Lupita Nyongo’s character in ‘12 Years A Slave’ reveals to
us why people of African descent obsess about cleanliness. The enslaver was
about to beat her man and fellow Oscar nominee, Chiwetel Ejiofor, for daring to try and protect her when the lecherous white man wanted to abuse her for not being at his call and beck, but Lupita's character confessed that
she went to Shaw's plantation to borrow some soap in order to clean herself after working all
day in the cotton fields, picking five hundred to six hundred pounds of cotton, day in day out and smelling so much she made herself gay. The way she begged the white man suggested that she
was cleaning herself for the jealous enslaver, knowing that he was fond of raping her - which
was perhaps the reason why the white wife refused to give her any soap, unlike the others. What
does the soap scene in the multiple Oscar-winning movie teach us especially when no white person in the movie was ever seen having a wash while the Africans were scrubbed repeatedly as if they were inherently dirty?
In chapter 12 of her best selling book, Tapping the Power Within, Iyanla Vazant stated: ‘I have a
confession. I am and have been for quite some time a “soap whore”. This
shocking self-mocking confession detailed her obsession with soaps of all kinds
and smells, including a single soap that cost $35.00 and overburdening gift
soaps that filled her house and made her to beg friends to stop giving her more
soap gifts after her attempt to become a home soap-maker. She told
readers that Mother Mary had given her a spiritual bathe with cold water, raw
eggs and lemon for scrubbing and scented warm water. There was no mention of
soap in that recipe but for some reason, her addiction to soap led her to
believe that soap was a part of any spiritual bathe until she gradually cured
herself from that obsession.
In the conversation between bell hooks and Cornel West, Breaking Bread, they wondered why people
of African descent are obsessed with cleanliness. In her self-help book for black women, bell hooks observed on page 80 of Sisters of the Yam as follows: 'If that white world told us we were dirty and ugly and smelled bad, we retreated into the comfort and warmth of our bathtubs... and remind ourselves that "white folks don't know everything." Olaudah Equiano highlighted
this in his interesting narrative in which he pointed out the unhygienic habits
of his white captors, during the trans Atlantic voyage, in sharp contrast to
the strict rules about washing hands before a meal and sweeping the
surroundings clean in his Igbo homeland.
Today, Africans remain enslaved to soap and we wash
sometimes multiple times a day with ‘medicated soap’ in order to be washed as
white as snow, according to a Christian hymn. Some black women mash up the
medicated soap to apply to their skin as a bleaching cream and some in Southern
Africa use soap for what is called douching of the private parts because it is
alleged that their men like ‘dry sex’. Europeans, on the other hand, are
notorious for their reluctance to bathe with soap – they would wash their faces
and under their armpits in order to conserve the hot water and save money on
heating during the winter – and they tend to stink up the elevator with the
smell of garlic. Nine of the ten celebrities who are said to smell awful appear white and the main reason is that they rarely take a shower and do not use deodorants.
Recently, I was visiting my family in Nigeria and one of my
nieces was miserable. I asked the older niece what was wrong with the two-year
old baby and she removed her diapers to show a nasty pealed bottom that was red
like raw meat on her otherwise lovely dark ebony skin. I was told that the
baby’s mother had taken her to the best hospitals but that the dermatological
prescription was ineffective. She turned to herbalists who gave her some
concoctions to apply to the rashes but they did not appear to work either.
So I asked them what soap they wash her with. They told me with
a sense of pride that it was medicated soap. I told them that the soap was the cause
of the rashes and that they should stop washing the baby with soap for her body
to heal naturally. They laughed at me as if I was dumb. ‘Huh!’ They cried,
holding their noses in mock disgust at some nasty smell supposedly coming from
my body. ‘Professor does not wash with soap O!’ They jeered at me. Fine, I told
them, let us do an experiment and if it does not work after two days, you can
go back to medicated soap. Well, after only 24 hours, the baby was better and
in 48 hours she was completely healed by being washed with only water!
They started looking at me as if I am a magician but I
explained to them that there is something known as the hygiene hypothesis which
states that the more obsessively we wash with antibacterial soap, the more
likely we will attract bacterial infections on the skin. As soon as you start washing with only
water on most days, your skin will glow and people will start wondering what
cream you are using. You can still use soap once a week, like shampoo, but not
daily or twice a day as we Africans tend to obsessively do. The wife of a
cousin in the US cried over the phone that her new born baby had lost all his
hair and that the prescriptions by the doctors left his skin dry and scaly.
Wash him with only water, I said. He was healed instantly too.
Iyanla Vanzant traces the connection between a bathe and
spirituality to ancient Jewish traditions and to ancient Rome and Greece. She
also traces it to the belief among the Yoruba that Yemoja – the Goddess of the
sea salt water – and Osun, the Goddess of the fresh water streams are linked
with cleansing bathes. The Japanese use their bath-tub for soaking only and use
a shower to wash before the soak with bathe salt but with no soap.
What is not commonly known is that the first time a bathe
was mentioned in the Bible was with reference to Pharaoh’s daughter going to
the river Nile for a bathe and finding a basket floating with a baby in it
(Exodus, Ch. 2). Prior to this, the references to washing in Genesis were
references to the washing of hands and feet as cleansing rituals. Subsequently,
Liviticus Chapter 15 commanded the people dozens of times to ‘bathe with water’
in order to heal the sick and purify the body, a practice that Moses obviously
learned in ancient Egypt.
The only times bathing with soap was mentioned in the Bible
were to emphasize that no matter how much soap they used, their iniquities
would not be washed away. See, for example, Job 9:20, and especially Jeremiah
2:22 which states “Although you wash yourself with soap and use an abundance of cleansing powder, the stain of your
guilt is still before me,” declares the Sovereign Lord.’
Beloved people of the world, the great unwashed poor who are
despised by those suffering from affluenza, rejoice for you can save your
scarce money by not obsessively buying lots of bathing soap. Wash with water
for better dermatological health. You will notice a clear difference within 24
hours and in two weeks, your skin will be spot-free, itch-free, odor-free and
radiating light. Your eye-sights would improve naturally too for the active
ingredient in soap, Potassium, K, is a highly inflammable chemical that has no
business anywhere near your eyes.
This is one of my discoveries in the technologies of the
self that I documented in my book, ADAM: Africana Drug-Free Alternative
Medicine. I have tried several times to access NIH grants to clinically trial
this powerful health technology that is completely free of charge but the
grants-officers mock my grants applications and even order me to withdraw my
applications rather than just reject them as is normal. What are they afraid
of? That the hypothesis may be supported and soap industries may collapse while
the people enjoy greater health free of charge?
People should feel free to try this health technology to
care for their skin free of charge and if it works for you as I am certain that
it will, please send me your testimonies to be documented anonymously. I appeal
particularly to women who insist on washing their ‘essential parts’ with soap
daily without realizing that they are drying up the natural oil that lubricates
those parts and therefore they are exposing themselves to bruises and making
themselves vulnerable to infections. The same goes for men who have developed
crutch itch from soap residues especially in Africa where most people in rural
areas wash with half a bucket of water that is not enough to wash off all the
soaping that is repeated sometimes multiple times a day.
NGO teaches AIDS patients how to make soap to help them
In many parts of Africa, HIV/AIDS researchers give out free
soap as an incentive to get people to participate in their research. In prisons
and immigrant detention centers in Europe and North America, one of the most
valuable commodities are soap rations. Some NGOs specialize in collecting used
soaps from hotels in Europe and North America, they melt them and form new soap
bars that they distribute to those smelly Africans with the good intentions
that paved the road to hell. Let my people wash with water, as the Good Book
says, that they will be healed!
This may be part of the reason why people of African descent
are more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS infection. Maybe AIDS stands for SAIDS – Soap
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. It is known that almost every AIDS patient
also suffers from nasty skin rashes. What if millions of AIDS patients try my
recommendation of washing with only water and they get healed of all those
rashes but also their immune system recovers free of charge? I hope that
everyone who benefits from my cost-free discovery will send me a donation to
support my further research into the drug-free health technology for the
cost-free healing of the nations.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment