blogs/satpradio   FIND OWEN HERE: Truelove Seeds Tumblr  |  Instagram  |  Twitter   FIND CHRIS HERE: Sankofa Community Farm at Bartram’s Garden   THANKS TO: Akoth Ambugo Cecilia Sweet-Coll Ruth Kaaserer

I'm an alien everywhere I go, you know, I'm an alien in America. I'm an alien back home because I left at such a tender age. My interests are so varied from the interests of my peers, especially at home, especially in the village. In the village, nobody wants the village life. They've lived in it. They know it so well, and I'm fascinated by it. So they don't understand. So, yeah, I'm a village alien.

It's just whacking at normal. Welcome back to Seeds and their people. I'm Chris Bolden Newsom, farmer and co-director of Sankofa Farm at Bartram's Garden in sunny southwest Philadelphia. And I'm Owen Taylor, seed keeper and farmer at True Love Seeds. We are a seed company offering cultural. truly important seeds grown by farmers committed to cultural preservation, food sovereignty, and sustainable agriculture. This podcast is supported by True Love Seeds and now also you. Thank you so much to our newest Patreon members, Kristen, Alex, Will, and Jennifer.

If you'd like to support our storytelling and seedkeeping, you can do so at patreon.com slash true love seeds. This episode features Akothumbugo, a current truble, a current true love seeds apprentice and longtime nurse, who lives in Newark, New Jersey, and who also spends parts of the year living back home in Kenya. Akoth first visited our farm a couple years ago with her friends and true love seeds apprentices Zanab and Kai. They all garden together at Green Oasis Village in Newark, where they practiced growing food and medicine in their community garden. This year Akoth began an official apprenticeship with us, and she brings a particular focus on indigenous seeds from Kenya on our farm.

So as usual, I'd love to hear what makes this episode special to you and to our listeners. Well, first off, of course, O'Carth is a beautiful soul. I don't know what her name means. We've been talking about the meaning of names today, but it must mean beautiful soul. And the way she presents, particularly her cultural seeds and the need to reestablish and to re-root her people in their traditional foods is something of course that I can relate with holy. I think the beautiful sort of symbolism of her growing these crops so far away from home

in order to learn more from them and in order to reestablish them in Kenya as a part of the common palate is really powerful diasporic work, you know, it's the work that certainly that I feel that I'm engaged in as an African-American cultural worker. And so I see lots of similarities and beautiful connections between what she's doing. And she is from East Africa. My ancestors are from West Africa. But it's just really touching to see that the stories and the struggles and the joys are so similar and so connected. I remember reading recently, that Kenya, I don't know how long ago this article came out, and I forget where it's from,

but in Kenya, one of the struggles is to find some of these traditional crops again because of colonization and because of really centuries of successive waves of westernization on every level, spiritual, economic, and cultural. The people of Kenya, many of the people of Kenya, particularly in urban situations, have lost connection with their traditional foods. And so while folks, of course, still eat very African in terms of the recipes and preparations, when one might have eaten the leaves of Black IP as you're green, now they're eating kale and collard greens. And those are Western greens, you know. And, of course, you know, in the situation of African Americans here in North America, you know, we have a similar situation. We've grown up with kale and collard greens and turnip greens and those sorts of things.

But it's just very powerful to see, you know, her reaching back and doing this for the posterity of her people. So for me, that's beautiful work. And that's why I call her a beautiful soul. So I'm going to transport you now to a cool, cloudy fall morning. a couple weeks ago at our True Love Seeds Farm in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. Okay, I'm really excited to welcome a cough to the podcast. Thank you for being here. You're welcome.

It's nice to get here early and start off the day this way. Yeah, I agree. Cold. I know it's late. The last day of September is cloudy. It's cold. It's early. But we're going to make this work. Yes.

are so where do we choose to stand right now what do you see okay in front of us we actually have a cleared row with cover crops ready for the end of the season and right ahead of us we have several bean varieties actually right and then right behind us we also have a foshoko the beautiful Nigerian Ameranth it's in the Amaranth family and then a wedu or what we call a path in Kenya so we are right in the middle of the plants it's a beautiful place to be so tell us tell the listeners who are you and and what what brings you here to our farm okay that's a really difficult question because I be like a move is evolving. It's a question I ask myself as well, like, who am I? And, oh, and that's a tough

one. Well, I'm going to ask this way. Where are you from? And how would you describe yourself in this moment of your evolution? Okay, so born and raised in Kenya, in a small rural town called Migori, which is not as rural as my ancestral village, which is even more rural. So even though I call myself a villager, there are deeper villages that I haven't even explored. And I came to the US when I was 15 years old, but I left Kenya when I was 12 years old by way of London. And then I was in the US. And my journey in the US started out in the Midwest in St. Louis. And then Illinois and then Boston and Philadelphia and now I am in Newark, New Jersey. And what brought all of this together, like the interest in gardening, I grew up in a farming family and

I did not like it. Up to now, I still don't like it. The way they do it, you know, because it's so labor intensive and then they grow foods that I don't want to play with all the time you know so it's mostly cash crops or it's just corn you know and then maybe a little kitchen gardens here and there so the kitchen gardens always got me excited and then my dad love planting fruit trees you know so seeing those mature and then you eat the fruit it's different you know so that evolved in that way but my own personal journey into farming almost began as a, how can I put it? I was living with a friend, or rather we were in Boston.

In college, I had a professor who used, he was the only black professor in the college we went to, and he was vegan. So he would always talk to me about all the African students that came in and that we were all slim and happy and healthy, whatever that meant. And then by the end of our four years, we had blown out, we have adopted the American diet. so he was always on my case and I really didn't like him for that I loved him as a person he would have me watch videos about food in America how animals are raised how crops are raised it didn't connect though so fast forward post college I'm here with a friend in Boston and she's having physical challenges that has us questioning everything that

we know about food and then tracing it back also to how we've been eating back home and then one step further to the food systems at home and how even those ones have been modified from the indigenous ways and now starting to explore okay how do we get clean food because it's a lot of money to shop at health food stores so then grow it you know so my journey began on YouTube just learning how to grow foods and attempting in little garden lot so yes I came from a gardening community but I didn't do it at home so I am learning I'm watching YouTube and literally that's how the journey began and every year I'm just learning more and getting better and better and better and then in Newark now I prayed to be Newark but

they had adopted a lot so I was able to be called into a space to help kind of steward it and turn it into a garden that also it was a big experience because that was like now the first somewhat sizable space of land that you would say I'm in control over but because there was nobody asking me any questions I had free reign to just experiment and I wasted a lot of seeds I wasted a lot of seeds because I would just throw seeds on you know I think at the time I was listening to the Japanese natural farmer Fukuoka and you know just the idea of spray them and they would grow and I would throw the seeds because I was getting them for free too and they didn't grow and then I met our friend Zaynab who had all

began their journey in seed keeping and I think they were really trying to get me to understand these things but it like when you're not in a space it's just not there you know at the same time interacting with my friends at rabbit hole farm and then they're like a cot why are you so focused on growing vegetables and stuff the weeds will feed you know so I'm also learning about wild and the essence of growing food. So everything is shifting in my brain. Why are we so focused on production

and what are the different ways that we can feed people? So it's a lot. But I hope that brings you to where I am now. So where I am now, I would say I'm gathering skills that I think are valuable to take me onto my next journey. And seed keeping is one of them. And growing food is one of them. So yes, I love the weeds, but I also want to grow food that the majority of the people will eat.

And where does your journey take you in the world? The journey takes me to rural spaces and specifically my rural African home, which it could be my mother's village or my father's village, because a lot of our people grow, everybody grows corn, everybody grows beans, but we are losing our ancient grains, we are losing the native seeds and not only the seeds, but the stories behind the seeds, the ways of preparing the foods, and also the skills that the communities had because we are so dependent on this production production mode without understanding the full scope and my people don't have food

right now which this is Africa the sun is shining you know 360 days out of 365 days the weather is right yes climate change and all of its effects but my journey takes me back there and putting all of these skills together so so we can work together so we can feed ourselves. Like there are so many other issues to tackle, but I don't think you can do it on a hungry stomach. So we want to get the people fed. Awesome. I'm going to ask you more about that after we talk about some of these plants.

And some of these plants in this field are some of those indigenous vegetables from Kenya, correct? Yes, absolutely. You want me to mention a few of them. Yeah, let's visit them and talk to the plants. and learn about your relationship to them. Okay. Apoth, a wedu, molochia, corcorus, or littorius. Right now, we are here with Apoth, which some people call Egyptian spinach,

other people call in Nigeria, a wedu. But it's a crop that's found all across Africa, all across the Middle East. probably Asia, Southeast Asia. Right. I know that, you know, Kais, people grow it in the Philippines, our friend Lans, people grow it in Vietnam. So, and that's also, I think that's another beauty of actually learning, you know, because, for instance, the path that we have here, it's like what? How would you call that like nine or ten feet nine or ten foot growing this vegetable at home So it's the first vegetable we are introduced to eat as children every time my child is weaned from the milk This is the first vegetable that they would be fed you know it would be a pot with

Ugali which is the starch in most of our meals and I have never seen a path taller than my hip hips which is like what three feet and here I am and they're growing up to 10 feet so that was the first time I saw this plant grow to this level and so what am I trying to say about that I'm just amazed because we harvest them so young because we cook them yes but the potential to see it grow full season just blew my mind away you know and it gets me very excited this particular one it's the one with a spiky not spiky jagged edges right so we don't grow this specific one I have seen

this one in Kenya, in western Kenya. So I know it's a seed that we carry at home. The one that we do grow is more shiny and the leaves are a little bigger and the seed pods also not as tall as this one. So this is one vegetable that I love to eat it with this other dish called Omena. So Omena like little, little fish fishes, kind of like anchovies, but not so salty, because they're from a fresh water lake Victoria.

So we eat this and the sauce and the ugali and my dear, you have nutrition, you have deliciousness. Yeah. It's a plant I'm very happy to see, you know, and especially because

this is not the natural climate that you know you would think some of these seeds growing but just to see how much they have thrived I've also planted a path now with seeds from Kenya at my friend's backyard that I turned into a garden this season I planted them later because this is when I came back in around May so we are not going to get seeds from them but the same they've grown up to about 10 fee, you know, some of them. So just that short window in a climate that I would not associate with growing, you know, apart and seeing it flourish so much. It gives you hope because I think as an immigrant, that's some of the thing, like food is a very important thing that keeps our

connection to our culture, our lands and our peoples. So to be able to grow it yourself is amazing. Before I used to buy it in Middle East. and West African grocery stores but it was ground up and packaged so not the same it was dried

no frozen yeah frozen yeah yeah yeah these are so tall because we're seedkeepers we haven't eaten any of it I was tempted

I was definitely tempted every time we come here I'm like they're in the perfect stage to have us them. You talked about preparing it with the small fishes from the fresh water. Yes. And with the starch, can you describe a little more of the recipe, like the preparation, how you cut it, how you cook it, what are the other seasonings, and what is the starch? Oh, okay. So, because I know different people prepare it differently. So the way I saw my mother prepare it and a lot of other

women prepare it there are different ways and I'll share for you the one that I like the most you when you get their seeds and they are somehow you can cut them but I never saw my mom cut them she kept the leaves whole we don't need the seeds we just eat the leaves and should boil water bring water to a boil and not a lot so bring water to a boil and we would put some Magadi soda or baking soda I don't know the purpose of this I don't know if it was to make it draw even more

or if it was to soften it I need to find that one out but she would put a little magadis soda do you have an answer and by draw you mean make it more slimy yes make it more slimy and tell us what a poth means a path means like direct

translation it just means I'm soft a poth like I'm slimy You know, that's me saying direct translation. And this is Lua language, by the way, because in different parts of Kenya, they'll call it differently. So like Swahili, they call it Mrenda. So in Lua, we call it apothe.

And it means I'm slimy? Like, it's like the plant is talking? That's my interpretation of it, because literally a path. like we don't say it apothe but I can refer to myself right now and say I'm slimy like a path you know so and that's the name a potth and it is slimy so I'll need to find out that word for you but me that is my own interpretation of it okay my people you'll just have to take it as it is but preparation so we put the Magadi soda in the water and then with a little

salt bring it to a boil and put the vegetables in and then let it boil until the water covers it and once the water covers it you you stir it consistently and this breaks it down a little bit okay so you have it just like that and then you steal whether that's fish or meat or the little fishes there are mena how you prepare that sauce is entirely up to you but that's the savouriness. So you don't do much to make their pots extra. The soup is the one filled with spices and seasonings. And then the starchy meal is called ugali. Ugali is made from traditional grains like the traditional ugali, which in some West African countries they call

fufu, you go down to southern Africa, they call it pap. So there are different ways. for the main starch that feeds a lot of African peoples. So ours, traditionally, is made from dried cassava. So it's made into flour and millet or finger millet and sorghum, all ground together. Traditionally, where we live, we have a lot of rocks. We would go and grind them with our hands on a stone. And you're doing the motion now. I'm doing the motion, okay?

I didn't do it a lot growing up. My grandmother did it with peanuts and things like that. Can you describe the motion you're doing? The motion is like, you can tell I'm not very, okay, let me put my brain together. So my hands are made into a fist of sorts. They are right in front of me. So I'm imagining, I'm imagining holding a stone. Okay.

The stone would have a smooth flat surface at the bottom. And the stone that had the grains would be flat and large. And now you're just using this stone in a forward and backward motion. Like you're grinding the two stones against each other. Does that make sense? So that was the grains. But now we have partial mills. You just take it.

It's done. Yeah. What do you mean? we don't do it manually anymore so you collect your grains the soga millet cassava another ugali we have is made from corn or we call it maize

maize which maize has replaced a lot of those indigenous grains because number one they are smaller they take more time so corn just corn is king corn took over

but a pot is really delicious with the traditional lugali because it's also softer than the corn. So together when you eat it, you don't even need to chew it. You can just swallow it. Nigerians call it swallow. Thank you for that. You're welcome.

It's one of my favorite meals. So before we leave this patch, yes. I know you, this is one of the crops that you've adopted as part of your apprenticeship and you have been harvesting all of the seeds of it with help from some other people and you've developed a method that works for you can you describe how you've been harvesting them oh yes because well how do i describe it this is what i do because i like to get every single seed and they grow from the lower stock all the way up and there are so many of them and

they are packed closely together so I like to put my head right in the middle of the plants you want me to show you okay let me just do it I put my head right in the middle and I begin from the very edge so really I would be beginning here so I don't miss out okay from this angle the plants like the stocks are pretty steady so I'm not worried about harming them and I can see it right you can see right all the way down Owen right yeah so that is the mathematics behind this and then with this clipper I some of them are easy I kind of bend them yeah without pulling them you see like this one sometimes you can

pull too much that the you you You rip the stem. You rip the stem. But, yes, I create this space so I can see. And then I just go off and work each plant steadily all the way to the end. It's very methodical. Like that one, it's a little green, but I still take it. if it's like 99% done.

Do you approve? I approve. My people, you also have to realize I'm also learning these things because when I saw my mother harvesting them, most of the time they were already split and most of the seats had fallen off, you know? So I'm also learning when are the right times? and well I imagine that worked for her because how many seeds does one person need

and for us we're saving for hundreds and hundreds of people that is very very true that is very true but it's a science you know it's it's it's there's no too little

there's there's technique to it and I think the more you do it of course it's different when there's a camera in front of your face I'm being more methodical But yeah, I've found this to work very well Just clipping them

Wonderful My last apoth question Is I would like to walk to the other patch Okay Down the field So this other Apoth Also many people listening will know it as Malachian

The Arabic name. This one is from Cameroon. It looks like it's very not happy with the cool nights. Starting to curl up its leaves. But they're shaped differently. Yes, and some seeds are ready. Yes, and our first seed harvest is here. When you were describing the one from your home

as being shinier without the jagged edges and with shorter seed pods, I was thinking of this one. Is this one look closer? Very close. I would say this is it, it's just that I don't know if the nutrients in the soil just makes the plant more vigorous, you know, the leaves are definitely bigger, but this is that plant. This is that a path. And maybe I'm just seeing it to its full glory because of the care and the water that it's been getting. Because I know, depending on the nutrients the plant gets, it can do off or thrive. Right. When I interviewed Anan Tsar for this podcast, she was talking about the same thing. She gave us our Palestinian Malachia seeds, and she said they look totally different in our field than they do back home. Yeah. So that's another thing that I think just we are keeping seeds, but it's all interconnected.

You know, the soil, the nutrients, everything is in check, and it works together to give you really high quality. high quality seeds and plants if we were to eat them um eating by the way i like to eat them i like to eat them i do too but it's also just humbling to see how many seeds you know they produce which at home if you go to buy seeds you don't find a lot of seeds like especially for the native vegetable when you go to the market, right, in the grain section, there's always a variety of beans because we eat beans. But for the native vegetables, you'll find a very small section with little containers with their seeds

in comparison to everything else. So I think just learning that, hey, it will require patience for them to mature and get the best. bountiful harvest of seeds will be a tricky thing to convince my Kenyan people, but one that I'm determined to do. How will you convince them? I'll just have to fence that area off and put a dog there or some turkey or something. But people are respectful of each other's spaces. I think when you have a space and it's fenced off, you pretty much have control. Yeah. So you're going to introduce seed keeping with indigenous vegetables. Yes, with indigenous vegetables back home. So

in that mix, we have a few of them here. So the apoth or Egyptian spinach or the cowpe or bo, we call it bo, which is a bean. We don't eat the beans, but we eat the leaves. There's another one called Chin Saga. which we also grew and I had the pleasure of harvesting. I think today I may get to work on the seeds. So the deck is another one. And then there are a lot of vegetables that I grew up knowing about, but I didn't consume them that much because the seeds are lost.

So retracing them as well and finding, communities that still grow them and bringing them back to our tables. Have you started that process at all? Yes. What does that look like? It looks like going to the villages and sitting down with my elders and asking them a lot of questions and a lot of surprise from them because they don't understand why a young person,

who has studied, you know, very complicated things, is coming back to sit down and share and want to know these stories from the elders. Most of the time, they don't understand it, but I think the conversations are very, very important. So it doesn't start off with me saying, hey I'm doing this you know it's like no what are you already doing you know and it also means traveling into many many rural spaces which I love rural spaces because the people are humble the people are joyful and the depth of knowledge is it's beyond me you know yeah the depth of knowledge is beyond me. So paying rural people, respect.

That's what it looks like. You know, just honoring what they know and allowing them to teach me and then creating these spaces where they are doing them, yes. But now with added knowledge from these experiences to do them in a way that now will keep these seeds

going so we don't lose them what is one conversation with a village elder that really stands out for you where you learned something new oh my goodness I was home I have many friends you know I go back to my mother's village and my father's village and number one I left when I was so So they're really surprised that I still know the language and I can talk with them, you know. So this one experience was just from an elder. It was this couple, a husband and a wife. And their trade was making rope from Sysol, where we grow Sysol at home. And do you know the Sysol plant?

So you know Balaup, the ones for the Sysol. the coffee it's made from sysol and sysol is in the cactus should i call it the cactus family it has a big imagine an aloe vera leaf but bigger and more fibrous with a thorn at the very tip that's very sharp and it grows big if it's in the right space and it shoots up tall like I would say more than 20 feet. The flower? Yes. Like it has a middle stock that goes all the way up.

Does it look like asparagus? No. Because asparagus looks like bushy, right? No. When the what kind you eat, like when it's young, does it look like a young asparagus? Not at all. Think of aloe vera. Think of an aloevera plant, but bigger.

but then one, a tree stem in the middle of it, going all the way up, but just a single stem going all the way up. Just chiming in here to say that asparagus is in the eye of the beholder. Cicel is called agave Cicelana. It's scientific name, and it's actually in the asparagus family, like other agaves. so there you go back to the story so this particular couple that was their trade they harvest the cactus and then this was the I knew people make rope from cactus I just did not know how the process was and then on a tree they have this makeshift very well

engineered thing that they would use to scrape off because you have to scrape off the fiber away and what you're left with is this ropy textured single stranded fiber that then they weave to make the rope and a lot of other things so on this particular day I just went there on my random tours I don't let anybody know that I'm coming I show up and it's husband and wife they're there by these three I'm like I what are they doing by the history? So I go down and I sit with them and they just start talking to me. They didn't know who I was, but I told them who I was. And then I asked them if they knew my

grandparents. And they started telling me stories about my grandparents that none of my mother hasn't shared with me. My dad wouldn't know because they all live home young. And so they are telling me the stories of my people that I would never have known, you know. So for instance, my mother's father, he was telling me my mother's father, the home was always, their home was always open. It was the one home you could go to, no matter what, whatever they had. If it was water, you would drink that water with them. You know, if it was porridge, you would drink the Uji or porridge with them. Whatever they had, they would share with you. So he was known, the family was known as just being very accommodating. And so you start to see those things

linger, you know, in the generations that follow. But to meet elders who interacted with these people in their prime. It was so beautiful. So he would share stories about my grand, because my mother's home and my father's home, they are not so far apart. He would share stories as well about my grandfather. I'm yet to catch stories about my grandmother from my my dad's side. I never met her. Those ancestral stories for me, you know, it begins there because the seeds and their people, you know, so knowing about these people, the lives that

they lived, because things are changing so rapidly and at the same time in rural spaces they remain the same in a way. So they're changing, the people are changing, the way of doing things are changing, but there's also a lot of retained knowledge. I love to picture you just showing up. Literally, I just show up and we just begin. Like, you can't, what do you call it? You don't organize it.

You know, you just show up and you be with the people. So a lot of it just requires surrendering too. surrender and the story finds you along the way here that's powerful it is oh look yeah that's a vulture a vulture a turkey vulture okay yeah this morning i saw maybe 10 or 15 of them circling together up there yeah so they probably saw something they probably found prey Ethiopian Holy Basel Ochimum Spesier There are so many things that we don't consider food

and we don't keep seeds from at home but we use for medicine So like this is the Holy Basil from where? Ethiopian Holy Basil We at home I've literally counted just walking randomly about eight different varieties

maybe more of holy basil and other plants in the mint family. I'm going to collect them and save seeds for you because those are things that growing up, they were everywhere. But with development happening, we don't even think twice about them. But what I do remember, we use it for if you have stomach upset, you'd be sent to get a variety of the holy basil And you'd make medicine from it by pounding it, mixing it with water, and you drink it. You know, so all to say that we are losing a lot of important and vital seeds

and to see that they can be grown and also just learning about the process of their seed stages and their, journeys is really beautiful so that's the only thing I want to mention about the mint family and it's the same with um wakatae tajetes minuta this one when if you had a chicken coop and every once in a while there are these little crawling things that stay in chicken coops that are horrible because they are so tiny if their coups got infested with those I'll call them chicken fleas.

We would get these. And I don't know if we would dry them and burn it in there or use them to kind of sweep the area or lay them there because they would deter them, you know? But now, I can't remember the last time I saw this and it was just growing in the wild. Nobody cultivated. Did it not for seed?

Why is it disappeared? Land is getting developed for many different reasons. So some wild spaces are being used to cultivate cash crops. And the cash crops right now in the specific region of southwestern Kenya that I'm speaking about, my people went through a period of growing. we always grow corn, but then we went through a period of growing tobacco for the British tobacco company. We went through a period of growing sugar cane. So large parcels of land were all turned into monoculture systems. So we lost a lot of these plants. Right. So you don't

just lose the traditional vegetables in that process of monoculturing. You lose the traditional wild plants yeah and the animals in the process yeah what do you call this plant do you know no I don't know if someone said to go get this for the chicken cup what they say I don't know I'm not lying but I saw it and I smelt it and it is it is that you know so now I know you know like now I know I know what to ask. This is a Peruvian plant but I had years ago seen articles about it being used and I don't remember which part of Africa at this point because it's been so many years as a dye plant. Yes I remember you shared that article with me. It was Kenya I think. Oh was it? Yeah.

Awesome. And I know Zainab just tried to use it as a dye plant and it was awesome. The bright yellow, yellowish green. Yeah. It's beautiful. It has tips that almost look golden-roddy, but not nearly as yellow. Golden-roddy, yes. They're a little more pale. They're a little more pale, yeah.

But like the more they are, you know, because they have the yellow flowers. So you get that at the very tip. So I can see where you would get the nice dye. Spelanthes, toothache plant, Achmela Oleraceae, and other Akmela and Spilanti's species. There's another plant you pointed out to me that I didn't realize you used medicinally in Kenya until this morning. Do you want to talk about that one? Which one was I... The toothache plant.

Yes. So the toothache plant, we... Policantis? Polantis? Oh, we call it Spilanthes. It's a genus, yeah. This plant is very, very powerful. At whom they grow,

so they're very small. The ones here, I'm sure, there are so many varieties, but everybody knows it as literally just the toothache plant, but in my language, we would say, yeah, the lack, which is medicine, for the teeth. So if you had a toothache, they would just go, look for it and you chew it.

And that was the end of the process. I don't know anything else besides that. It's again one of those things I used to see a lot growing up, but now I don't see it so much. Yeah. In the wild. So this is two types growing together actually. One we got from our friends from Burma, the Karen farmers. And that's the one you're eating now with the smaller center with these ray florets, almost like a sunflower. And then this one here, which is from Brazil, which is the more commonly grown one in the U.S. for medicine, has a much larger center with no ray florets, just looks like a cone. And this one has a bull's eye with maroon and yellow, but a lot of people grow just the yellow one. And you're saying yours that grow wild in Kenya are even smaller than the

ones from Burma they're much smaller very very small and I've never seen them grow like these some of these are a foot and a half maybe even two foot right they are lower to the ground again that could just be because the soil here is prepared for them but it's one of those that everybody knows pretty much you have a toothache you have to go scouting around because nobody's planting it. Yes. I looked it up when I was trying to identify the species of this one. You know, and I don't know that it's from Burma,

but the people from Burma that we know found it to be the closest that they could find to their native one. And so when I was trying to identify it, there were dozens and dozens of species of Spylanthes. So it seems like it's all over the place and has so many ways that it looks, but they're generally mouth-numbing. mouth numbing so pretty much across the board you're finding out that it is for that

purpose that's what I've heard from the people who use it in different parts of the world I don't know if there's some that are less mouth numbing this one is supposedly less mouth numbing because they grow it not for the medicine but for the leaf they eat the leaf both raw but mostly sauteed I understand the Brazilian ones or the Burmese one. The one that's closest to the Burmese one. They'll eat the leaves of the Brazilian ones too before they found this one. So they approximate with the Brazilian one and then they're trying to get closer and closer to their native Spylanthes. That's amazing. That's really amazing. For me, that's what fascinates me too, is how the variety, you know,

and I'm eating the leaf too because once you tell me I can eat it, I will eat it. But the variety of ways that different people from different places use these plants just fascinate me. Yeah, and one thing, the first time I saw someone eating bean leaves was a man from Kenya, for example. Like we think of beans often as just the seeds or the pods. And actually, I've met people from Burma who also eat the leaves, but it's a relatively new idea to me. Yes. I'm wondering if we could go go see your bow. That would be great. Let's go.

Bo. Field P. Cow P. Vigna. Vigna. Ungwikulata. So, I have a story about this one because these seeds was given to me by my friend Regina. Regina is from Kenya

and she is from the Kiseland, which is they call it the Kisi Islands. And that region, They are known for growing and eating these traditional foods than many other societies in Kenya. So I asked her about these seeds. I brought some from Kenya, but then she also gave me some. She's had hers for 10 years.

She's been keeping seeds without knowing that she was a seed keeper. for 10 years. And then I got this from the market. I got them from the market in Kenya, in western Kenya, a town called Busia at the cereals market. Serials, grains, beans, at the cereals market. And these ones, we eat the beans for them when they are still very young, and tender. So like if you come closer you mean the leaves if you bring this the camera to the leaf

you feel that that's a little mature and then I don't know if you can tell the difference there is a difference in the audio the young ones are high pitched but

they are you know they are really really Nice. So again, for me, this is my first time. You could say this is my first time growing them for seeds because I was just used to eating them. And we would start at this stage, we would start harvesting them for food. Yeah. And this is our second planting because we harvested them really early. They were an early seed crop and we had the idea of just replanting them in the same spot to see if we could get a second one. And it's looking. Like it might happen for some of them. For some of them, and this is pretty far long, you know. It's far long in its seed development. You can tell that all the pods are in and developing nice and thickly. One question, Regina, right? Where does Regina live?

Regina lives in Princeton. And she has a little community plot. New Jersey. New Jersey. Yes. And pretty much a lot of Kenyans in America will grow this because it's abundant, it's quick to grow, and disease, you know, not a lot of pests like beans. It's true because it's a cow pee or a what we call a southern pea or a field pea. Vigna unguiculata is the Latin name.

And while we get a lot of bean pests on the American species, Phaziolis, Bulgaris. in particular, which I know is also eaten, at least the man I met Joseph Mbura, was growing that for the leaf too. This one really rarely is eaten by insects or getting diseases. It's an African species. And then that's another thing that I'm learning Owen. Like you see, there are about three or four different species that I would, I call the same thing and I would eat all of their leaves. I know of white ones. These ones are red and even a black one. And we all eat the leaves and we call all of them bo. How do you decide which color to plant? It doesn't matter. I have fallen in love with the red ones because the leaves are bigger, okay? So I don't have to spend a lot

of time harvesting they grow faster and then yeah I guess I have to grow all of them side by side to really compare yeah but I like the red ones they're proliferous so if you see them in the market the seed or even the leaf there won't be a differentiation between the varieties in the taste no or in the name no awesome so you This doing seedkeeping allows you to go a step deeper, actually, because now it's important for me to know, because maybe I had this generic name, but they're more specific. Yeah.

How will you find out? Ah. Science, technology, my friend, I will call Owen. But seriously, I feel as though, especially in the Bean family, they are well documented, you know. So maybe culturally. we just had a general name which it may mean this grew in a different region and so they had a different name for it but then the scientific names I can the internet after you

introduced me to this bo I looked it up tell me how you say I know I always say it wrong oh and says bo me I say bo okay after you introduced me me to it. I looked it up and found many articles about this plant in Kenya as an important indigenous food crop that's essential for the health of the people. And I saw suggestions that it be preserved during, you know, for the dry season or whenever it's not able to be grown. Can you, do you know anything about that and how it's preserved sometimes? So how we preserve them They

Hold on I'm not getting your question well You mean preserving the seeds or preserving the vegetables To be eaten in the dry seasons Preserving the vegetables Oh so different methods of preservation People blanch them And then dry them

So blanching, drying And then just reactivating it in water before eating and we do that with quite a few vegetables not just the bull with a pot for instance the Egyptian spinach they dry it into a

they dry the leaves and into a powder so I know of regions in Africa that cook it from the powder how does it look if you were to see people drying these plants? So it looks like this

once they are blanched and dried there are deeper green kind of like tea imagine green tea the leaves yes and then imagine soaking them in water and just watching them bloom put that in your mind it's there and are they dried with the sun yes often under the shade but on a hot day and Kenya where I'm from it's dry heat so things they don't need to be in direct sun to dry you can dry them under the shade.

Thank you. Let's go look at the dried beans. This one is bo. You're good at this audio thing. Let's hear from the bow. Those are all the seeds. I would say there are hundreds. there are hundreds oh yeah thousands maybe thousands thousands that's just from how

how much did we grow like a handful right just maybe maybe maybe 30 plants yes so this is beans says are generous but this one is very generous and this is the purple how would you say this color it's uh it's like a it's a red it's like a like a soft red pink almost and the pods are purple. Yes, they're beautiful. Do you ever eat the seeds of these? I've never tried it.

I've only ever eaten the leaves. So now I'm very curious to eat. Because when you go to the market, it's not sold in plenty. At least my market. There are many markets, but in my region it's not sold so much. but I know some communities eat the seeds.

Us, we mostly eat the leaves. So when you say you eat beans a lot, which ones are you talking about? I'm talking about mang beans. You know the mang beans, the green ones? Yeah, we eat mang beans, kidney beans, black beans, they are yellow beans, grey beans, so many other types of beans that we consume in our diet. Yeah, that's different from these.

ones and those ones we don't eat the leaves because the texture they are rougher yeah so this is the only one I know where we eat the leaves piri pili apilo peppers this is actually a pepper that is familiar to you not this variety this is the piripiri you call it piripiri as we call all peppers pilipili all of them we call pili-pili so or in my in luo we say apilo the ones we grow at home these are ground peppers the ones we grow at home can grow to be about even taller even my height even but it's more like a little bush and the peppers are very small maybe an inch in height in height and very tiny and very hot very hot how do you harvest and prepare them how do we

harvest and prepare them we are not crazy Kenyans and I won't speak for everybody but our family now we my brother is crazy for peppers but not everybody else so when you're ready like once a whole branch has ripened you'll find we can cut it and just hang it up down until it dries and then when we are eating whoever wants the pepper will just take one and just put it in their meal like crumble it up yeah crumble it up in their specific dish so we don't do like mass processing or drying of peppers to preserve in powder form or in dry state however I was an

entrepreneur when I was a little girl I think either seven or eight years old during the mango seasons the green or before they are ripe, like in between that space. Mangoes are very delicious and at home we eat them with pepper and salt. So it was my job to collect the peppers, dry them, grind them up together with salt and I would sell them. So that was my first business. How would you get customers? What would you say? Hey, I'm a businesswoman.

I didn't even need to convince people to buy my produce. My face is enough of an invitation. You know, I bully them into buying if somebody, if a child is walking and I see them looking at me and they're with their parent, I'd be like, just buy them the thing, you see, they want. Just, and then, yeah. And then they're just typical things that we, they're like snacks, you know, so people buy.

I like to, I want to imagine you singing some kind of song about my, mangles or something no is this pepper closer to the one that you grow it's short but is the fruit closer the fruit yes in terms it's not as thick as the other one so it's narrower it's about an inch long so I would say the ones we grow like this okay so that actually looks like half an inch pretty short and thin and red. Yes. But now all of them will be like that.

Chin Saga, Dick. Clioomi, Janandra. Well, this is one right next to you, this harvest of the... Deck. Chin Saga. Chin Saga in Kisi. But in my language, Luo, we call it deck. There's a flower here that it looks like.

It's in the family. What's the name of that flower? Clioomi. Clio. Yeah, so actually the first time I saw Clioomi was at a nursery somewhere and I almost bought it thinking it was this but there were just obvious differences. You could tell they were in the same family but not the same plant. The leaves are very tiny and we eat them. They are very better.

It's a better vegetable and different communities eat it differently. Like the Kisi community, the guy who gave you the seeds, they just. plant a lot of them and then they thin them out so they start eating them when they're really young and they just saute them and they mix them with things like calilu or amaranth to soften the bitter in my culture we ferment it so we get the leaves and then boil it down once we boil it in water We pour milk, and then we cook it down with the milk. And then every day you pour milk and warm it up with it for about a week or more. Owen, that food is so good.

The bitter is delicious. And we eat it with ugali. It makes me salivate just thinking about it. And I actually asked my mom how they used to do it. traditionally in the traditional African homes you have clay pots and you would have your different vegetables because a lot of our vegetables were fermented because we had cows as well and so you had cows you had milk so you had cream from those from the milk and all that so you'd had a pot that just had this one vegetable and you would eat it down until it was

finished and they were all in a line so you had quite the array of traditional fermented vegetables. Yeah. All fermented in cow's milk? All, when you do the fermentation, yes, with milk, cows milk. So does it get to a sour flavor? Yes, but because you're warming it up every day, it cuts, I think the bitter and the like the sugars in the plant.

and the heat and the entire process it's not sour it has a little bit but not an overwhelming sour so it ferments but you're everyday basically killing

the microorganisms the fermentation organisms kind of some percentage of them wow I'd love to try that because I've never tried a ferment like that before with with dairy and with the heating process yeah because like the way so you cook the vegetables and then you're letting it sit and every day while you're cooking your other stuff

you put it in there fire and you add a little bit of milk to it I don't know the mathematics of this but I think my ancestors are just geniuses indigenous folks are just geniuses because there are so many things because they didn't have refrigeration you know um so that was a way of preserving the food too yeah so if you have this whole array of ferments does that mean each meal you can kind of have these little dollops of different ferments or they they took turns because it takes let me say i started with this we'll eat this one this one is finished the next one will be ready the next one will be ready so they're in succession yes you just have it ready because it takes time but they're usually so good some people

will go and start eating them before they're ready ready i some people yeah but like in the process of fermenting the vegetables break down too so they they get softer um the sizes break down as well. And then they can say, a path. Apoth. Yes. So this deck or Chin Saga, we've harvested, this, you harvested, another one of the plants you adopted on the farm as an ancestral plant. And maybe we can hear from the plant a little bit. Let's hear how it sounds at this stage where all the pods are dried. And let's even maybe experiment with different ways of getting the seeds out.

Yes. What are we hearing right now? That is me removing the shell. I wouldn't really call it the shell, but I am halling. Haling. Haling or husking? I'm removing the seeds

from. the pod and I'm doing that with my hands I'm just they're all dry and very easy to come apart and they are beautiful the seeds are black and kind of like tiny tiny tiny snail shells almost very very tiny they look so beautiful Yeah, and then what can I say about DEC? I don't know what happened to your seeds because something came to attack them. Yes, DEC is, so Kliomi, that's the genus of this plant, and it's in, I actually can't remember the family name, but it's in the same order as brassicas, as cabbages. And so when all of the brassicas and cabbage relatives came out of our field,

We have a pest here called the harlequin bug, which is a shield bug, a stink bug relative. And it loves cabbages, and we've removed them all when we harvested the seeds, so it jumps onto the nearest relatives, which in our field are Dek, or Kliomi, and Meringa. They're both in the same order, believe it or not, as cabbages. Moringa as well? It is. Now, Chinzaga and Moringa are not in the same family. they're not that closely related but they're in the same order so the harlequin bugs will jump on both of

them and destroy their leaves oh wow that's amazing because it's so bit like sometimes you wonder just because of the nature of the plant that the bugs would stay away but okay they find it delicious too like we do this is a brian my kid and i go to the park a lot near our house and we have There's ornamental cliomi there. And every time we go, we both harvest the seeds into our hands and put them in little leaf pouches and bring them home and scatter them around the neighborhood. And it's just such an easy seed to process, to harvest and process.

We'll, like, slap the pods into our hands, or he likes to take one by one like you just did. And it's just such a fun seed to process. It really is. It really is. These little hollow pods full of these cute little snail shell seeds. I don't know what I can say but it's magical Well why don't we try to put this inside of this tarp In a way that protects it and keeps the seeds enclosed

And then we can hit it with these tomato steaks And see how quickly the seeds will come out Okay, we've put the seeds will come out Okay, we've put the chinsaga inside of the tarp and now what cough what are you doing um kneeling on them

to reduce the size drastically before I start hitting them so to compact them yes and you have one chinsaga pocket right on your hat it reminds me of this morning when you got here and you were emptying your sweatshirt pocket and it was full of marigold seeds that you had harvested in the

middle of the night from the street planting you can't see a seed and let it go you're a compulsory seed keeper yeah it's the way you know i tell people that right now i'm the richest i have ever been because i have so many seeds that i just collect even seeds i don't know um from different places I see them and I just collect them. Yeah. So I'm very rich right now. Yeah, it's a beautiful relationship to the plant world. Yes, it is.

And so now we are going to show you how we harvest. We have the Chin Saga inside a tarp and I'm using a wooden stick. and I'm just going to hit it like that. I just had the microphone inside of there. Let's see what's underneath. oh wow thousands of seeds of seeds oh wow this is the eggs of the harlequin bug mixed in so is this dead though yeah it won't survive if even if they hatch they won't have anything to eat it can still hatch maybe it might not because it's dry

It's dry. You can see there's lots of them here. They're arranged in these little rows. They look like little striped black and white barrels. Oh, wow. Like me, I get fascinated with things like this. Like, now I'm tempted to keep this as a souvenir. You're welcome to all of the harlequin bug eggs you want.

So now, like, even though we just matched this, there's still a lot of seeds in them. Yes. And a part of me wants to just carry them up and kind of like shake them. Mm-hmm. To help release some of the seeds. I don't know how efficient that is, but... I think it's great and then you can flip the whole thing and then people can just keep whacking it.

whacking it. Yes, it's beautiful. What's your favorite method? What we're doing? I like that you're spinning this pile of pods around. I would wrap it again with the tarp and just keep whacking until you feel like you've got the majority of the seeds without driving yourself crazy. Because there's a lot of seeds in there already.

And this is one of many harvests. Yeah, that is true. But you have, you see, you have to do it several times, right? because like let me just open a few people and show you whether or not we get seeds from them but like you see for me I've never seen the seeds harvested in this quantity some seeds more than others where you will just go and find people hanging them actually upside down inside the kitchens or outside the kitchens like different people have different methods of keeping seeds and we we hung these upside down in the basement right

you harvested the full branches of the deck of the chintzaga and you bundled them up with a string and hung them for weeks to dry in the basement yes that was fun to watch and we actually trialed a couple ways you also spent quite a lot of time harvesting pod by pot or branch by branch early in the season so that we could test their germination rates separately to see what it means to harvest a whole plant at the fairly dry stage versus individual pods or individual branches. Yes. I'm keen to see how that turns out. Yeah, we'll see we've done similar tests with other plants. And a lot of times it's very similar germination rate, but it'll be interesting. Moringa. Moringa oleferra.

Moringa. There is Moringa Olayferra and there is Moringa Stenopatela. They say Moringa Stenopatela does very well in places like the African continent. The Stenopatela has bigger leaves and the seed pod is white. The oleifera is brown. And I found out about Moringa when I was going down the rabbit hole of changing my diet and it's you know at first you're like oh you're superfood oh let's go crazy about moringa at this point i didn't even know moringa grew at home so i bought moringa seeds and decided to plant them in let me say like an acre piece of land i didn't know anything about growing food, I was just like, let's plant moringa because moringa is going to save the

world because of the nutrient dense capacity of this plant. But then it didn't do well. I don't think a single tree, only one or two of them survived because I grew them in a wetland.

Moringa does well in very, and that's different because it also grows in Asia and I've seen it grow in very lush spaces. they like heat and it's very proliferous and so i learned that moringa grows at home when i started seeing moringa trees everywhere close to lake victoria in kisumu which is the second largest city in kenya also a city by lake victoria and in mombasa which is on the coast of kenya

And in Dara Salam, Tanzania, Moringa is like the Neme tree, the Mawarubayne tree. They are everywhere. But our people don't eat them. Our people don't eat them like that because it just grows everywhere. So that was my experience with Moringa. But I love this tree because Moringa grows so easily. But, ooh, I went to visit a relative of mine in Mwanza, Tanzania. and she had this tree in her backyard and I was like in behind her house I was

like oh you have Moringa do you eat Moringa you know so I was just going in on all the benefits of Moringa and then she said do you know where I learned about Moring I was like no and she was like she learned about Moringa from my grandmother my mom's mom who visited her and would take Moringa make tea from the leaves, and everything she would cook, the vegetables, she would just harvest the leaves right there. So she learned about Moringa from my grandma, and I don't know where my grandma learned about Moringa. You get? So maybe it grew in her village. Wow, that's amazing. You know, like I learn about Moringa over here with all these food

addicts, health food addicts in America. I adopted it thinking, oh, it's so new and grand. And then here I am. My grandmother knew about it. It's a traditional medicine. Yes. Yeah. So it's just like how plants travel to. It's fascinating. So how does your relative use it? My relative doesn't even use it. They know it's there. the one who learned from your grandma I think she only used it for like a few you know following grandma's presence that people fall out of them

I know in Kenya right now you can buy the moringa powder so when people are unwell then they look for things and mostly they use it as a powder where they just make a tea I cook with it I make tea

when I cook vegetables I once I'm done I'm done cooking my veggies and I have the fresh leaves. I'll put them there last minute. By itself, the powder is very strong. It doesn't taste good. Yeah, it's a very intense flavor. I sometimes will eat the leaves just because it's so interesting.

But it is intense. It's very intense. I eat the seeds. And the seeds I found out I could eat from my neighbor. She has a shop in Newark. She's from Bukina Faso. So she told me they eat three seeds a day for reasons of just keeping the system flush. Your face is telling it all.

Yeah, the leaf, I can't figure out how to describe the flavor. It's kind of bitter, almost astringent. It tastes very healthy, though. Very grass. It's a very green, grassy. It's true. It is kind of grassy, they think. Yeah. I've eaten the seeds, too. They sell them in West African shops,

and that's actually where a lot of our seeds that we grow come from. Meringa will not make seeds here. They won't even make seeds in North Florida. They'll make seeds in South Florida. So we have to source the seeds from here or there, and a lot of times I get them from West African shops as a food or as a medicine. And they grow, usually. So I'll get you seeds from Kenya too to see if there is any difference.

And then if you go to an Indian or Asian grocery store, you'll actually find them selling the leaves because they eat the leaves. And then the seed pods, while they're still green, they call them drumsticks. They cook the drumsticks. Yes. Yes. My father-in-law in Mississippi, actually, I think it's even on. our episode where we interviewed them, finally got seed pods that were ripe in the Delta.

And their seeds had come from their trip to Ghana from a tree that had ripe seeds. And so he was able to do it in the Delta by bringing in the plants over the winter to the barn and then bringing them out again in big pots. For us, these that are here that are probably 10 feet at least, tall grew from seeds this year. They grow so fast. They grew very fast. Do you find that they struggle here because it's wetter? I'm not sure because I've only seen my own plants really and my in-laws in Mississippi and they all I think they do pretty well and this year luckily the harlequin bugs have not eaten them but they will start to decline rapidly now that the nights are

cooler. Yes. They like heat. Moringa is a heat-loving plant. Bambara ground nuts. Vigna subterania. The Bambara, you call them Bambara. Bambara ground nuts. And I, I learned about them from you before I went home because you told me about them. And then as I was traveling through Western Kenya on my way heading into Uganda, I stopped by the cereal market there and they had them like three different varieties of them so you introduced me to them and then I go and I find them at hope you know I was like oh no we don't eat this we don't have this and then here I am constantly just being blown away by you know yes it's like the Meringa again it's like the

Moringa again yeah so we do have Bambara ground and see they don't love it here. We've been growing them for, I've been growing them for maybe eight or nine years. And this is probably 10 or 12 different varieties that we're growing together in hopes that eventually they really start to acclimate more to our climate with the genetic diversity. And the rodents have already started eating them. You can see the empty shells over there, but they're premature. So we have to just allow the rodents to eat some while the rest mature. Do you think mulching them will help them get over the cold nights? I think so, but then the rodents would live right at the food source.

Okay, I understand you. So we try to grow them and the peanuts, which are right next door here, away from areas that the rodents can hide, which is very hard to do on a farm. But it's partly why the dahlia row is a couple rows away, you know, the other tall crops are a couple rows away at least just to because those hawks and stuff will hunt them or they'll feel like they're vulnerable yes yes okay so we're just always experimenting we decided not to irrigate them a couple years ago we thought they did better without irrigation oh yes like here when we open it you can see that the so this one

means the rats were trying to get to this already right it might it might be grow out like that. Yeah, it might be that they already dug some up that were riper underneath. Yeah, so these just like peanuts will grow these pegs, they call them, which come down from the fertilized flower and go underground and become the embryo that or the ovary that ripens into the seed. And this is Vigna subterrania, so it's the same genus as the cowpe. It's another African species. Yes. Beautiful. Okay, let me ask you a few more questions. Thank you so much for showing us your plant relatives, your plant friends.

You're welcome. I'm inspired to find out more so I can share more stories with you when I return. Oh, I love that. So how do you imagine, how do you hope that your time here at True Love Seeds will help you on your journey? All I can say is it has helped me a lot. like I tell you this all the time like go and every time I come here I come to life but not just because I'm in a beautiful environment with beautiful people doing this beautiful thing called seed keeping the practical you know understanding how to lay the garden how to prepare them

understanding the need to space things out in a particular way. So just the practical, systematic way of growing, you know, because if you want to grow these things to eventually give you seeds, you need to do it systematically. That wasn't a part of my system. I'm very, let's throw the seeds. It gives order to my way of doing things. And so at home, everything I'm doing, I feel like it's geared towards taking it back home

and also now learning from my people how they've done things and then bringing it all together to grow food, save seeds, share skills with one another. So I have the land. I'm digging a well right now because I learned it's very important. for you to have water. Water, water, water, water, water, water. I've mastered. Let me not say mustard because soil scientists will come after me. But I feel like I've mastered building soil. Because the past few years, that was my focus. So I know how to build soil, so I don't have to buy it. Water. I'm digging a well. The space is there. The rest is just gathering the seeds, gathering the people

and doing the work how will you gather the people the people will come because my people are so curious and given the nature of who I am to I talk to everybody you know I let people in so I'm not worried about that but the only thing is because people are already

gardening they want to know what are you doing differently so So if they see something working or they see something different, there's a natural curiosity that we have as humans to improve. But I'll also do it through technology because I think it's very important for us to start documenting our own stories with our own faces and voices and bodies. So that's where technology comes in handy because I want to share what we are doing, not just

for us, but for generations to come. I want the elders to know that their stories are valid. So what you're doing really, documenting them, doing their thing, and then them seeing themselves. So video format, you know, where we speak, we do these things, and then we see ourselves doing it, and then we share it to the world, you know, in all these beautiful platforms that are out here for us. Yes, I've really enjoyed when you've been back home. following your Instagram lives at Village Alien, right? Can you tell me what Village Alien means to you? Well, Village Alien, I feel like I'm an alien everywhere I go, you know?

I'm an alien in America. I'm an alien back home because I left at such a tender age. My interests are so varied from the interests of my peers, especially at home. Especially in the village. In the village, nobody wants the village life. They've lived in it. They know it so well, and I'm fascinated by it. So they don't understand, you know, why am I so passionate about these things?

It's like I'm pulling people backwards. But I have experienced the top of the top, because my experience in America has been in very wealthy communities in America. I don't want it. It's not complete for me. I still end up feeling. so empty. So at home, village alien, I am an alien, you know, so it's like I want to convince my people, hey, this world that you're seeking out there, it's great. But let's find a way to make

it happen right here, because we have everything that we need here. We have the sunshine, we have the freedom, we have the community. Let's just get our resources together so we don't have to, but it's not a good thing period so there's a poverty in rural areas and that can make anybody want to flee you know and go to cities or developed nations Western nations so yeah I'm a village alien and I thank you for explaining that and your vision and I've enjoyed following your Instagram lives when you're back home going into the wild spaces seeing what plants are there going onto your family gardens and farms and getting to see what that looks

like wonder if you could take a moment to describe what your family growing practices are like now yes so my dad so this is how it is at home my mom focuses on the kitchen garden my dad focuses on the fruit trees so when you get into the garden the one this is the one that's attached to the home so like the upper level is the house and then you go in the lower level which is the garden so as you enter in you would say it's kind of dived up into kind of the way you have the line in the middle of the garden so there is that side and there's this side and all along the sides my dad has planted a variety of fruit trees so he has several avocado trees papayas mangoes oranges he even tried to plant apple trees they didn't do well we're like dad cut

this thing down this is not the place for this he's refused to cut that apple tree we've not even eaten a single apple that tree has been there for 20 years occupying space um pomegradates you know lemons. So my dad has always loved fruit trees. And they farm like many people farm. So the cash crops, you'll find areas of the garden with corn and beans. You'll find other areas with sweet potatoes, other areas with cassava. Oh, now bananas. His teeth are getting weak. So he's planting bananas everywhere. Oh, my dad. Anyway.

And the way they farm, it's still the way that I don't like. You know, where it's a lot of tilling. And I'm like, this is so much work for what you're getting out. But I try to show them, they don't follow through. You know, they don't follow through. So that's why, again, I'm like, I need to have my space. to do my thing and then show them that it's possible because people get stuck to what they know. Yeah.

So during the season, they'll go, they'll till, they'll plant the seeds, they'll germinate, and then they'll go to weed again, and then, you know, so there's not a lot in the way of building of soil happening. Slowly, slowly, they kind of get it, but not entirely. but for somebody just randomly going there you'll be like oh this is beautiful this is lush there are fruit trees and bananas everywhere yes but you're not eating fruit trees fruits every day you know you need your staples you need those things to be growing every day yeah so can you paint a picture of your dream farm my dream farm my dream farm my dream my dream my dream My dream farm, wow, I have this vision in my head.

You know, I kind of have adopted, I've become a landscape designer over the years because I've designed over 15, maybe 30 different garden designs in my head, and they change each time. So my landscape, my garden, is filled with flowers and herbs and aromatics around our traditional houses. So there'll be within the farm, there'll be traditional houses. And around the immediate vicinity of the house, there'll be herbs. and then there'll be pockets all around the perimeter that have fruit trees kind of like orchards

yeah around the perimeter at the far end of the garden would be left to be a wild space and there'll be beehives over there for the intruders to meet to meet their fate and then And we will grow everything that we are able to grow.

You know, it's not just a garden. It's a whole space that accommodate so many activities like skill sharing, storytelling, with food also growing around us. So we are abundant. We are abundant with the food. We are abundant with their people and the seeds. And yeah, I see it so clearly, so clearly. And because now it's underworks, like I have the exact image in my head of what's happening.

We are digging a well. And on top of the well, I'll build a structure. So there'll be the well. You'll be like a gazebo type so you can sit around it. And then on the second level, we'll be a circular room that's just open. So in rainy days, we can chill there. seed work processing plant starting someone can sleep there to have classes and then the third level will be the water tanks and then the top will just be an

open area so you can see everything from that level I can really see it you can see it yeah yeah will you build the house I'm looking structure yeah I'm looking for a builder right now. Yeah, but the well is going. We've gotten to maybe 30 feet down, and we're still digging. Yeah. That is really beautiful. You're welcome.

I tell you to move. Move over there. When these people keep stressing you up, just pack your bags and come. We'll find a way to get the seeds to the people who need them. I'll consider it. Consider it. Nice. And will you be there full-time or will you continue to go back and forth? I think as time is moving on, I'll be there more than here.

But I also like America and because a lot of my work will be focused and geared in the village. At some point, I think you just need to continue being exposed to the changes that are happening in the world. And it can be hard if you're in the village full-time. So in addition to being there and traveling a lot of Kenya, I love the U.S. for many reasons there are just so many diverse viewpoints that no idea is too crazy

so this is my getaway space in the summers yeah well then I hope you'll always visit us always count on me thank you for all of the joy and wisdom and laughter and songs that you bring to

our farm and to our community. Yeah, no, thank you, and you're welcome. It's been a joy. This is home for me, so wherever you are, wherever you move, I'll be there. Yeah. Thank you, Akath. Thank you, Owen. Thank you so much again to my friend Akoff.

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