Becoming The Muse

The Great Pan African Bake Off

In the Great Kitchen Of Ideologies, 54 contestants work together, to bake the ultimate Pan African recipe in a revolutionary oven.

Ingredients:

1 cup of Rich Cultural Heritage
Sifted from local culture and infused with generations of stories and folktales with song and distance.

1 cup of Ubuntu
Freshly harvested from the garden of shared values and interconnectedness where we exist because of others.

½ a cup of Unity
Sieved from the dreams of African leaders, to bring nations together. Carefully separate unruly elements like xenophobia and tribalism which make it clump together.

A pinch of Colonial Butter
Imported from Imperial empires. Use as little as possible as it adds a touch of bitterness and sticks to the pan even after liberation.

Yeast Of Decolonisation
A revolutionary agent to compliment the colonial butter. It causes up-rising and empowerment but watch out as it tends to over-ferment yielding a tyrannical flavour.

Generous sprinkling of Sovereignty
Extracted from the struggle and hand filtered through blood, sweat and tears of patriots and financed by the taxes of citizens – it gives the recipe a piquant flavour of freedom and resilience but with some bittersweet notes.

A dash of modernisation (optional)
Mixing the old with the new, a home grown ingredient cultured from the global village. Note: it can overpower the cultural heritage leaving a rootless dish

Method

Mix the ingredients: Mix the ingredients together in a large pan of Africanism to chants and cheers of Africa Unite, Rise Up Africa, We Are Africa. Smooth out the lumps caused by colonisation, corruption, remove any bitter bits, division and conflict.

Kneading: The 54 leaders gather together at the kneading round table, taking turns t0 knead, land redristribution, peace, truth and reconciliation into the mix

Proofing: The dough is left to rest under the warm African sun, and it rises to the folklore, music and dance as ancestors watchover

Baking: Place into the oven preheated by shared-history. As the temperature rises there might be a bit of smoke but the dough should evenly rise.

Check if its done by dipping a knife of shared prosperity into the centre, nothing should stick.

Allow to cool. Cut into equal pieces and serve everyone.

Results

Pan Africanism is golden on the outside but it is prone to crumbling with each crumb an experience worth sharing, perhaps that’s the beauty—the imperfect blend of hope, history, and humor.

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