Meet the plants: okra!
Outside garden, inside secret
-Dr. Geree Augusto
Abelmoschus esculentum
Historically, plants are part of the resistance and communicate freedom and liberation. Plants were used to map significant places along the underground railroad and okra (ngombo), whose seeds were braided into the hair of the enslaved as they struggled to survive the middle passage were then planted into colonized soil. The bright yellow ngombo flowers became beacons of hope to other enslaved individuals. It is said that the enslaved could remember their homeland through the flowers that waved to them on foreign soil.
Is a warm weather plant that will grow anywhere melons and cucumbers thrive. Spreading across to Western Africa and down into the central part of the continent during the Bantu migrations around 2,000 BCE, okra has been a staple in African and African diasporic cuisine for a long time. It even crossed the ocean to Asia at an early date and spread with Islam to India, where it is called “ladies fingers.” About the same time okra was making its appearance in Brazil, the West Indies, and later mainland North America, it made its way to China and the island of Macau where it bears one of its many African names, quilobo, which comes from Angola. In fact, quilobo is one variant of the Kimbundu word quingombo, where we get the word “gumbo.” From the Igbo language of southeastern Nigeria we get the vegetable’s English name: okwuru became ochra and okra. Along the entire length of the 3,500 mile coast exploited by the trans-Atlantic slave trade, okra was grown and cooked with other vegetables or rice and made into soup. Okra seeds are said to have travelled to the colonized United States hidden in the hair of the enslaved people forced to endure the merciless middle passage.
Okra seeds, hidden in the hair of the enslaved forced to endure the middle passage was a tiny act of resistance that seeded a cultural signification that fuels recipes to this day. For enslaved cooks forced onto colonized soil, okra was a common thread in their mixed African heritage.
Consider how the smallest action can alter time or create a sense of community. What small acts have you witness that have altered the course of history?
The bright yellow ngombo flowers signaled safety to many on colonized soil. What signals do you offer your community as beacons of care, safety and belonging? How do you follow those signals with action?
Deep dive into subtle and gross indicators that may isolate folx or suggest they are unwelcome. Where have you observed these? What have you done to change them?
summer ngombo harvest from solitary gardens
If you wait too long to harvest okra it becomes inedible. The long pods of this plant dont like to be the biggest, or the strongest- in fact, the smaller the okra, the more flavor.
How does okra remind us that capitalism is only made successful through storytelling and myth? How does this plant remind us that the biggest isnt always the best?
How can we all be more like okra?
