More than Human Allies & the Foods We Can’t Forget

THIS SERIES IS PART OF A LARGER STORY OF KNOWLEDGE PASSED DOWN THROUGH THE SKIN, STOMACHS AND BLOOD OF AFRICAN AND AFRICAN DESCENDED PEOPLES. No matter where we go, a piece of home lingers along the paths we take. Though fragments of home will always exist, there are certain processes, and ceremonies that require an entire ecosystem to replicate. This photo series depicts a day dedicated to two such processes; grinding Cocoa and collecting Shea fruit. The images are not focused on the chocolate or shea butter we would produce days later, but on the tools of our creation. We see the Shea tree, older than the Nation of Ghana; a hand broom on the cacao grinding stone; the architecture of a traditional home and the land that inspired it. This collection of images centers the objects that make these processes possible because they serve as anchor points that ground those of us in the present to the Indigenous food production cycles that predate and outlive us.

These photos were taken during a week-long learning intensive on traditional Northern Ghanaian Foodways, hosted by Tongo Oasis in the home of the Talensi people known as the town of Tongo, just outside Bolgatanga in the Upper East Region of Ghana.

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