BY: LINDA NCUBE
Growing Up at an Adventist Table
In the beginning of Creation everything was just perfect, and God said it was good. In the garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were given fruits and vegetation for their food consumption. According to the NIV Bible, Genesis 1:29, “Then God said, ‘I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.’” God as the Creator knew that the diet was sufficient for their bodily needs.
I grew up in a Seventh-day Adventist Church in Zimbabwe, and my father was a church elder for as long as I could remember. He loved that his family ate according to The Spirit of Prophecy. The Spirit of Prophecy is the church doctrine that teaches temperance in eating, according to our Prophetess, Ellen G White, who wrote many books on health and reform. There are two books that I vividly remember from our family library from which my father would make us read in the evening services after the Bible readings. These were Counsels on Diet and Food and The Ministry of Healing by Ellen G White. Each day he would assign a page or two for us, his five kids, to read, and he or my mother would then interpret and expand on what we had read. This explanation was important for us because, without it, we did not even understand or comprehend the meaning of what we read. My father told us that, by letting us do the readings, he was trying to cultivate in us a habit of liking to read while also improving our English, which would be helpful in our schoolwork.
My mother tried her best to live by the church ethics. The Seventh-day Adventist Church discourages the use of non-human animals and their products as food. I remember one night after the evening service at home, my father announced that he and my mom had decided that we would abstain from eating non-human animals. The family had little problem with the transition. But, our parents had to travel to the nearest city, which is around 700km round trip, to get the required foods and ingredients for our new diet, since the small town where we lived — Dete, in Hwange District — did not have most of the vegetarian items required. My maternal grandma stayed a 5 minutes’ walk from our house, and she did not take well to our family’s decision to be vegetarians. She would feed us meat when we visited her and told us not to tell our parents. She felt that we would be lacking in protein, and she always referred to members of our church who were vegan as folks who look malnourished. My grandma, in her old age, did this with a pure heart. She had concern for her grandchildren, and as a member of the Anglican Church, she did not understand the principles of the Adventists around food and the consumption of non-human animals.
My father sustained and provided for the family by having chickens. In the yard the fowl runs would, at one time, contain 50 broilers and 100 egg-laying hens. It was a small fowl run because we lived in a high density area of about 250 square meters. People who could afford such projects at that time were considered a better class, as they could choose to be involved in the so called “civilised” income generating projects, as compared to the poor who had the indigenous free range chickens. Though we had become vegetarians, we continued rearing the chickens, and we were taught that the broilers should be given a small space to roam around so that they would not waste energy but instead use their energy to make them fatter. I remember how we would be grateful for having broilers that would move just three steps or so and then sit down, not knowing how we were promoting the abuse of the farmed chickens. For us it was an achievement to have such chickens — chickens that ate store-bought feed as compared to the free range chickens. My father would boast to his customers that the broilers would help them save money as they had so much fat. No extra cooking oil required.
I feel guilty for the atrocities we caused to the chickens in the name of our survival and economic status. But, I am quick to forgive myself. We did not know any better. We were misled and taught to think by colonizers that this was the mark of our civilization — having chickens raised by Black people that could be consumed within five weeks.
Now that I know, as a Black Christian woman in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I seek to help myself and others to do what is right, to not make our tables be the cause of suffering for non-human animals. I consider it my mission to teach my church members about the need to adopt a plant-based diet, which does not promote the suffering of farmed animals that are consumed as food.
Our family also had a garden where my father planted foreign vegetables such as lettuce, baby marrows, eggplants, etc. My father worked in a local hotel in a game park, in addition to raising chickens, so he got to know and see whites’ food. He boasted about eating what the whites ate, poor man, unknowingly promoting white supremacy and colonization. I forgive him because he did not know any better. We all have been socialised to think that everything from the white community was perfect for us, and therefore, it made us better humans.
One of the many vegetables that we had in the garden was spinach, and all of my siblings hated it. Mother would cook it with peanut butter, and she would read to us from a church recipe book called Progressive Cooking by Paulina Long. On page 56, under the sub topic, “Spinach,” the book read, “The children should be taught to like it and eat it for health’s sake.” But I am happy now that spinach is one of my favourites. I no longer eat it for health’s sake. Instead, I enjoy it, with peanut butter. As I grew, I realised that our traditional Zimbawen diet was the healthiest and have since gone back to it even though my children do not like it. They always jokingly say, “Whatever mom eats is tasteless.”
What if we, Christians, listen to the instruction that was given at the time of Creation?
Assimilation, colonization, imperialism, and white supremacy made many people forget the traditions of their ancestors and the foods they ate. In fact, most Africans look at our ancestral foods with shame and associate it with poverty. As a Black woman from the Black community in Africa, I can tell you that we were socialised to associate everything from white people as better for us. But the betterment they taught us was foundational for building systems that were dangerous to us, for us, our food security, and our environment as well. Prior to our colonization and the arrival of white people, we cultivated most of our foods in traditional ways that were free from chemicals. These ways were very original to us and were nutritious as well. Colonization not only deprived indigenous people of food and ceremony, but also the cultural knowledge of food and its preparation was lost along the way. This includes teachings about wild plants and the ongoing controversies of hunting — be it trophy or sport hunting — whilst our ancestors hunted for food consumption. The colonizers also displaced the indigenous people from their fertile lands to barren land, and because the barren land could not produce enough food, Black people had no choice but to get into the cheap labour of the white man’s land.
The plate below is one of my favourite traditional dishes — pounded millet with herbed beans. I usually share such meals on the Sabbath lunch with my church mates. Millet is said to have originated more than 4000 years ago from a wild West African grass. The superfood tolerates adverse growth conditions and serves as an important food source in many parts of the world. As a Seventh-day Adventist, we mainly reserve the best foods for this day, Saturday, because it is a celebration day. The food is prepared on Fridays, and we primarily choose foods that do not spoil in a short span of time, especially for people who do not have refrigerators. Our faith is founded in Exodus 20:8–10 (Good News Bible), which says, “Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. You have six days in which to do your work, but the seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to me. On that day no one is to work, neither you, your children, your slaves, your animals, nor the foreigners who live in your country.” And again in Exodus 16:23, “The Lord has commanded that tomorrow is a holy day of rest, dedicated to him. Bake today what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. On Sabbath thus we do not do any work instead we spend the holy hours in the church. We observe the Sabbath from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset.”
Pounded millet with herbed beans
Now that I know better
Now that I know that plant-based eating is best for me, for non-human animals, and for the earth; now that I know that animals are beloved creatures just like myself — like the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, who after talking to Jesus, ran back to the city and told everyone what she had heard from Jesus; now that I know, it is my mission to tell others and to advocate for non-human animals. It is my mission to care for them in a way that promotes their five freedoms, as listed below:
Freedom from hunger and thirst
Freedom from discomfort
Freedom from pain, injury, and disease
Freedom to express normal and natural behaviour
Freedom from fear and distress
I am also committed to promoting eating that is similar to what God provided at the time of the Creation, the Eden diet, which is a form of eating by Black people for Black people. It is safe for the planet and does not include the abuse of other bodies. Non-human animals are here on planet earth with us to share life abundantly. They are not here to be a commodity or to be treated as a product. These are individual beings with feelings. They have the ability to experience pain, fear, and the desire to live. Non-human animals have love for their families and aim to protect them, for example the hen will fight the black eagle who is trying to snatch away its chicks from her. She is protecting her children because she loves them and cares for them. Let not my colonized, acquired taste for animal flesh be the cause of their pain. We can do better for ourselves and for non-humans, so help me God.