fat · foodway7 bonds · 7 sourced

shea butter

The tree is called women's gold locally, and the name is accurate about the labor and optimistic about the money.

savouryveganvegetarian

Cultural layer

Origin

The Sahel and Sudanian savanna; fat pressed from the nut of Vitellaria paradoxa, processed by women across Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana and northern Nigeria

Routes

A cooking fat and skin salve across the savanna belt for centuries; now largely exported into the global cosmetics industry, where the value is captured at the formulation end rather than the collection end

Context

Shea is a cooking fat that the export market decided was a cosmetic. The trees are not planted, they are protected in the parkland where they grow, and the nuts are collected and processed by women whose labor is the entire supply. What leaves the Sahel is raw butter; what returns is a branded jar priced on a different continent's terms. The tree is called women's gold locally, and the name is accurate about the labor and optimistic about the money.

Route

Pending

The routes are written. They are not yet mapped.

This entry's cultural layer already names where it came from and how it moved. What it does not yet carry is that movement as structure: ordered waypoints with real coordinates, and a mechanism on each leg. Until it does, the layer stays an empty slot rather than a drawn line, because a map built from prose would be a guess with a projection under it.

1 of 404 entries carries a mapped route · nutmeg is the prototype

What renders here when it lands