Charles Onyango-Obbo
29 November 2007
column
THE US USUALLY TOUTS itself as a melting pot of many world cultures and likes to celebrate diversity. Now those values, including the vexing issue of religious freedom, are being tested, thanks to a sister from Guinea.
If you are an African, you might probably be a little embarrassed or wonder what the fuss is all about, just like if you are a white American or a European, you might be fascinated by some of the bizarre and exotic aspects of this tale.
A wire story a few days ago by Associated Press (AP), carried widely around the world, told of Ms Mamie Manneh, a New York resident. The African customs of Manneh and other West African immigrants have become the focus of an unusual criminal case against her.
Manneh is described as a modest woman with nine children. The case dates to early 2006, when federal inspectors at JFK Airport examined a shipment of 12 cardboard boxes from Guinea.
They were addressed to Manneh and, according to a flight manifest, contained African dresses and smoked fish with a value of $780 (Sh49,000).
Stashed underneath the fish, the inspectors found what West Africans refer to as bushmeat: "skulls, limbs and torsos of nonhuman primate species", plus the hoof and leg of a small antelope.
Three days later, federal agents were at Manneh's door, where she told them she ran a smoked fish importing business. She initially denied ordering any bushmeat from Africa or ever eating it while in the US. After she consented to a search, the agents came across a tiny, hairy arm hidden in her garage.
"Monkey", she explained, claiming the arm was sent to her out of the blue "as a gift from God in heaven."
Federal prosecutors hit Manneh with smuggling charges that accused her of violating import procedures, and suggested that she was a menace to man and beast alike.
A criminal complaint warned of "the potential health risks to humans, linking bushmeat to diseases like Lassa fever, Ebola, HIV, Sars and monkeypox."
The defence lawyer countered by accusing the government of picking on a poorly educated immigrant.
Manneh, 39, testified last year that before arriving in US more than 25 years ago, monkey meat was critical to her religious upbringing. At age seven, "I was baptised and they used that for the baptising ceremony," she told a judge.
Manneh is already serving a two-year sentence in state prison for trying to run over a woman she suspected of sleeping with her husband. If convicted of the federal charges, she faces up to five more years in prison and deportation.
THE PROSECUTION ALSO HAS dampened spirits at the church in Staten Island where Manneh and other African immigrants once packed the pews to practice a religion blending Christianity and traditional customs. One of the few worshippers left, Leona Artis, says the flock's craving for monkey meat is deeply misunderstood. Take Thanksgiving.
"Where some people have turkey, we'll have monkey meat," Artis said. "I've been eating it all my life. It's delicious."
Baptisms, Easter, Christmas, weddings - all are occasions for eating monkey (which is usually blessed by a pastor), Manneh's supporters said in a sworn statement filed with the court.
"We eat bushmeat," they said, "for our souls." I guess the big difference is that you can raise and multiply turkeys, but those who eat monkeys and gorillas don't have a restocking plan.
Less bizarre, but no doubt as intriguing, was a story in The Times (London) about the origins of chocolate. It turns out that humanity's love affair with chocolate began at least 500 years earlier than was thought previously.
Chemical residues found in pottery vessels from what is now Honduras have revealed that the ancient peoples of Central America were drinking chocolate beverages as long ago as 1150BC. The previous evidence was dated at about 600BC.
John Henderson, Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University who led the research, said it was likely that the distinctive taste of chocolate was stumbled upon by accident by ancient brewers fermenting cacao pulp to make a beer known later to the Spanish as chicha.
Now, who would have guessed that?
Japanese engineers, meanwhile, didn't stumble on one of their latest inventions by accident. They have developed a musical road surface, according to The Guardian. A team from the Hokkaido Industrial Research Institute has built a number of "melody roads", which use cars as tuning forks to play music as they travel.
You know the tune is going to change when you see highlighted coloured musical notes painted on the road.
So we leave you with the Indian billionaire, Mr Mukesh Ambani, recently identified as the world's richest man, with a fortune of over £30 billion (Sh1.9 trillion), which took him past Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Smith.
Recently, Mukesh bought his wife a "small" present - a fabulously kitted-out Airbus plane. Price? To him, a modest £30 million (Sh1.9 billion)!
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