#Lake Kivu | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sandeepsingh11 · 2 months

Text

FOOD OF CONGO: FAMOUS DISHES OF DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Spectacular Zongo waterfalls, incredible Mount Stanely, amazingly beautiful Lake Kivu and Okapi Wildlife Reserve, and various other beautiful sites make your decision of visiting the Democratic Republic of the Congo one of the best decisions of your life. Now, you have decided to enjoy your vacation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but have you prepared your wish list for food of congo that you will try in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Well not to worry we are here to suggest to you some of the famous dishes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These delicious traditional dishes of the Congo have the potential to capture your heart with their amazing taste and simplicity. When you try the food of congo, it gives you a golden opportunity to know more about the culture of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

So, before knowing the famous foods of Congo, let’s firstly know about the country a little bit.

About Democratic Republic of the Congo

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the largest countries in the world and placed 2nd in the list of largest countries of African Continent. The country is located in the center of the African Continent. The country has a tropical climate and blessed with many natural resources. The capital of the country is Kinshasa. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the home of many ethnic groups. Christianity Religion is followed by the majority of the people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The official language of the county is French.

Food of the Democratic Republic of Congo

The food of any country is the representation of their culture and culinary art. The Democratic Republic of the Congo also owns tempting dishes having a unique taste. Cassava and Maize are the main staple food of the people of the country.

So, let’s know about some of the famous dishes of the Congo-

Saka Saka is one of the popular dishes of the Congo that is widely consumed in other countries of central Africa. The main ingredients of the dish are cassava leaves, palm oil, onions, peppers, garlic, smoked fish, and many other important ingredients which make it more and more delicious & a must-try dish. The dish is also referred to as Mpondou, Mpondu, or Pondu. The dish is usually served with meat, fufu, fried plantains even rice.

Chikwanga or kwanga wrapped in banana leaves is a traditional bread food of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The name of the dish may differ as per the region. This fermented bread is usually served with the main meals. It is a great combination of soups and sauces.

Fufu is the common dish of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and also in other countries of central and West African countries. The dish is made with cassava, yams, plantains, and other important ingredients. All the ingredients are boiled and a paste is made from which small round balls are made. These small balls are usually eaten with soup, stews of meat, chicken, and other spicy foods.

While you are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo you must have to try this dish. This is the national dish of the Congo. The main ingredients of the dish are cassava leaves, fish, chicken, palm nuts, rice, and many other important ingredients that give it an exotic taste. The dish is usually served with saka saka and rice.

Madesu is one of the great options that you can choose for your breakfast from all the delicious dishes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The dish is prepared with beans, tomato, onion, peanut, and many other important ingredients. The dish is usually eaten with cassava and rice.

Fumbwa is one of the most famous dishes of the Congo. The dish is prepared with wild spinach hence the name Fumbwa (fumba is the word which is used for wild spinach in the Congolese language). The main ingredients of the dish are wild spinach, tomatoes, onions, peanut, palm oil, and many other important ingredients. The dish is usually served with fufu or fish.

When you have enough spicy food and you are craving something sweet then try this dessert named caakiri. It is one of the popular dishes of the Congo. Caakiri is made from couscous and cream.

Dongo Dongo is one of the famous dishes in Congo and other African counties. The main ingredients of the dish are okra, garlic, onions, fish, and many other important ingredients. The dish is usually eaten with rice and fufu.

Palm wine is a famous beverage in the Congo and various parts of the South African countries. Palm Wine is an alcoholic beverage produced from the sap of the Palm trees. The name of the beverage may differ as per the region.

Mikate is another popular dish of Congo and other South African countries. Mikate is basically a snack made of fried dough. The name of the dish may differ as per the region.

Do try these traditional and famous dishes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

#food #congo #democracy

3 notes · View notes

uzumaki-rebellion · 2 years

Text

“Black Boys Bloom Thorns First: Volume 4, Chapter 48″

Need to catch up? Masterlist HERE.

youtube

"It's never gone this far It's never been this bad But I won't let it erase the memories Of good times we've had And even with everything That we've been going through You never have to ask me I still choose you"

P. J. Mortin – "Please Don't Walk Away"

Disa stared at the floating villa on her kimoyo.

Yani and her children were moving to Lake Kivu, nearly one hundred miles away. Their new home had four lavish bedrooms with acres of land for Riki and Sydette to play on. They would be flown every day to their regular school, so Joba would still have daily interactions with them.

Queen Ramonda took it upon herself to convert Yani's old suite into an entire luxury floor for Disa and Joba. Walls and furniture were removed, and the expansion gave her a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of Wakanda. Disa thanked the queen for her kind gesture at making sure the changes benefitted her, too. Her home became an even bigger paradise.

Joba didn't fare well with the sudden change in family dynamics.

Anxiety and stress over the situation forced Erik's youngest into a state of nervous clinginess for three days. When they were summoned by Erik and Ramonda to say goodbye, Disa almost refused to go herself. Her disappointment in Yani's treatment of their plight was a slap in the face to all Disa had tried to create with her. Harmony. To not show up would appear to be a petty slight, and the Udaku's took optics seriously. Disa gussied up in a black dress and heels, fluffing out her hair in luxurious waves. Joba looked pretty in a puffy pink taffeta dress with lace-up pink sandals. Disa helped her fluff out her big hair too and added tiny yellow butterfly clips.

On the way down to the Talon port, Joba's breathing turned into hyperventilating and Disa spent thirty minutes talking her daughter back into a calm state.

"It's going to be alright, Joba," she said.

Big, black wet eyes peered back at Disa. Joba would be the only child in the palace, and it was a lonely feeling. Hugging her child, she was able to convince her to see the siblings off. Riki was already in the throes of a tantrum, screaming at the top of his lungs until Erik arrived. The boy latched onto his father's thigh and wouldn't let go. Sydette remained by her mother's side, wailing and pleading with Yani to let her stay.

Disa encouraged Joba to hug her brother and sister, which she did willingly. But she refused to look at or hug Yani at all. Erik picked up Joba and held her against his chest, and her daddy's arms seemed to ease her stress levels. Ramonda and Shuri did their best to keep smiles for everyone and spoke excitedly about future visits and upcoming birthdays. The situation grew painfully intolerable, and even Yani seemed to be full of regret and hesitation at what was happening. But it had to be done. Her misery had to be handled on her own and in her own space.

Sydette gave up begging and just flopped on the ground and folded her arms. Erik handed Joba to Disa and lifted his oldest. He walked a few feet away from everyone, talking to her softly as she wiped her eyes continuously. All Disa could make out from where she stood was Erik reassuring Sydette that he loved her while kissing her cheek and asking her to be a good big sister. He held out his hand for Riki, and his son bounded over, allowing his father to lift him up too.

"Joba, come here, please," Erik said.

Disa put Joba down and she trudged to her father, giving Yani a wide berth as she passed her.

"My Bast, this is so awful, just awful," Ramonda murmured.

Shuri put an arm around her mother. Ramonda reached out and squeezed Disa's hand. T'Challa strode out of the palace doors and joined them with a phalanx of Doras. He wore a dour expression.

"How are you holding up?" T'Challa asked.

"As well as can be expected," Disa said.

Yani walked over to them. She tried to wear light make-up to make herself look confident, but there were bags under her eyes from lack of sleep, and her lips were cracked in a few places from dehydration and nervous biting. The woman didn't look good at all.

Shuri gave her a hug.

"Be well, Yani," Shuri said.

Ramonda hugged her next, but kept quiet. T'Challa wrapped loving arms around her.

"Let me know if anything isn't up to par when you arrive. You are welcome back here whenever you want," T'Challa said.

He released her and made his way over to Erik and the children. When Yani finally turned to Disa, her face was full of contrition.

"Joba is welcome to visit whenever she wants," Yani said.

"We'll stick to scheduled visits here to help her adjust," Disa said coolly.

Yani nodded.

"How does it feel?" Disa asked.

Yani stared at her with confusion at the query.

"Leaving?" Yani said.

"No. Choosing yourself."

"It feels scary. I'm nervous…"

Yani glanced down at her feet.

"That will pass. You'll get stronger and feel a lot better in the next few weeks," Disa said.

"I hope so. I'm doing mi best standin' here all brave, but I want to throw up."

Disa smiled then.

"I threw up a lot and doubted myself often," Disa said.

She looked over Yani's head. Erik's somber face told her it was time to end the goodbyes.

"Excuse me," Disa said.

She moved with a heavy heart and joined Erik.

"Have fun at the new house, okay?" Disa said.

She hugged Sydette and then Riki. Both children accepted her touch with passive, drained energy. Their hearts were broken, but Disa knew they would bounce back once they saw all the wonderful amenities of the new home in person. They could jump into water from their own dock just like they did back in St. Thomas. Erik put them down and held Joba's hand.

Yani joined the sad bunch and ushered her children into the waiting Talon Fighter. Everyone waved at them. Yani came back out one more time, and Joba turned her head away from her while she hugged Erik. He kissed Yani on the lips and whispered something in her ear. She bolted back onto the Talon Fighter afterward. As the aircraft took off, Joba buried her face in Erik's hip. An awkward silence linked them all there, watching the ship become a speck on the horizon.

"Joba, would you like to go visit the nursery with me? Mother's new orange blossoms have arrived from Birnin S'Yan!" Shuri said.

Ramonda clapped her hands with excitement.

"Oh, my goodness, they should be ready to transfer into the royal garden gazebo. We should have a tea party there to welcome them," Ramonda said.

Joba lifted her head from Erik's side.

"Would you like to go with Queen Mother and Shuri?" Disa asked.

Joba stared at Erik, and he patted her back.

"Yes, please," Joba said.

Ramonda held out her hand for Joba, and she took it once Erik winked at her.

"I'll keep her until lunch," Ramonda said.

"That's fine. Have fun," Disa called out.

T'Challa followed them with the Doras leaving Disa alone with Erik. Once everyone was gone, he closed his eyes and released a heavy, shuddery breath. He touched his heart.

"Another hole," he said.

"You have a miraculous way of healing," she said, trying to lighten the mood.

He stared at her.

"Go on and say it. I ain't shit," he said.

"It's not for me to say anymore, Erik."

"I'll pick Joba up from Ramonda before I go to work and drop her off with you."

"How are things with the Phuri stuff?"

"T'Challa and his people are taking care of that. They'll call me in if they catch more assailants for interrogation. He wants me to handle my personal business and I'll be used as needed."

"You feel confident about squashing those people?"

"I do. They've collected evidence to analyze. I'll look it over after I finish this probe assignment."

"Keeping busy will help you…"

Erik's eyes spilled with tears.

"I didn't want her to go. Seeing her walk away from me like that… I feel sick, angry at myself, and so… empty. Disa, out of everyone in my life, before I turned into this shell when I left the states for good… you've been my rock. My touchstone. My best friend. How can I fix this? My woman left me and took my babies. Umama said I was too greedy. I've always been that way. My Baba raised me to believe I could have everything in this world that I touched. My mother too."

"Maybe it's time that Erik N'Jadaka Stevens-Udaku cared for his own well-being for a change. You have led the most extraordinary life I have ever encountered. People will write books about you. Your exploits will become legendary. Control of a kingdom awaits you. Reconnect to who you are, the real you, the one I saw glimmers of back in Cambridge before the navy. I am in awe of you Erik, I really am. Use this time to get to know you again. All that you have touched has changed the trajectory of the global future. Step into your power the way you used to talk about. You are a child of Ogum. Stand in that. You're the father of my brilliant baby. The father of two more exceptional children. Stand in that power the way I know you can. You need to count your blessings and not your losses, and I'll be by your side as your council and confidante. The time has come for you to do what you said you would. Run the world."

Erik gazed at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. He stood taller and the liquid hovering in his eyelids shimmered.

"Show us what you're capable of and I promise you, everything will fall into place," Disa said. "Come through Geechee man. Ogum's spear. The one who brings thunder!"

She snapped her fingers and tapped the center of his forehead.

Erik took a step back from her and his lips twisted up with the determination she remembered from way back. She placed her hands on the planes of his chest.

"Focus on you and your original goals. The least you can do for me is stick to what you came here for."

He wandered off by himself and Disa watched him go. Yani's leaving would be the catalyst to put a fire under his ass. She was sure of that. Erik was a king in the making and she damn well knew that once he took the throne, she had access to realizing her dreams, too. Liberation for the Black diaspora.

Disa headed to the West Palace and her office. Twyla waited for her in the reception area, drinking tea and chatting with the small staff. Wakandans typically worked twenty hours a week by law, so she hired extra staff to cover the times she worked longer hours. The capitalist American over-work ethic had a chokehold on her, and it was taking Disa a long time to relax into the work/life balance that the Wakandans treasured.

"How was it?" Twyla asked when they walked into Disa's personal office together.

Disa dropped into her desk chair and cradled her face.

"Awful. The kids fell out. But after Yani left, I gave Erik a pep talk. I hope it makes him take stock of who he is now. "

"I couldn't be there. I'll see them later today for dinner, but I didn't want to be around alla that hurt. But I'm proud of mi girl."

Twyla lowered her gorgeous milky brown eyes. Disa grinned.

"I'm proud of her too," Disa said.

"You are?"

"Why do you look so surprised?"

Twyla pushed one of her thin locs behind her ear.

"I thought you would be happy with her leaving for different reasons."

"Getting Erik to myself?"

"You are in the palace together. I know yuh in love with him."

"I love him. But he needs to love himself again. Just like Yani."

Twyla grinned. Disa lifted a large sketch pad from her desk and flipped a few pages until she came to what Twyla wanted to see.

"Disa!" Twyla squealed.

Twyla took the sketchbook and stared at the preliminary images of a sleek-looking tourist agency building.

"This is just based on what you described to me with the whole circular theme. I can make it sleeker, more futuristic if you want," Disa said.

"No! I want to emphasize eco-tourism, especially highlighting water and plants."

"This is just a start. Give me some notes and I will flesh it out more."

"Flesh it out? These already look ready to go!"

Disa grinned. Twyla used her finger to trace the curves of the sketched images that were full of color.

"How did your meeting go with Erik?" Disa asked.

"He said he will support my venture. I have to put together a presentation for the Council of Elders and the Chamber of Commerce. I may have to wait for him to take the throne in case T'Challa doesn't like it. With all that's happening, I know Wakandans are nervous about opening themselves up to the world. Eco-Tours are my specialty and I'm great at it. I'm studying Wakanda's ecological history and I know I can create a sound business that will benefit the country."

Disa rested in the energy of Erik becoming king. Although she had respect for T'Challa, Erik had a grasp of the world far beyond what his cousin could understand.

Erik stood at his desk and welcomed the Council of Elders into his inner office. Mpilo had comfortable chairs and fresh incense burning, while Tlotliso brought in snacks and libations. Zinzi carried a broad smile on her face as she sat down with the others facing Erik. Once Efetobo took her seat, Zinzi placed an official folder on his desk.

"Despite the circumstances with the Phuri, we are still on schedule for transferring power to the throne," Zinzi said.

Erik looked at all the older Wakandans in his midst and folded his hands on the desk.

"I've put together a transition team and will hold a meeting with them once I hear back from the invitations I'll send out," Erik said.

Elder Bhira and Elder M'Kathu glanced at one another. Zinzi and Efetobo kept steady eyes on Erik.

"You have made plans without consulting all of us?" Bhira asked.

"Until I take the throne, I didn't think there was a need to consult you," Erik said, challenging the elder.

M'Baku cleared his throat and Erik turned his attention to the Jabari chief.

"Who will this separate transition team consist of?" M'Baku asked.

"Once I receive confirmation of acceptance, I will prepare a list for you. For now, you should know that my team will comprise Wakandans familiar with my father. They will assist me in creating a United Diaspora Consortium," Erik said.

"What is that?" Bhira asked.

"It will do what the African Union tried to do decades ago. This time I will unite the Black diaspora globally—"

"To do what?" M'Kathu said.

Erik sat back in his seat.

"I will finish what I started three years ago. T'Challa tried to introduce Wakanda to the world without thinking it through. Going to the U.N. and revealing what we have was a tactical error on his part. The United States and the European Union are Wakanda's biggest enemies. They court favor with us now because they fear what we have. He spoke of building bridges, but I will never give the outside world easy access to us."

M'Kathu stood up.

"You cannot go back on the word of our king!" M'Kathu

"There will be a regime change, and all that kumbaya shit T'Challa spoon fed the U.N. is out the window. The United States has no moral conscience, and its European cousins are the same way. They will get nothing but dust from me."

M'Kathu glanced at the others. Zinzi and Efetobo remained stoic. Bhira looked uncertain and M'Baku stayed cool.

Erik leaned forward.

"I'll still need you to guide me with internal Wakandan affairs. You'll be kept abreast of the UDC plans. My goal is to have a union of Black leaders from throughout the Black diaspora who can give us the expertise of what our people need. Strictly NGO's. I'm putting together a draft to present to you after my first meeting."

"Will we be present?" M'Baku asked.

"Not for the initial meeting with Wakandans. Once I put together the UDC, you'll be there front and center. I need to speak freely in private with the people I choose before I bring them to you," Erik said.

"Will you proceed with your original plan of arming the diaspora?" Efetobo asked.

"Yes," Erik said.

M'Kathu and Bhira shook their heads in disappointment. Zinzi and Efetobo remained calm. Erik stood and moved to the front of his desk and sat on it.

"I'm not handing out weapons to just random Black folks. There are problems out there, and the last thing I will do is give high-tech weaponry to idiots. That's what War Dogs are for. The ones who followed me were already entrenched in communities I targeted and knew who to give firepower to. We'll prepare communities and provide them with protection. Listen. I know what's out there. You don't. T'Chaka only told you what he wanted you to hear, and you later accepted his son because that was the way things were always done based on ignorance. The world only recognizes power. Not goodwill and community centers. I know it frightens you to face a new world order, but you must prepare for the changes that will sweep the globe. If you don't like what I'm saying, then prepare to step down from your post when I take the throne. You have nine months to decide."

M'Kathu and Bhira left the office immediately. Zinzi and Efetobo stayed with M'Baku.

"Will they stay?" Erik asked.

Efetobo leaned on her cane from her seat.

"They will stay," Efetobo said.

"M'Baku, what do you think?" Erik asked.

M'Baku folded his meaty arms.

"I think you and I should have a private talk and get to know each other better," M'Baku said.

"I'll plan a private dinner for us in my suite," Erik said.

M'Baku lifted an eyebrow with surprise.

"Bring your wife, Ayomide. Yani told me she is the power behind the big chief," Erik teased.

M'Baku's dispassionate expression switched up then at the mention of his wife. A gap-toothed grin spread his thick lips. This gave Erik relief. A man that sought his woman's council was a smart leader. Both Disa and Yani mentioned that the Jabari leader became putty in his wife's presence, and he was eager to get the two of them together alone. Sita told him they were in his corner.

Tlotliso slipped into the room with a stack of private invitations to be sent to all the Wakandans that he wanted to meet. All the people that had supported his father so long ago. Erik wanted to meet his father's past so that they could help him shape the future.

"These need your signature and private seal," Tlotliso said.

She placed them all inside a clear side bin next to his desk. Mpilo entered to refresh drinks and remove uneaten food.

"Do you seek war with the world?" Efetobo asked.

Erik shook his head.

"I seek justice and reparations. Things that we should've gotten hundreds of years ago. War will come to those who try to stop us in that quest. As long as no one tests me, the weapons I will send to War Dogs will just be on standby," he said.

Efetobo and Zinzi stood from their seats.

"I promise you both that no force shall be used unnecessarily. I'll give our detractors on the outside an opportunity to do the right thing for the diaspora. They can pay what they owe and make good on promises from the United States, the Caribbean, South America, and in Europe. I'll force every country and island nation to face their history of anti-Blackness. My goal is restitution. I'm not a tyrant, but I'll flex if I have to."

His kimoyo beads warmed up on his wrist and glowed blue. Riki and Sydette.

"I have to take this," Erik said.

Zinzi, Efetobo, and M'Baku bid him farewell and left his office. Erik tapped a bead. Riki's and Sydette's faces were pressed together and their hair was soaked with water. They sat on a dock and he could hear water breaking against the Kivu lake shore.

"Baba, can we come back to the palace?" Sydette asked.

Her red-rimmed eyes weren't colored that way because of playing in the water.

"You two aren't having fun in the lake?" Erik asked, making his voice chipper.

Riki shook his head, and Sydette wiped her eyes.

"But it's so pretty there. I was waiting for more pictures from you."

"I wahn come home," Riki pleaded.

"You are home, Dumplin. I'll see you next weekend."

Riki's mouth fell open, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Sydette stared at him with gigantic eyes, willing him to rescue them. He noticed Yani's shadowy figure behind them. Their female nanny was nearby, too.

"Baba's gotta get some work done. I'll read you all a story with Joba tonight."

"No," Riki gasped, like all the breath was crushed out of his chest.

"C'mon y'all. I told you that Mama wanted her own house, and she wanted to make you happy there. She likes it a lot."

"I know… but…"

"But what, Sweet Pea?" he said.

"It's not the same without you all here. It's pretty and I like it. I just want you here, or we come there. I miss Joba…"

Sydette started crying and Riki blubbered next to her.

"You can tell me all about it when I see you next weekend," he said.

"Too long!" Riki complained.

"Riki! Joba! Time for dinner!"

The new nanny called to them, and Erik glimpsed the cute chubby face with the big smile.

"Kora is calling you. Go eat and I'll see you tonight on vid chat."

Erik blew them kisses and ended the call. Mpilo stood quietly, waiting for him to finish.

"The Scorpion Fighter is ready to take you to Princess Shuri's lab," Mpilo said.

He nodded and fingered through the stack of invitations. Mpilo left him to his privacy. Pausing, he thought of Nick Fury. Erik considered bringing him into the UDC as a liaison. It was a risky move to make, but it could be the buffer he needed to keep the Americans on a leash while he infiltrated the globe with his agenda. Erik's Nana used to make patchwork quilts, and that was the spirit he was using to put together the UDC. All the different patches of Black life stolen away to all the corners of the earth. One patch wasn't big enough to bring comfort to a cold body, but a blanket made from many could warm so many souls. Nick Fury was born and bred in the belly of the beast, just like Erik. He knew the tricks and trickster moves of the master manipulator country. The man knew intimately what Wakanda was made of. Perhaps Erik could turn him into a double agent and use him to his benefit.

It was worth trying.

Erik sent a message to Shuri that he was on his way. His work was never done. But the throne was on the horizon. His kimoyo lit up and vibrated on his wrist.

"Hey now," Erik said.

His Grandpop's image floated in front of him.

"JaJa, we're on our way there. I will see you soon," Dante said.

"Grandpop… I…."

"I know… I know…"

"The travel isn't stressing out your health, is it?" Erik asked.

"Heck no, boy! I haven't felt this alive since… well since I met my new grandbabies."

"I have so much to tell you… so much to ask you," Erik said.

They both stared at one another, teary-eyed and grateful.

"I won't hold you up. I wanted to tell you myself. We're bringing your mother and father home where they belong. Their proper home. They'll see their baby boy become the king he was destined to be," Dante said with pride.

"When you get here, I'm putting you to work. Don't think you're going to lounge around here. I need your old activist spirit. I need your wisdom."

"It's all yours," Dante said.

Erik lowered his head and burst into tears.

"The sun will never set on us again," Erik said.

"That I would love to see," Dante said. "I'll be with you soon, JaJa. Love you."

"I love you too."

Erik touched his kimoyo, and his Grandpop's image winked out.

"Prince N'Jadaka, are you ready?" Mpilo asked.

Erik took confident strides out of his office.

Califia and N'Jobu would finally be in Wakanda together.

Chapter 49 HERE.

@readingaddict1290

@issimplyaamazinggg

@eyeknowmywrites

@kitesatforestp

@fd-writes

@soufcakmistress

@cherrystainedlipsbaby

@tclaybon

@thadelightfulone

@allhailqueennel

@bartierbakarimobisson

@cpwtwot

@shookmcgookqueen

@yoyolovesbucky

@raysunshine78

@the-illlestt

@terrablaze514

@l-auteuse

@amirra88

@jimizwidow

@janelledarling

@chaneajoyyy

@sweetestdream92

@purple-apricots

@blackpinup22

@hennessystevens-udaku

@scrumptiouslytenaciouscrusade

@bugngiz

@stariamrry

@honeytoffee

@meilintheempressofdreams

@tyees

@eye-raq

@writerbee-ffs

@chocolatedream30

@childishgambinaa

@mygirlrenee

@thewaysheis—awkward

@tchallasbabymama

@lahuttor

@goodieyaya

@post-woke

@soufcakmistress

@yomiloo

@goddessofthundathighs

@nahimjustfeelingit-writes

@retroxvailles

@cydneyrenee4

@nizzle-mo

@cecereads209

@childishgambinaax

@gopaperless

@bombshellbre95

@tchallasbabymama

@musicisme333

@sister-winter73

@nccu-rnc

@sj206260358

@blmcd57110

@griot-of-wakanda

@musicisme333

#Black Boys Bloom Thorns First Volume 4 #Wet Sugar 2 #Killmonger Fanficton #Killlmonger Fanfic #Wakanda Forever #Black Panther Fanfiction #Marvel Fanfiction #T'Challa #Shuri #Ramonda #M'Baku #Pantherverse #Uzumaki Rebellion #Uzumaki Rebellion Writes

25 notes · View notes

reasoningdaily · 1 year

Text

The Rift Valley tells the entire human story from the start | Aeon Essays

We are restless even in death. Entombed in stone, our most distant ancestors still travel along Earth’s subterranean passageways. One of them, a man in his 20s, began his journey around 230,000 years ago after collapsing into marshland on the lush edge of a river delta feeding a vast lake in East Africa’s Rift Valley. He became the earth in which he lay as nutrients leached from his body and his bone mineralised into fossil. Buried in the sediment of the Rift, he moved as the earth moved: gradually, inexorably.

Millions of years before he died, tectonic processes began pushing the Rift Valley up and apart, like a mighty inhalation inflating the ribcage of the African continent. The force of it peeled apart a 4,000-mile fissure in Earth’s crust. As geological movements continued, and the rift grew, the land became pallbearer, lifting and carrying our ancestor away to Omo-Kibish in southern Ethiopia where, in 1967, a team of Kenyan archaeologists led by Richard Leakey disinterred his shattered remains from an eroding rock bank.

Lifted from the ground, the man became the earliest anatomically modern human, and the start of a new branch – Homo sapiens – on the tangled family tree of humanity that first sprouted 4 million years ago. Unearthed, he emerged into the same air and the same sunlight, the same crested larks greeting the same rising sun, the same swifts darting through the same acacia trees. But it was a different world, too: the nearby lake had retreated hundreds of miles, the delta had long since narrowed to a river, the spreading wetland had become parched scrub. His partial skull, named Omo 1, now resides in a recessed display case at Kenya’s national museum in Nairobi, near the edge of that immense fault line.

I don’t remember exactly when I first learned about the Rift Valley. I recall knowing almost nothing of it when I opened an atlas one day and saw, spread across two colourful pages, a large topographical map of the African continent. Toward the eastern edge of the landmass, a line of mountains, valleys and lakes – the products of the Rift – drew my eye and drove my imagination, more surely than either the yellow expanse of the Sahara or the green immensity of the Congo. Rainforests and deserts appeared uncomplicated, placid swathes of land in comparison with the fragmenting, shattering fissures of the Rift.

On a map, you can trace the valley’s path from the tropical coastal lowlands of Mozambique to the Red Sea shores of the Arabian Peninsula. It heads due north, up the length of Lake Malawi, before splitting. The western branch takes a left turn, carving a scythe-shaped crescent of deep lake-filled valleys – Tanganyika, Kivu, Edward – that form natural borders between the Democratic Republic of Congo and a succession of eastern neighbours: Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda. But the western branch peters out, becoming the broad shallow valley of the White Nile before dissipating in the Sudd, a vast swamp in South Sudan.

The eastern branch is more determined in its northward march. A hanging valley between steep ridges, it runs through the centre of Tanzania, weaving its way across Kenya and into Ethiopia where, in the northern Afar region, it splits again at what geologists call a ‘triple junction’, the point where three tectonic plates meet or, in this case, bid farewell. The Nubian and Somalian plates are pulling apart and both are pulling away from the Arabian plate to their north, deepening and widening the Rift Valley as they unzip the African continent. Here in the Rift, our origins and that of the land are uniquely entwined. Understanding this connection demands more than a bird’s-eye view of the continent.

The Rift Valley is the only place where human history can be seen in its entirety

Looking out across a landscape such as East Africa’s Rift Valley reveals a view of beauty and scale. But this way of seeing, however breath-taking, will only ever be a snapshot of the present, a static moment in time. Another way of looking comes from tipping your perspective 90 degrees, from the horizontal plane to the vertical axis, a shift from space to time, from geography to stratigraphy, which allows us to see the Rift in all its dizzying, vertiginous complexity. Here, among seemingly unending geological strata, we can gaze into what the natural philosopher John Playfair called ‘the abyss of time’, a description he made after he, James Hall and James Hutton in 1788 observed layered geological aeons in the rocky outcrops of Scotland’s Siccar Point – a revelation that would eventually lead Hutton to become the founder of modern geology. In the Rift Valley, this vertical, tilted way of seeing is all the more powerful because the story of the Rift is the story of all of us, our past, our present, and our future. It’s a landscape that offers a diachronous view of humanity that is essential to make sense of the Anthropocene, the putative geological epoch in which humans are understood to be a planetary force with Promethean powers of world-making and transformation.

The Rift Valley humbles us. It punctures the transcendent grandiosity of human exceptionalism by returning us to a specific time and a particular place: to the birth of our species. Here, we are confronted with a kind of homecoming as we discern our origins among rock, bones and dust. The Rift Valley is the only place where human history can be seen in its entirety, the only place we have perpetually inhabited, from our first faltering bipedal steps to the present day, when the planetary impacts of climatic changes and population growth can be keenly felt in the equatorial heat, in drought and floods, and in the chaotic urbanisation of fast-growing nations. The Rift is one of many frontiers in the climate crisis where we can witness a tangling of causes and effects.

But locating ourselves here, within Earth’s processes, and understanding ourselves as part of them, is more than just a way of seeing. It is a way of challenging the kind of short-term, atemporal, election-cycle thinking that is failing to deliver us from the climate and biodiversity crises. It allows us to conceive of our current moment not as an endpoint but as the culmination of millions of years of prior events, the fleeting staging point for what will come next, and echo for millennia to come. We exist on a continuum: a sliver in a sediment core bored out of the earth, a plot point in an unfolding narrative, of which we are both author and character. It brings the impact of what we do now into focus, allowing facts about atmospheric carbon or sea level rises to resolve as our present responsibilities.

The Rift is a place, but ‘rift’ is also a word. It’s a noun for splits in things or relationships, a geological term for the result of a process in which Earth shifts, and it’s a verb apt to describe our current connection to the planet: alienation, separation, breakdown. The Rift offers us another way of thinking.

That we come from the earth and return to it is not a burial metaphor but a fact. Geological processes create particular landforms that generate particular environments and support particular kinds of life. In a literal sense, the earth made us. The hominin fossils scattered through the Rift Valley are anthropological evidence but also confronting artefacts. Made of rock not bone, they are familiar yet unexpected, turning up in strange places, emerging from the dirt weirdly heavy, as if burdened with the physical weight of time. They are caught up in our ‘origin stories and endgames’, writes the geographer Kathryn Yusoff, as simultaneous manifestations of mortality and immortality. They embody both the vanishing brevity of an individual life and the near-eternity of a mineralised ‘geologic life’, once – as the philosopher Manuel DeLanda puts it in A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (1997) – bodies and bones cross ‘the threshold back into the world of rocks’. There is fear in this, but hope too, because we can neither measure, contend with, nor understand the Anthropocene without embedding ourselves in different timescales and grounding ourselves in the earth. Hominin fossils are a path to both.

The rain, wind and tectonics summon long-buried bones, skulls and teeth from the earth

Those species that cannot adapt, die. Humans, it turns out – fortunately for us, less so for the planet – are expert adapters. We had to be, because the Rift Valley in which we were born is a complex, fragmented, shifting place, so diverse in habitats that it seems to contain the world. It is as varied as it is immense, so broad that on all but the clearest of days its edges are lost in haze. From high on its eastern shoulder, successive hills descend thousands of feet to the plains below, like ridges of shoreward ocean swell. Here, the valley floor is hard-baked dirt, the hot air summoning dust devils to dance among whistling thorns, camphor and silver-leafed myrrh. Dormant volcanoes puncture the land, their ragged, uneven craters stark against the sky. Fissures snake across the earth. Valley basins are filled with vast lakes, or dried out and clogged with sand and sediment. An ice-capped mountain stands sentinel, its razor ridges of black basalt rearing out of cloud forest. Elsewhere, patches of woodland cluster on sky islands, or carpet hills and plateaus. In some of the world’s least hospitable lands, the rain, wind and tectonics summon long-buried bones, skulls and teeth from the earth. This is restless territory, a landscape of tumult and movement, and the birthplace of us all.

My forays into this territory over the past dozen years have only scratched at the surface of its immense variety. I have travelled to blistering basalt hillsides, damp old-growth forests, ancient volcanoes with razor rims, smoking geothermal vents, hardened fields of lava, eroding sandstone landscapes that spill fossils, lakes with water that is salty and warm, desert dunes with dizzying escarpments, gently wooded savannah, and rivers as clear as gin. Here, you can travel through ecosystems and landscapes, but also through time

I used to live beside the Rift. For many years, my Nairobi home was 30 kilometres from the clenched knuckles of the Valley’s Ngong Hills, which slope downwards to meet a broad, flat ridge. Here, the road out of the city makes a sharp turn to the right, pitching over the escarpment’s edge before weaving its way, thousands of feet downwards over dozens of kilometres, through patchy pasture and whistling thorns. The weather is always unsettled here and, at 6,500 feet can be cold even on the clearest and brightest of days.

One particularly chilly bend in the road has been given the name ‘Corner Baridi’, cold corner. Occasionally, I would sit here, on scrubby grass by the crumbling edge of a ribbon of old tarmac, and look westwards across a transect of the Rift Valley as young herders wandered past, bells jangling at their goats’ necks. The view was always spectacular, never tired: a giant’s staircase of descending bluffs, steep, rocky and wooded, volcanic peaks and ridges, the sheen of Lake Magadi, a smudge of smoke above Ol Doinyo Lengai’s active caldera, the mirrored surface of Lake Natron, the undulating expanse of the valley floor.

And the feeling the scene conjured was always the same: awe, and nostalgia, in its original sense of a longing for home, a knowledge rooted in bone not books. This is where Homo sapiens are from. This is fundamental terrane, where all our stories begin. Sitting, I would picture the landscape as a time-lapse film, changing over millions of years with spectral life drifting across its shifting surface like smoke.

Humankind was forged in the tectonic crucible of the Rift Valley. The physical and cognitive advances that led to Homo sapiens were driven by changes of topography and climate right here, as Earth tipped on its axis and its surface roiled with volcanism, creating a complex, fragmented environment that demanded a creative, problem-solving creature.

Much of what we know of human evolution in the Rift Valley builds on the fossil finds and theoretical thinking of Richard Leakey, the renowned Kenyan palaeoanthropologist. Over the years I lived in Nairobi, we met and talked on various occasions and, one day in 2021, I visited him at his home, a few miles from Corner Baridi.

Millennia from now, the Rift Valley will have torn the landmass apart and become the floor of a new sea

It was a damp, chilly morning and, when I arrived, Leakey was finishing some toast with jam. Halved red grapefruit and a pot of stovetop espresso coffee sat on the Lazy Susan, a clutch bag stuffed with pills and tubes of Deep Heat and arthritis gel lay on the table among the breakfast debris, a walking stick hung from the doorknob behind him, and from the cuffs of his safari shorts extended two metal prosthetic legs, ending in a pair of brown leather shoes.

Afterwards, I drove out to the spot where Leakey envisioned his museum being built: a dramatic basalt outcropping amid knee-high grass and claw-branched acacias, perched at the end of a ridge, the land falling precipitously away on three sides. It felt like an immense pulpit or perhaps, given Leakey’s paternal, didactic style, atheist beliefs, and academic rigour, a lectern.

A little way north of Leakey’s home, beyond Corner Baridi, a new railway tunnel burrows through the Ngong Hills to the foot of the escarpment where there is a town of low-slung concrete, and unfinished roofs punctured by reinforced steel bars. For most hours of most days, lorries rumble by, nose to tail, belching smoke and leaking oil. They ferry goods back and forth across the valley plains. The new railway will do the same, moving more stuff, more quickly. The railway, like the road, is indifferent to its surroundings, its berms, bridges, cuttings and tunnels defy topography, mock geography.

Running perpendicular to these transport arteries, pylons stride across the landscape, bringing electricity in high voltage lines from a wind farm in the far north to a new relay station at the foot of a dormant volcano. The promise of all this infrastructure increases the land’s value and, where once there were open plains, now there are fences, For Sale signs, and quarter-acre plots sold in their hundreds. Occasionally, geology intervenes, as it did early one March morning in 2018 when Eliud Njoroge Mbugua’s home disappeared.

It began with a feathering crack scurrying across his cement floor, which widened as the hours passed. Then the crack became a fissure, and eventually split his cinderblock shack apart, hauling its tin-roofed remnants into the depths. Close by, the highway was also torn in two. The next day, journalists launched drones into the sky capturing footage that revealed a lightning-bolt crack in the earth stretching hundreds of metres across the flat valley floor. Breathless news reports followed, mangling the science and making out that an apocalyptic splitting of the African continent was underway. They were half-right.

Ten thousand millennia from now, the Rift Valley will have torn the landmass apart and become the floor of a new sea. Where the reports were wrong, however, was in failing to recognise that Mbugua’s home had fallen victim to old tectonics, not new ones: heavy rains had washed away the compacted sediment on which his home had been built, revealing a fault line hidden below the surface. Sometimes, the changes here can point us forward in time, toward our endings. But more often, they point backwards.

Just a few years earlier, when I first moved to Nairobi, the railway line and pylons did not exist. Such is the velocity of change that, a generation ago, the nearby hardscrabble truck stop town of Mai Mahiu also did not exist. If we go four generations back, there were neither trucks nor the roads to carry them, neither fence posts nor brick homes. The land may look empty in this imagined past, but is not: pastoralist herders graze their cows, moving in search of grass and water for their cattle, sharing the valley with herds of elephant, giraffe and antelope, and the lions that stalk them.

Thousands of years earlier still, and the herders are gone, too. Their forebears are more than 1,000 miles to the northwest, grazing their herds on pastures that will become the Sahara as temperatures rise in the millennia following the end of the ice age, the great northern glaciers retreat and humidity falls, parching the African land. Instead, the valley is home to hunter-gatherers and fishermen who tread the land with a lighter foot.

Go further. At the dawn of the Holocene – the warm interglacial period that began 12,000 years ago and may be coming to a close – the Rift is different, filled with forests of cedar, yellowwood and olive, sedge in the understory. The temperature is cooler, the climate wetter. Dispersed communities of human hunter-gatherers, semi-nomads, live together, surviving on berries, grasses and meat, cooking with fire, hunting with sharpened stone. Others of us have already left during the preceding 40,000 years, moving north up the Rift to colonise what will come to be called the Middle East, Europe, Asia, the Americas.

As geology remakes the land, climate makes its power felt too, swinging between humidity and aridity

Some 200,000 years ago, the Rift is inhabited by the earliest creature that is undoubtedly us: the first Homo sapiens, like our ancestor found in Ethiopia. Scrubbed and dressed, he would not turn heads on the streets of modern-day Nairobi, London or New York. At this time, our ancestors are here, and only here: in the Rift.

Two million years ago, we are not alone. There are at least two species of our Homo genus sharing the Rift with the more ape-like, thicker-skulled and less dexterous members of the hominin family: Australopithecus and Paranthropus. A million years earlier, a small, ape-like Australopithecus (whom archaeologists will one day name ‘Lucy’) lopes about on two legs through a mid-Pliocene world that is even less recognisable, full of megafauna, forests and vast lakes.

Further still – rewinding into the deep time of geology and tectonics, through the Pliocene and Miocene – there is nothing we could call ‘us’ anymore. The landscape has shifted and changed. As geology remakes the land, climate makes its power felt too, swinging between humidity and aridity. Earth wobbles on its axis and spins through its orbit, bringing millennia-long periods of oscillation between wetness and dryness. The acute climate sensitivity of the equatorial valley means basin lakes become deserts, and salt pans fill with water.

On higher ground, trees and grasses engage in an endless waltz, ceding and gaining ground, as atmospheric carbon levels rise and fall, favouring one family of plant, then the other. Eventually, the Rift Valley itself is gone, closing up as Earth’s crust slumps back towards sea level and the magma beneath calms and subsides. A continent-spanning tropical forest, exuberant in its humidity, covers Africa from coast to coast. High in the branches of an immense tree sits a small ape, the common ancestor of human and chimpanzee before tectonics, celestial mechanics and climate conspire to draw us apart, beginning the long, slow process of splitting, separating, fissuring, that leads to today, tens of millions of years later, but perhaps at the same latitude and longitude of that immense tree: a degree and a half south, 36.5 degrees west, on a patch of scrubby grass at the edge of the Rift.

5 notes · View notes