Nibbles: Bananas, Sorghum, Agave, Big vs small, Cauliflower, Wine, Chestnut, Farmers’ rights, India, Aquaculture, Medicinals, Tarpan

(Not much) agrobiodiversity on display in Nairobi museum

The main building of the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi has had a facelift, courtesy of the EU. Pretty good job on the outside, but the new exhibits were a bit of a disappointment.

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There’s a big hall about Kenya’s animals, of course, and another series of displays about its cultures, arranged by life-stages (birth, youth, adolescence, initiation: you get the picture), though this includes very little about agriculture:

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But there’s nothing at all on the country’s ecosystems and protected areas, and nothing on its plants, at least inside the building (apart from a display of an herbarium specimen in the small hall describing the museum’s history). There is a little botanic garden dedicated to medicinal plants (arranged by family, the wisdom of which is debatable), but this misses the opportunity of describing the Amaranthus on display as not just a medicinal but also a nutritious traditional leafy green (see my next post):

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However, the entrance hall does have a terrific display of cucurbit diversity:

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These bottle gourds are used by the Maasai and other pastoralists to store water, milk, blood, and mixtures thereof. Here’s a close-up:

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