Mo Juba! — Kinimori

Mar 17

Mar 17 Mo Juba!

‘Mo juba’ is where I share some of the life lessons I take note of and take away with me as I explore our plant world, and simply live. My journey into the plant kingdom is opening and re-opening my eyes to what I think are valuable gems for the human soul. Well, my soul, at least. My mind and body too.

Hey, I’ve come upon new gems of learning already! For example, many of us will have heard about the benefits of being mindful and practising mindfulness. While gardening, I find that I am able to review and experience my inner thoughts and feelings (including the difficult ones) in a way that I might otherwise have struggled to do without it. At some point, I came to the realisation that what I was actually doing was practising mindfulness while gardening! The technique is used in psychology to help patients deal with certain mental health issues. The said mindfulness that I had tried to practice many times before but didn’t get very far because I struggled to ‘make it real’, if you know what I mean.

I am very aware that it is one thing to be cognisant of a lesson and to understand it intellectually. It can be quite another thing to ‘make it real’ and to successfully apply the learning to our lives, whether as a one-off change, or in increments.

I am sure that over time there will be more than a few more lessons to be learned. Some lessons I will miss altogether, some I will pick up on right away, some I may come to understand later. I am firm believer that situations that present learning opportunities will continue to come back again and again, sometimes in different shapes and formats, until we ‘get it’. Hopefully one day that lesson will rock up again and I’ll be able to say ‘Uh-huh! Yep! Got your number! and respond in a positively productive way.

So, why ‘Mo juba’? What does it mean? ‘Mo juba’ is a phrase that literally means something along the lines of ‘I hail’, I give reverence to’ or 'All hail’ in the language of the Yoruba people of south-western Nigeria. The phrase is used in traditional worship within the Yoruba pantheon. Today, the ‘Mo juba’ is not only the preserve of traditionalists. In it’s literal sense ‘Mo juba’ can be applied to the act of marvelling at or praising just about anything or anyone you want to give a ‘shout out’ to. Religious or otherwise.

Gardening. To the plant lovers out there, what better way is there to learn some of life’s lessons and to grow - naturally, amongst nature? Doing what you love? Mo juba!

I choose to use the phrase ‘Mo juba’ to acknowledge the life lessons I learn from the plant world and nature. Gems, I call them. Mo juba! And so it is.

I hope some of those gems will resonate with you too, just as this picture of a cluster of Mahonia acquifolium flower buds resonates with me. The winter sun magically striking the one open bud and some others in various stages of development makes them stand out link gems to me. Mo juba!