Love, Friendship & Muringakaya: A Story of Migration
Moringa has traveled well beyond the Indian subcontinent and forged a new identity, finding its way into new recipes and uses. Rekha Warrier finds that in the era of climate change, as plants and people find themselves moving and putting down roots along new frontiers, hybrid cultures and cuisines emerge.
I met Gayle by the happiest of happenstances in the fall of 2020. It was a Saturday morning, and I felt a hankering for that uniquely south Indian lentil preparation called sambar. Over the course of my stay in the United States, I had always prepared the dish sans its star ingredient, the tender pods of the Moringa oleifera tree. Like me, the moringa tree is native to India. I had never encountered a moringa tree or seen its pods being sold at a market in the US. That morning too, I was resigned to a sambar without moringa pods. I cooked the lentils and decided to finish making the recipe after a trip to the farmers market in the town plaza. There, in a corner of the plaza, I saw an astonishing sight; a golf cart packed to the brim with long pods and jars of winged seeds. After my astonishment subsided, I looked up to see Gayle, grinning at me from behind the steering wheel, saying “They are moringa. Take as many as you want!”.
Thus, on a fine fall morning in the small Arizona town of Ajo, located in the heart of the Sonoran Desert, over the span of a few minutes, a series of serendipitous events unfolded. I found a friend; Gayle found a willing scrabble partner, and a pot of stew found its missing ingredient. The next day we met at her delightful home, amidst a flurry of birds and the shade of well-loved trees for a game of scrabble. She beat me handily that day, and then again on multiple weekend afternoons. Gayle played to win, but she was also besotted by the beauty of words. A good play wasn’t just about points, it was about putting down a rare word. From the most meager or vexing combination of letters, she would conjure words that would root and branch in unexpected directions, like the gangly moringa trees in her verdant garden.
Moringa oleifera, from a drawing by Pierre Jean-Francois Turpin, 1830.
How and why does a tree travel halfway across the world? While it is true that nobody has ever seen a tree walk, evidence written into our soils and snows tell us that trees do migrate. Through the frigid centuries of the Pleistocene, trees marched up and down the northern latitudes tracing the ebb and flow of glaciers. Now, in the rapidly warming days of the Anthropocene, trees are setting out again, on a long northward journey. Only some species will succeed in this perilous venture, finding friendly climes and fertile soils in places where neither man nor beast know their name.
Moringa pods | Image credit Outdoor happens
It is unclear when the moringa tree first arrived in the United States, or how it first left its native soils of the Indian subcontinent. They probably had an easier time on their trans-continental journey unlike many trees on the move today. They perhaps arrived as seeds in the pockets of early immigrants, who endeavoured to bring with them a semblance of the homes they left behind. Or maybe they sailed back in the company of silk and spices in the ships of early colonialists. Five moringa seeds, from trees planted decades ago by my grandmother, travelled back to Ajo with me last year; picked, dried and packed by my father into an empty bag of Lays chips, with planting instructions, and the gentle suggestion to put down my roots where I plant the seeds.
Today, moringa trees are grown in parts of the African continent, the Caribbean, central America, and in gardens such as Gayle’s in the southern United States. Along with multiple new homes, it has also found celebrity as the ‘miracle tree.’ While in India, I learned to use its pods and leaves in such comforting, homely preparations as muringakaya erissery and murigakaya ela kootaan; in the rest of the world, moringa has found its way into teas, medicines, and even watches. In Nigeria, the Fulani people cook the leaves with peanut cakes, whereas Gayle made a tea of moringa leaves and picked the most tender pods and leaves for salads. Moringa seed oil is now a high-value commodity used in everything from cosmetics to lubricating delicate precision instruments. This flowering of new possibilities on distant shores owes in part to the moringa’s own abilities to flourish where it is planted, and in part to the unbridled curiosity of those who encounter this wondrous tree.
Leaves of the moringa tree
The more we study trees, the more we learn that they are not that different from us. Just like human societies, we know today that a forest is as rife with friendships and philanthropy among its trees, as it is with competition. The kingdoms of plants and animals pulse with the same desire to flourish and find community. It is this desire that fuels the great migration that our changing climate has set in motion, where people, animals and trees of every hue are setting out, albeit asynchronously in search of a better home. This migration is triggering anxieties of invasions and cultural loss. But, with a little bit of curiosity, and a lot of love, the terrorizing prospects that climate change heralds could, in part, be replaced by the opportunity to weave a vibrant and syncretic future. This future, a feat of heart and imagination, would be one with new flavorful possibilities, and one where friends who parted ways in faraway homes may yet be reunited.
In the scorching desert town of Ajo, forty miles from the US-Mexico border, Galye managed to pull off this feat with veteran ease, creating a resilient oasis of care. In her beloved garden, intended as a community resource, an eclectic group of plants — moringa, acacias, agaves, figs, chiltepines (an ancestor of the modern chili), oranges and rosemary — grow together in lush camaraderie. Her stewardship also extended far beyond the garden walls, into the weathered wilderness of the Sonoran Desert. The humanitarian group that she helped establish continues to serve as a fount of humanity and compassion for the migrants who are compelled to navigate the deadly desertscape surrounding Ajo.
In the summer of 2021, Galye passed away unexpectedly at the age of 79, leaving behind memories for me that have seeped into words, spaces, and trees. The word topaz will forever remind me of the two of us bent over a scrabble board, marvelling at the little miracle of a perfect word finding its perfect spot; the corner of the town plaza, now a lasting reminder of the serendipities that bring friends into our lives. As for moringa trees, it will always connect me to Gayle’s insight about the extraordinary time that we find ourselves in. The last times we played scrabble she won two out of the three games we played. As I was leaving for my home, she said something to me, and the full import of those words have only dawned on me now. She said, “I love it that you could come by to play scrabble with me today, and I think my moringa trees are overjoyed to finally meet someone from their native lands.”
Rekha Warrier is an ecologist. She studies the intersections between food security and conservation.
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