Who dat da shroh dat rice? Dat rice fa we da eat...

It is so true that if that's all you know it seems normal.  Chile I eat rice with most things southern.  Let's see we have red rice, okra & rice, greens & rice...RICE RICE RICE.  So of course here in California when I would eat at other folks home I always asked "where's the rice" a brief silence would fall then they would say "o' we don't eat rice with this or that". Ha! And Hunna look at them just as fool as they would look at me.  Check this out, once I became a fixture in my husband's family, mind you a traditional Alabama southern family it would kill them how I made a small pot of white rice for our southern feast...funny thing though, everyone I've introduced to the idea has lalalalaluved it! Now listen...I get it. In a society where we clearly understand white bread, white rice, white sugar WHITE  WHITE WHITE is a big no no.... I guess thats payback because black cat, black magic...you get it?  Usually anything black is associated with negativity so now its the color white turn (teehee).  Anyhoo, I blv all things in moderation is fine and this is why,  brown rice is uuuuggghhhhhh!  Baaaaaby nature can keep she brown rice!!!!  I've tried it every whicha way and I'm sorry it taste like bark and tree leaves with a dash of dirt (yep I said it)!  Don't you dare ruin my fine southern Gullah cuisines with y'all's brown rice...

Now just to give you a lil background on how tightly bound we (geechee people) are to rice, in the 1700s white plantation owners promptly paid more for Afrikaans from west Africa in the rice growing regions like Sierra Leone.  In fact west Afrikaans were the largest group imported into South Carolina and Georgia coastlines.   Also Gullah people are direct descendants of true Afrikkan rice laborers.  Truly RICE intertwines Gullah people and the people of Sierra Leone together just like white on rice (pun intended).  American colonists (da white people) figured out quickly that rice grew well in moist areas and the southern coastlines, specifically South Carolina was perfect rice land due to its semi tropical earth.  Dem boy bun smart.  I guess when you have to eat you rather know how to plant food rather than wait on someone to feed ya!  

Anyway I love seeing portraits with women carrying woven baskets on their heads, baby on their back and a Gullah song on ee lip thinking about how good their rice wus gonna go with the scraps given to them, which is now considered a southern cuisine (side eye) and/or the fruits of their own labor (what little they had).  Our sea islands are truly the 'salt of the earth'. I couldn't be apart if a better culture/people.  The more I learn the more in love I become.  We deep init? 

Story by PT 

Refer to Africanheritage.com for additional information on "The Rice People"