Journey to the stars: Linking the sun, energy, food and women

I GOT to learn that last Sunday was Mother’s Day. I had not been aware of the important day until we were recording a programme, “Amafa Ethu,” for Skyz Metro FM. Programme presenter Luke Mnkandla asked for a comment on the significance of the day to me. I had no hesitation to do that. I have always known African views regarding the role and importance of women in African communities and societies.

For quite a while I had been writing about the role of women when it comes to their recognition as testified to by the ubiquitous decorative motifs, symbols and emblems that depict women in the context of their greater role than that of men in executing the continuity, perpetuity, eternity and endlessness of the human species. For example, at the Great Zimbabwe Monument, several designs and motifs express fertility and the majority of them are associated with women. The very first design is the circle, expressed in architecture and its variations that also depict womanhood as far as fertility goes. In addition to the circular designs, there are chevron patterns, and dentelles that express what the circle expresses and portrays. The chessboard is another motif that is found in several Iron Age stone monuments. Sometimes it is not easy for those without discerning minds to see that each rectangle has an imaginary line running from one corner to another. In the process, two triangles arranged back-to-back are the result.

 A triangle or open V is a variation of the circle and equally expresses the connection between women and fertility. However, a lone or single triangle does not meet the required African aesthetic elements. In order to impart beauty or art onto it, the motif is repeated in a regular, seasonal or rhythmic manner. The result is a chevron pattern that is very popular in Africa as one of the key decorative motifs that are executed on a wide range of utility objects. 

 

Of course, the chevron pattern is not confined to the African continent alone. In Belarus, a mother, upon her daughter’s marriage, gives a small piece of cloth bedecked with chevron patterns. Clearly, the meaning and message is the same. The mother is wishing her daughter to bring forth babies in her marriage. The Reverend Paul Bayethe Damasane who, like me, has interest in African decorative motifs and what they represent and symbolise, gave me this information.

It turns out that at Great Zimbabwe the only structure representing manhood is the stone conical tower whose top part was mutilated by Karl Mauch in the vain hope there was gold stashed in the gigantic male sex organ made out of stone. Of course, the megalithic male sex organ is provided with a pair of stone testes that are placed accurately in anatomical terms. At the Stonehenge, the same expressions are to be found, though they are fashioned out of the available material, limestone. The rest are female-inspired decorative motifs that are artistic while at the same time, they express fundamental African ideas relating to sexuality and the role it plays in effecting the continuity of the human race.

Enough of sexuality expressed through stones that, like sexuality, express eternity. Back to the Woman’s Day. When I was asked to make some impromptu comment, I relied on what was relevant to the current series of articles that I am penning. It is all about stars and other cosmic bodies. A day or two earlier it had dawned on me that as human beings and indeed all other forms of life on earth are dependent on the interaction between heaven and earth.

This may have been influenced by my preoccupation with agroecology that I am teaching to some rural communities in Matabeleland South. I found myself linking what I have been doing regarding the summer solstice and its significance in the Stonehenge located within the Salisbury Plain in England. Movement and tilt of the sun (actually of the earth) made the summer solstice the longest day and therefore potentially the day characterised by maximum potency. To most of us, the sun is located in the heavens. It takes the all-important light millions of years to reach earth.

Green leaves intercept the light energy that is absorbed by the chlorophyll by making use of energy from the sun. Food is manufactured in the leaves that are in essence factories that produce food. Mothers then consume the food that contains energy from the sun. When they consume meat, they are indirectly eating food made by leaves that consume the children of the earth, Mother Earth, who is fertilised by the sun. Mothers feed their babies in the womb across the placenta where food exchanges take place. The zygote, later the embryo and finally the foetus are fed for nine months before they are born. This I have always known from Biology lessons that I did at secondary school and later at college.

However, back then I did not fully comprehend that a tree or plant is intrinsically linked to the heavens. Now I began to imagine that at the beginning there was just one small and unified universe that came into being following the Big Bang or Creation, depending on one’s belief. The separation then came. However, the trees and plants continued to be linked and connected to the forming heavens and the earth.

The distance hit me hard, a distance that I did not hitherto comprehend. A leaf is a magical factory that relies on the energy from the sun, a stellar component of the universe. This is to say, for our food, we are dependent on the heavens. Light from the sun is an important ingredient manufacturing process-taking place in the leaf. Mother Earth provides the much-needed carbon dioxide. The soil provides anchorage and water alongside manure and mineral salts. Food is manufactured in the leaf and stored in various forms such as cereals, stem tubers, root tubers and leaves, inter alia. Mothers derive energy from food that is unlocked during the process of metabolism.

Are humans not eating food in order to get energy? This is obvious. Energy is mostly what the flora and fauna need for their life processes. I began to realise that we comprise primarily and essentially of energy. This, I now realise, is the ubiquitous phenomenon in the world and the universe. The material component is there to facilitate storage of energy and its release at the right time, under the right conditions. Everything is primarily energy. 

Energy is stored in the material component that will release the energy when needed. There is energy in molecular bonding. Gravity and friction are better understood in terms of energy. Energy facilitates movement, communication, chemical bonding and virtually all body systems and processes. The world, and probably the entire universe, is about energy that is intangible and little appreciated by many of us.

I began thinking about the witch of Mufakose who fell out of favour with fellow passengers aboard a chitundumuseresere (winnowing basket) that was taking them to Mt Darwin. Of course, we are not privy to the airborne quarrels that ensued high up in the dark night. All we know is that the passengers overflew a house that was fortified with some anti-witch missiles arraigned by a woman traditional doctor.

The witch was stark naked with only thick darkness as her clothes. By 5.00am, a curious crowd had gathered to watch with glee the unfamiliar spectacle who by then realised her nudity and sought to cover her body. Energy in the antiballistic missiles was used to bring down the woman and to power their ingeniously designed craft. Energy is what makes all of us move. In the absence of energy we cannot move, we cannot blink. Even when we break wind, energy is required. Poor woman, she missed the sumptuous human flesh that the team was destined to consume that far away where death had been reported. 

I saw some link and connectedness among several phenomena: the sun, energy, food and women. I was clear that I was on course in terms of what I am writing about under the banner, “Journey to the Stars.” The ancients were alert to the role of stars and that their own fate depended on the celestial and other cosmic bodies.

In their case, they built megalithic structures in which they created rituals and ceremonies around the monuments. They knew and appreciated the movement and positions of the celestial bodies in the firmament. The bodies and their movements and resulting positions influenced the available energy on earth. We depend upon the energy from the sun to power all life processes that are dependent upon the provision of energy. Can we therefore imagine life on earth in the absence of the sun and the energy that it emits and is trapped by the leaves (the green chlorophyll) to make food?

That was my message to our listeners on Mother’s Day. It was some new dawn for me in terms of perceiving food in the context of energy and the more important link and connectedness between the heavens, the earth, women and children. We have in the past demonstrated that women are more natural than men are. This is to say they are more linked to nature, in particular the moon, a concept shared in common by several communities of the world. 

Nature knows who its mother is. Whoever saw calves follow a bull as their father? Calves need no teaching that the cows are their mothers. A bull knows no mother, no grandmother, no aunt, no sister, nor cousin. All that it sees are females! Happy Mother’s Day.