Page 21 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 34

Community
Adults didn’t grow heavy like the babies but
acquired beautiful smooth and shiny skins,
spackling eyes and strong bones and teeth.
The beautiful trim bodies of the ancients is
possible today by reintroducing animal fats
into the diet.
What happened?
To chronicle the destruction of the Gikuyu
and African diet generally and the wide
superhighway to cancer and all the modern
diseases that are laying the health of modern
Africans to waste would require an entire
book. This is a book that would ask you to
reconsider eanestly the great loss to our health
that has been brought about by the book of
civilization. Nyina wa Kariuki is a neighbour
of mine at home. By home I mean Nyeri, as in
Mukurwe-ini, as in Gakindu, Kwa Mukuyu.
Mama Kariuki is now around ninety years
old and has been on the Gikuyu diet all her
life. She used to be very energetic and could
climb the hills like a mountain goat until
recently. Her children and grand children in
Nairobi and in the diaspora built her a fine
stone house with all the modern conveniences
of cookers, fridges, microwaves, the works.
All because they love her. When I visited her
recently, I saw that one of her cabinets, is full
of all manner of bottles containing strange
medicines from the pharmacy. She asked me
to sit in one of those over padded butterfly
seats. “Nindarwarire mwana wakwa”, she
said. “I got sick my child”, and all the danger
signs were there. She is sick from modernity
like almost all rural folk nowadays. She gets a
delivery of 20 litres refined vegetable oil from
her loving children every month plus many
other junk things from the city. You should
see these loving children. The men on spindly
legs have bellies that look like they have
swallowed a traditional water pot, ndigithu,
while their wives spot under their arm pits
their very own imengemenge (pr). They are
as heavy and hang and sway this way and that
way just like the ram’s. The children are what
are these days called tunonos or fatties. That
is how to know that they are prosperous. They
have arrived. Panting.
It is now becoming quite clear to many honest
health and nutritional researchers that the road
to cancer, diabetes, heart disease et all is paved
with refined vegetable oils, double refined
for good measure and with zero cholesterol.
This is snake oil. don’t take my word for it
but do your own research. Read about butter,
margarine, cholesterol, just to start you off.
Get yourself away from the ridiculous adverts
and simplistic advice of the so-called men
and women of the medical profession who
are also snake oil salesmen and women for
pharmaceutical companies..
Switch off your TV. Read, read, read! The
truth is out there.
ISSUE 34 | FEBRUARY 2025 21