Sugar Cane Roots
6.30 am in the morning van. A streak of dawn interrupts the sleepy darkness as we descend the escarpments that lead to the main highway. The passenger next to me is fast asleep and the driver onto something of a morning ritual.
In one hand, he holds the steering wheel. In the other is a stalk; a stalk of sugar cane held as if in brazen defiance to the ‘colonial’ traffic laws and, well, colonial products and ideas…
One: who needs to take breakfast with knife, fork and spoon — in one position? Besides, didn't they invent drive-ins and drive-throughs? Well, this is my version, I imagine him saying.
Two: who needs toothbrush made from pig hair bristles? Or ‘chemical’ packed toothpaste or even bitter-tasting mouthwash solutions when there’s sugar cane! God made ancestor cultivated sugar cane that sets your juices flowing and is sweet, oh so sweet!
Whoever said using tooth paste and brush increases blood circulation is ignorant of the health benefits of chewing a meter long sugar stalk, which clearly is an exercise in jaw dexterity and doubles up as a cranial massage.
And so begins my journey to my motherland; the land of sugar cane fields and sugar cane chewing drivers ferrying sugar cane lovers back to the village of their sugar cane roots.
