Apparently broccoli is a man-made plant. Legend has it that an Italian family by the name Broccoli artificially selected broccoli from the wild cabbage. The flowers of wild cabbage are not palatable to human taste. However, sometimes a cabbage can “accidentally” produce a flower that is slightly palatable.
Over the years, the Broccoli family carefully propagated the cabbage with the desirable features while weeding out those that were not palatable. Eventually, the edible flower aptly named broccoli became the dominant vegetable in their farms. It later became popular and spread throughout Europe, America and your local market.
The method of artificial selection is not extraordinary. Your grandmother knows the process too well. If she visits a relative and she’s given a tasty avocado the one that tastes like “blueband”, she will request to be given the seed which she will plant in her backyard. Soon she will treat her visitors to the tasty avocado. Her visitors will also ask for the seed and the blueband avocado will spread to various parts.
After every harvest, farmers put aside the best crops to be used as seed for the next planting season. They are also careful to ensure that they retain the “mbegu” of their best animals.
Any wise farmer only breeds and propagates the finest of her flock or plants. And weeds out the bad ones. My grandmother had a cow called nyamoibi which was good at “stealing “, producing milk and resilient against disease. After she joined the ancestors, we sold nyamoibi for a bowl of kamande. Yea, we are not wise.
Culture, our way of life, is a product of artificial selection. Parents, teachers, preachers, politicians, scientists and everyone contributes to culture in one way or the other. People mostly propagate ideas that they think are useful. Like farmers, when we interact with others, we are deliberately or inadvertently planting seeds.
Culture is like broccoli, blueband avocado or Nyamoibi. And we are all farmers. We choose what gets to spread.
Life is life
Fabio