This was the first time I had an experience of what it could be like if I didn’t have to rely on food as my main energy source.

Setting: The Northern Frontier District of Kenya, about a five hour walk from the closest town. A gracious Samburu family had invited me to live with them in their mud/dung home so I could learn the language and ways of their culture in order to better serve as a health care worker in the region. Being a vegetarian, I had mentally prepared myself to fit in with their traditional diet of milk, meat and blood.  Thankfully, it transpired that meat and blood were rare luxuries.  But the milk and chai (sweet milky tea) had a very distinctive acrid flavour and smell. Earlier, I had been told stories of how Maasai and Samburu would mix cows’ urine &/or blood into their milk, and despite my attempts to block it, this thought persisted in the back of my mind. 

Before sunrise, after the animals were milked, Yeyo (Mother) would give us a cup of sweet milky tea followed by copious amounts of the warm, smoky-tasting milk from the malas. 

While I was out with the ndoye (girls) roaming with flocks all day, we ate seasonal berries, and very occasionally dug up some roots to eat.  Upon our return home with the animals at sunset, we were given milk and chai for supper.  I so enjoyed this rhythm, the company and being ensconced in the wilds. 

However, within a week or two my senses revolted and my body staged a strike against the Samburu milk. I could no longer bring it close to my face without it triggering a retching reflex.  This was terribly embarrassing.  I apologized but could not explain it or override it.

Over the following week I only ingested a few berries while we were out with the flocks and managed to swallow a few sips of chai in the hut, just to try to appease Yeyo’s concerns.

It was an extraordinary experience, because although I was consuming next to nothing and spent most of my day walking, I felt fantastically strong, fit and joyful.  More extraordinary was that I felt absolutely no hunger or thirst.

Though I have fasted many times, I have never had my chains to food so thoroughly and effortlessly severed.  Often during fasts, particularly the first few days, I have to keep steering my thoughts away from thinking about food.  In this very odd condition it dawned on me just how much time and energy each day are consumed around food: The planning, shopping/harvesting, storage, preparing, eating, washing up,…

I felt such a sense of freedom that was also strangely empowering.

The days passed in this almost blissful condition of detachment from having to fuel my body.  However I was also aware that Yeyo and Nkoko (Grandmother) had become increasingly worried that I was sick. At least they could see that I looked well, energetic and happy, and as I learned more of their language and culture, we could communicate better.  They were all so gracious and kind to me.  I felt very blessed.

After about a week of this, one morning my hunger returned and I craved the taste of Samburu milk (kulay).  Some of the milk would be shaken in its mala until it became thick, curdled and tasted slightly soured – like yoghurt.  And, though at first I found this “kulay nowatoe” undrinkable, it soon became my favourite food there.  They all seemed to be relieved when I joined them for the milky meals again.  This extraordinary experience has stuck with me. I’ve wondered what my energy source was during that time and wonder if it was Prana from sunlight and the air.  I must have been in a certain state to have been able to access that possibility.  My overwhelming feelings were of gratitude, joy, awe and wonder as I entered this new world that was a blank canvas for me, without any narratives.  I had total trust in the situation and knew I just had to be alert in the moment to respond and integrate.  

Since then I have also contemplated on the amount of energy the body uses to digest and utilize food as our source of energy.  It actually seems quite an inefficient system when you think of all the myriad processes (including enzymes, increased blood supply…), teeth, glands & organs of digestion, detoxification and elimination involved to just sustain & fuel our bodies, let alone the suffering of people, animals, and earth in our quest to feed ourselves?  Could it be that one day our bodies might evolve beyond all of that and tap into a kind of photosynthesis process using Prana?