By Afam Echi
Season of fresh foods: avail yourself good health
I think it is the book of Ecclesiastics that declared that there is a time for everything. In addition to the other things he mentioned there is a time to plant and a time to reap. Looking around, you will notice we are in the season of fresh foods. Some three or four months back we were engaged in tilling the soil and according to the age long saying the hand that worked must eat.
And here we are eating the fruits of our labour. There is fresh corn, fresh pumpkin leaves, fresh okro, fresh pepper, fresh fruits, fresh garden egg leaves, other fresh leaves etc. The irony is that while many of us are struggling to pick these foods for consumption, how many of us are involved in growing them or knows how to grow them?
The times have indeed changed. When I walk pass some of these foods in the market or wherever it is sampled it takes my mind back to the child hood days as I recall how they are grown and especially how they are consumed. As I reflect I recall what is missing in my life and may be those of others who travelled the same route as me. That was the era when there were no fast food joints and no fertilizers.
The fertilizer then was purely organic, from animal dungs like goats, sheep, and fowls. Food was grown and eaten in its pure natural form. The food I patronized most was more in form of pepper soups. They come either as yam pepper soup or cocoyam pepper soup, ordinary soup in liquid form made with garden egg, ugbogiri pepper soup etc. They are usually cooked with local spices, (uda, uzizza, utazi etc) and some kind of fish for good taste.
This is a wet season when the environment is constantly cold what with the constant rain falls doing the rounds nonstop. Right in my country home of Uru, Ogwa pepper soup made with garden egg and local spices has been a very good companion helping yours sincerely to fight off cold. Sadly, in this season due to climate change the pears are not available to partner with the available corn to reduce our hunger.
I am sure I am not wetting anybody’s appetite. They are served hot and after each meal the perspiration and the blowing of nose will make you drink enough water. The evidence of the food in our body is instantly seen in our distended stomach. In those days these foods are grown behind the house in the garden and are very handy any moment.
They come in different varieties, fresh and last only in the short period it is grown. Some are easily perishable like garden egg leaves and sadly up till now there is yet no known technology to preserve these foods. Except one goes to the hinterland some of these foods have become scarce. The reason is understandable. Some of the young men have deserted the villages and our parents have grown weak and feeble.
Besides, the lands have disappeared in some places because they have been displaced by modernity as exemplified in building constructions. In most places you visit one can hardly see the usual back-house garden (mgbala) commonly owned by women. People now build their houses and wall it off. The best you can see are flower decorations that provide no food values.
The missing mgbalas are where any woman can run to pick some items to prepare food at any time. In those days it was an unwritten rule and a thing of pride that every woman owned a back garden. Our mother’s mgbala for sure represents a store house of food on the go. A well-equipped garden would contain such things planted as pepper, garden egg, corn, cocoyam, ugu, yam, ugbogiri, scent-leaf (nchianwu) etc.
It is lamentable that we have quietly lost so much in our culture. When I visit communities in the hinterland indirectly I nose around to see if there is any place I can still find yam barns even among the Eze’s. It is hard to see any and that is a reflection of the extent we have relegated agriculture in our land.
I feel guilty that even my mum’s garden and my dad’s yam barn exist only in the memories now. Now that the consciousness in agriculture is returning gradually among the people we may be on our path to self-recovery once more.
It is time for fresh food. Everything occurs at its rightful time. It is proper and justified to follow the food that grows at each season. That is Divine Providence method to avail us with good health. The foods grown in our land with their medicinal and nutritional properties represent nature’s direct and sure response to our health challenges if only we understand how to apply them.
They are like spare parts to fix our health issues. If you are constantly eating the foods that are grown in each period, you will align yourself with the vibration and nature of the environment you find yourself. It is not for nothing that nature itself provided us with different kinds of food supplies in different areas.
Our forebears very close to nature respected these cycles and enjoyed the benefits of longevity. Nothing stops us from dropping our artificial and so called sophisticated lifestyle which only impairs our health situation and queue up behind nature. It is the season of fresh food. Enjoy it while it lasts
