The Cassava Diaries

About 2-3 years ago I had an argument with a room full of opponents. The source of the disagreement? Cassava. Yes you heard me. It started with a comment I made about how nutritionally poor cassava is. This raised an uproar because apparently cassava has many fans among my African brothers and sisters. I guess it has seen so many of us through harsh times we are unwilling to concede to its uselessness in improving our nutritional status. The argument turned towards Africa's problems as most conversations do when two or more Africans gather together. And then the night went on...

What made me remember the cassava argument? Well I am in 2nd year of medical school and this past week we started our medical nutrition course. What well meaning nutrition course taught to aspiring medical professionals would be complete without paying homage to the foods which we in the motherland love yet which we consume to the demise of our immunological status in the fight against disease. For this very reason I must pay humble homage to cassava, plaintain, and yes, even yam. It's no wonder the Asians were eager to send these food crops our way and rarely continue to use them as part of their own diet. (Although i must mention that plaintain is indigenous to South America and not to the Asian continent).

So what is the importance retrieving the cassava argument especially years later when i cannot really remember the details of that climatic event? I mention it today because it represents in its entirety the woe that behooths myself and my fellow Africans. We hold dear to us the things we are familiar with, or the things that have served us well. For some its cassava, for others, its being able to navigate through the tiresome streets of Lagos, and for others still, it is knowing that you can go back home and nothing would have changed. How sad!

I have and continue to be challenged to seek that which could be better for my people, my country, my heritage, my future. The simple hope, no, the promise that lies in the desire for something better, that is what drives me to continue this journey in the hope that one day, we will no longer argue over cassava and how "good it has been to us."