African Food History, Art, and Spirituality

French is the official language of the Republic of Congo, in Kikongo the name of this African country favorite dish is named Pondu, in French it is named feuille de manioc, in English it is known as cassava leaf stew. Congolese cooks combine a mixture of mushrooms, tomatoes, onions, pumkin, palm-oil and herbs, other fresh vegetables such as cassava leaves, fish, bush-meat and goat-meat eaten with a starchy dish called fufu. Farming Cassava Leaves Fufu is rolled into golf ball-sized balls, an indentation is made with the right finger and then dipped into a soup, sauce or stew in order to soak-up the flavor . Cassava is known by many names depending on where you live on this planet; the most common names for cassava are manioc, yucca, yuca, mandioca, and tapioca. Cassava originated from tropical America and cassava was first introduced into Africa in the Congo Basin by the Portuguese around 1558. Africans eat around 176 pounds or 80 kilograms of cassava per year per person. It is e

 Senegambia Graves and Megalithic Stone Circles The Senegambia burial mounds stone circles are located between the River Gambia and the River Senegal in the Western African countries of Guinea, Senegal and The Gambia. The Senegambia stone circles are a setting for ceremony and rituals, grave markers, places of burial, and a sacred place of worship and mourning. Wassu in Guinea The Wassu and Kerbatch grave sites in The Gambia and Guinea and the Wanar and Sine Ngayene burial mounds in Senegal contain over 1,000 stone circles and ancient human burial mounds spaced over an area of 62 miles wide and 217 miles in length. In all, there are 1,102 carved stones on all the stone circles of Senegambia burial sites.  The Sine Ngayene grave complex of Senegal is the largest site with 52 circles of stones. The next largest is Senegal's Wanar grave complex with 21 circles of stones, third is the Wassu complex located in Guinea consists of 11 circles and lastly The Kerbatch complex located in the

Major Pierre Claver Karangwa, one of the executioners of the 100 day long Rwandan Genocide lived in the Netherlands for 26 years before his arrest​. Rwanda is the most densely populated country in mainland Africa with a population of 13 million living on 10,169 square miles of land; Rwanda is about the size of the US state of Maryland. The population is divided among ethnic lines with Hutu 85 percent, Tutsi 14 percent, and Twa 1 percent.  Major Pierre Claver Karangwa In 1959, three years before independence, the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Over the next several years thousands of Tutsis were killed, and some 150,000 driven into exile in neighboring countries. The children of these exiles later formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front and began a civil war in 1990. The mass killing of Rwanda’s Tutsi population was ignited on April 6, 1994, when a plane carrying the-then president, Juvénal Habyarimana, was shot down and crashed in Kigali, t

Easy Recipe  Make Perfectly Seasoned Sweet Potato Leaves Cook sweet potato leaves in recipes just as you would spinach. Blend sweet potato leaves in smoothies, make sweet potato leaves stir-fry or eat sweet potato leaves washed and raw. Sweet potato leaves are eaten raw and cooked; add sweet potatoes to your salad or mix them in with spinach, sweet potato leaves go well with any meat dish such as chicken, beef, pork, or fish. Perfectly Seasoned Sweet Potato Leaves Sweet potato leaves are universally eaten throughout Africa in too many recipes to count. Sweet potato leaves are edible and delicious with a soft texture that tastes like kale or spinach. The best way to cook sweet potatoes is just to simply sauté them with a little bit of onion, olive oil, salt and pepper. Sweet potato leaves have five times more vitamin C than other greens such as spinach. Sweet potatoes do not have a particular season but are grown year-round in the United States; however they are at their peak sweetness

Borno State’s capital in Maiduguri northeastern Nigeria had many internally displaced persons (IDP) camps which were home to thousands of people who fled their homes because war had been declared on the everyday people.  Internally Displaced Persons means persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence, in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights or natural or human-made disasters, and who have not crossed an internationally recognized State border. Life in an IDP camp In IDP camps every inch of space counted. Jerrycans and cooking pots were stacked on top of each other and clothes hung from the roof. Living in an IDP camp means you have to start your life from zero, and you may not have a safe place to live once you arrive.  One night in May 2020, Awofaa, a 38-year-old widow was sleeping with her three children