There is a welcoming that breathes on you as the vista, wind swooshing from hills old as time, hugging your return back home to Enugu, as you take the humbling bike down the lone tarred road from Umumba to signboard where in the opposite direction lies the austere house of Udeh Agbara of The Sam Chine whose nta is my father.
I used to sweep this long compound zigzag for pattern every morning then in August to darts of squirrels, colored scarce but things had already taken turn for worse even then us and pick at the pineapples fence. We heart that it used to be more, lush, beautiful, rich with food trees teeming with baboons and antelopes but all that was destroyed because of cashew
Now, there is a hunger that seethe the atmosphere when you hump the proud bike askance at affording it's cost, it waves from a bend where it is sprinkling mbacha on a basket tray beside the road for sun drying. It bathes in the evening carries yesterday's grate of cassava that have been soaked in the river for cyanide after bathing because there is no water and dinner is the only important food, it is the only food infact, and there is no water, our rivers run dry our ground are made barren because of cashew.
Cashew is a cash crop alert from the acid and it's nut it's flesh is rather useless as a fit it's a pyro kinetic meaning it will only induce more hunger rather than fill your stomach
From Obeleagu Ummana find these acid tentacles ugly trees called cashew that Medusa twigs, that only house lizard and snakes.
Cashew has no beauty no educate or filling fruit no doesn't add to the ground it's fruit doesn't fertilize the ground and it's leaves are dry before they reach the ground
if any trees was designed from hell it is cashew
You wouldn't know that when you see the amount of land dedicated to the wanton planting of cashew for their nuts and acid used to supplement coffee drinking and battery, bring to fore the banes of capitalism and such false civilization.
From Obeleagu Ummana find these acid tentacles ugly trees called cashew that Medusa twigs, that only house lizard and snakes.
Cashew has no beauty no educate or filling fruit no doesn't add to the ground it's fruit doesn't fertilize the ground and it's leaves are dry before they reach the ground
if any trees was designed from hell it is cashew
You wouldn't know that when you see the amount of land dedicated to the wanton planting of cashew for their nuts and acid used to supplement coffee drinking and battery, bring to fore the banes of capitalism and such false civilization.
But the advent of lithium, isn't exactly a replacement it's has its own effect, but we can go axe sharpen, to those cashew trees, and can plant life back into my village and other villages that have been destroyed by the so called elites Who traveled outside to bring back help and development only to return with the seeds of indigence.
I hear the Biafra movement planting of 1 million palm trees but there aren't food, they will take too long to become useful, we need food now, We need food trees.
Now Compared Enugu to Benue where the ethos calls for Orange and Mango while the surrounding plot is farmed in Yam, potato and cocoyam. You see that we have a more fertile land dark lush loam and vegetation that ensure that they people can sell and eat from the land
Benue is the next state from Enugu but their philosophy of the Tiv from the Igbo where one is considered in the cash solipsistic of pompous living the Tiv man focuses on a well rounded communal food living, and you can see the difference between heaven and hell
In Enugu you have beer sere hungered while in Benue you have pomp plump yam farming and it's the same lands in close proximity but with such huge difference.
Now Compared Enugu to Benue where the ethos calls for Orange and Mango while the surrounding plot is farmed in Yam, potato and cocoyam. You see that we have a more fertile land dark lush loam and vegetation that ensure that they people can sell and eat from the land
Benue is the next state from Enugu but their philosophy of the Tiv from the Igbo where one is considered in the cash solipsistic of pompous living the Tiv man focuses on a well rounded communal food living, and you can see the difference between heaven and hell
In Enugu you have beer sere hungered while in Benue you have pomp plump yam farming and it's the same lands in close proximity but with such huge difference.
Hardly will find the Tivs in Lagos you only find them in Nassarawa, Jos or Abuja close to their hometown where food is surplus but the Igbos destroyed their villages and are the biblical seeds of the sower.
The first set of elite who came back home after the civil war came back with a vengeance to met on her own people We have Family that bought up entire hectare for 200 naira and farmed cashew on it employed vigilante to ensure there were no trespassing chasing the indigene to force shack up in the cities to eke a living doing menials for meagre
Today the remaining land not yet cashewed are being fought for with oracles, open brawl and curses.
Today the remaining land not yet cashewed are being fought for with oracles, open brawl and curses.
Few arable farmland means the people are hungry all the while the devil plant chew is given so much reverence as a cash crop when it should be cut down and burn down at sight.
From the backyard of our house to the Ajari river I'm taking over 20 hectares of land was used to farm these destructive cashew. This Cashew plantation even affected the Ajari river and made it thin, reducing it's surface area, drying some parts up, With Fulani cows soiling the only clean parts with dung during their drink, What else then?
Nothing like avocado, ogbono, bananas, plantain, walnut, just cashew and they are useless as you couldn't fill up on eating them left to only roam it's plantation for it's seeds, people are turned into beggars in their own land
From the backyard of our house to the Ajari river I'm taking over 20 hectares of land was used to farm these destructive cashew. This Cashew plantation even affected the Ajari river and made it thin, reducing it's surface area, drying some parts up, With Fulani cows soiling the only clean parts with dung during their drink, What else then?
Nothing like avocado, ogbono, bananas, plantain, walnut, just cashew and they are useless as you couldn't fill up on eating them left to only roam it's plantation for it's seeds, people are turned into beggars in their own land
I usually make it out sometime during the harmattan and without mbacha these people have nothing else to eat these nuts are taken to Nkwo Ezagwu the market day to sell them for 5 thousand naira a paint rubber to be spent immediately on egusi crayfish and palm oil as soup ingredients for the quotidian eba hurrying home to eke out the week until next week when they can go back to sell another pick.
The People look like rabid dogs gaunt and helpless it cost 1 thousand naira from signboard to 9th mile so forget about living the good life if you can't trek out of there you will sit down at home all day and learn the devil's handiwork .
The People look like rabid dogs gaunt and helpless it cost 1 thousand naira from signboard to 9th mile so forget about living the good life if you can't trek out of there you will sit down at home all day and learn the devil's handiwork .
The last time I traveled I bought 5 seedlings of avocado to plant around the village, but I came back to hear of them being uprooted while the cashew are left grinning.
To think that cashew are mostly farmer for their nut is disgustingly bourgeois and stupid m construct you couldn't walk two meters without finding mango in a village like Zaki Biam.
Women in India and Kenya loose their finger's from the acid of the cashew oil of harvesting cashews nut, Just because one Starbucks addict in America wants to drink coffee with cashew nut to make their fart smell funky.
We do need to change our mentality from cash crop to foods crops our, Colonial masters not only destroyed our village but also our mindset towards them, that we do not see in them the heritage of our fathers but as land we can sell or make a swindle from.
We need believe in them, invest in planting food trees for our r children, Not coffee cocoa, definitely not cashew, But fold trees, take our time to study Sepp Holzer permaculture and revitalized our forest our land.and villages
Knowing what you know about cashew you will never look at cashew tree the same way again
Now that battery can be made using lithium, We should have no need for cashew
let us go back to our hometowns, cut down those coffee cashew trees and plant food in.th3 belly of our mothers, children and Fatherland
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