Smashin

@_kia

@thicksexyasswomen44😈

African bush elephant (Loxodonta africana) herd at Kruger National Park in South Africa

Roman Furrer

African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) mother and three month old calf, Mashatu Game Reserve, Botswana

Photographer: Suzi Eszterhas

O amor nunca perde o caminho de casa.

Adinkra

Magou Seck as Mossane in Sefi Faye’s 1996 eponymous epic. (Photo courtesy: RAIFF)

African bush elephant Loxodonta africana

Observed by callumevans, CC BY-NC

Três Orixás por Djanira da Motta e Silva, 1966. 

𝓜𝓪̃𝓮 𝓭'𝓪́𝓰𝓾𝓪, 𝓻𝓪𝓲𝓷𝓱𝓪 𝓭𝓪𝓼 𝓸𝓷𝓭𝓪𝓼, 𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓮𝓲𝓪 𝓭𝓸 𝓶𝓪𝓻

『IEMANJÁ』

Ahem. Dipping my toes back into the realm of reviewing books.

Working the Roots by Michele Lee

This is a wonderful book for all the Black and African American folks interested in herbal remedies used throughout the south during the last...I want to estimate most of the century. The cover claims for longer, but the interviewees were all alive when the author went out to gather information for the book.

Before the modern medical movement became accessible to Black people, families had to rely on their knowledge and their agricultural skills to make it when someone fell ill. Lee does a wonderful job of hunting down the oldest folks she can find to tap their brains about how they survived and what they used to do so, and the elders involved seemed very eager to pass on what they knew on their land and in their homes before it was forgotten.

I would tap this more as an herbal book rather than a spiritual book, although I use it as both. (I think I got the title recommendation from @biglizconjure's online course, but it's been a whole year since then so what do I know.) It goes biography by biography, detailing whose information comes from where and from what backgrounds, and the compiles to a glossary-by-symptom in the back. I've reviewed a lot of folk herbalism books and I have never been a big fan of poorly substantiated information, but this book is a well-organized historical record of folk remedies more than it is straight up declaring all recipes as fact. I wouldn't try all of them without serious research (there are a LOT of folk remedies that work, but, like, with really dangerous mechanisms, like using foxglove to stem bleeding on serious cuts), but a lot of the ones I've put a few other modern herbal research texts against have come out clean.

@ancestralmedicinemagic actually helped me tidy up one of these for a cramps tea a good while back. So, cheers! 🥂 10/10, do I recommend this title! I remember it being a touch expensive, so try asking your library to buy a copy if you can't afford a personal one. That way it's accessible for you to borrow and your library has one more interesting book to set out this February 😛

Blessings!

The garden keeps us busy as ever - today, all these lovely Aloe africana babies got individually repotted. Can you believe this were all under one single plant in a single pot? Whoever thinks container gardening is not fruitful, is truly missing something amazing. So much healing power, and so much life, in these green children 🥰.

Elephant (Loxodonta africana) with Egret resting on head, Amboseli National Park, Kenya.

Photographer: Will Burrard-Lucas

• Alberto de Lacerda - Átrio, 1996.

An African elephant (Loxodonta africana) crosses through the brush in Moremi National Park, Botswana

by jaffles

African bush elephant Loxodonta africana

Observed by nikx63, CC BY-NC

LA FAMILIA, Belkis Ayón, 1991