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Videos on traditional food systems

The Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE) based in McGill University, Canada, responded to requests from indigenous leaders from around the world to help stop loss of traditional food system knowledge with research and community-driven activities that bridge the generation.

This series of videos presents highlights from 12 indigenous community areas in 9 countries, and is intended to con tribute to the evidence base used to make global policies to protect Indigenous Peoples’ food resources and promote good health.

Thanks to Lois Englberger for the tip.

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Livestock bring books, ice cream

Donkeys are being used to cart books around the Ethiopian countryside as part of a literacy campaign.

The donkeys are not just a gimmick – in rural Ethiopia and provincial towns like Awassa, horse-drawn buggies and donkey carts are a normal form of transport.

But the project also tries to teach the children about respect for animals.

Donkeys here are generally despised and often ill-treated, but these two working donkeys wear the colourful embroidered trappings usually reserved for riding horses.

Northern Kenya, in contrast, has camel libraries. Speaking of camels, we’ve just missed the Pushkar Camel Fair. But I wonder if we’re too late for the camel ice cream.

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Traditional African vegetables hit the mainstream

It’s not really all that long since we brought together researchers on that overlooked portion of African agrobiodiversity that is its traditional vegetables for one of the first ever times. I wonder how many of us ever thought that in little more that 10 years we would be able to buy terere and managu and the like wrapped in plastic and barcoded in supermarkets in Kenya:

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Or indeed buy nicely packaged and labelled seed from small agricultural suppliers in places like Limuru:

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Preparation is time-consuming and fiddly, sure:

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But the taste and nutrients are worth it, as more and more people are finding out. We had some Amaranthus for Christmas lunch, from grandma’s shamba. Can’t get much more mainstream than that.