Dictated by the old religion, black-eyed peas were eaten on New Year's Day, along with the heads of things, with greens for cash and peas for change. Nobody knew that in Kongo, greens symbolized life and vitality, even as the Creoles added new greens to their gumbo zherbes, each one representing a new friend in the year to come. The Manding call the cowpea "soso," and the Wolof call them "nyebe." An ancient staple of the diet in Senegambia and its hin-terlands, the black-eyed pea grows well in hot, drought-conducive conditions and is a symbol of resilience, mercy, and kindness. Nyebe are the kind of cooked food one gives as sadaka-righteously given charity-to beggars on the streets of Senegal.
Black-eyed peas represent fertility, the eye of God, and they are associated with the force of change and wind, the Yoruba goddess Oya. They were a spiritually potent food long before our arrival in America. Leftover peas are even used to repair the cracks in the outer walls of the great mosques of old Mali. "Black-eyed pea" in Yoruba is "ewa." Change the tone and it's the word for "beauty" and the word for "tradition." To ingest black-eyed peas is to become filled with beauty, and ancestral tradition.
