Kemone's Food Fight

Kemone with papayas at Mariano's.

I’ve known Kemone Hendricks since she was a high schooler at ETHS. I led and she participated in an Evanston Arts Council and City of Evanston joint workforce development project called ArtSkills 2000, which gave Evanston kids summer jobs. She was a paid photographer with 19 peers. She and I got back in touch recently to talk about the business of photography, as well as health and wellness. This is some of what we talked about.

Q: Kemone, to me you look like the same skinny kid who I met about 17 years ago, but actually your body has gone through some big changes, besides giving birth twice. You’d gained some weight and you weren’t feeling good physically. What do you attribute the weight gain to and what do you attribute your weight loss and better health to?

Kemone: My weight gain started when I became depressed about the relationship I was in. I had started to eat a lot and also drink alcohol almost everyday to comfort myself. Food became a drug to me and I would eat to the point I would feel like throwing up sometimes, even if I was full I would continue eating. Eating became my happy place, the only time I would truly feel happy was while I was eating my favorite foods, but the weight gain made me even more depressed. The person whom I was in a relationship with also enjoyed eating and encouraged me to eat more and applauded my weight gain.

I always wanted to break the cycle, but wasn't quite sure how to. I was disgusted when I looked in the mirror and started hating myself. I didn't even recognize the person in the mirror anymore. I became so disgusted with myself I started searching the internet for the fastest way to lose weight. I associated losing weight with also losing the unhealthy relationship I was in. That thought made me feel free and happy, because if he wasn't around I wouldn't have anyone encouraging me to eat and promoting the very thing that made me hate the way I looked. All I wanted was to be the Kemone I once was—sometimes sad, but usually really happy, energetic, not caring what people thought of me. Deep down I knew I could never get her back the wound was too deep. But maybe somehow I could create a new Kemone, someone better than her? Someone kinda like her? Someone stronger than her? That wouldn't let this happen to her again?

So it began. A journey I'm still on this very day. I'm a all-or-nothing person, so if I commit to doing something I will succeed. But I'm also very impatient. I wanted it now! I couldn't stand the person in the mirror another day. So I got a gym membership, started taking one of the best appetite suppressant pills, worked out almost everyday, barely ate, drank lots of water and ignored everything else around me and before you new it I felt alive again. Hearing people say “OMG. You’re getting so skinny" became a drug to me.

Q: Your path to better health has included paying attention to what your body is telling you it needed, not what a diet guru might prescribe. What are some of the foods your body is telling you it wants to feel its best?

Kemone: So I soon realized that trying to starve myself left me with little to no energy. My body started telling me it needs fruits, veggies, something else to keep it going, but not too much to slow it down. So I would fast some days drinking green tea with 100% pure honey, water, and soup broth when craving flavor. I would do that for two days straight sometimes only one and then on the days that I did eat I would eat lots of fruits, protein (chicken breast), protein bars (no sugar added, gluten free). I wouldn't eat after 7 o'clock and if I did get hungry after that, I ate fruits only. Then I would cycle that same routine thru out the week. If I did eat something “bad” I would detox it out by drinking one of my favorite detox teas.

Green tea with a hint of mint is amazing, pure honey is amazing, blueberries do wonders for you, Fiji water best tasting water ever. 

Papayas. I enjoy papayas.

Q: What didn’t work for you on your quest toward wellness?

Kemone: As mentioned, starving left me tired. But what also didn’t work for me was eating solid foods everyday. To me even a salad was like a gateway to wanting to eat more and something less healthy. It was all or nothing with me. Once I knew this was the days of fasting I could set my mind to eat and succeed.

Q: When you fall off the wagon, what foods do you go for? Chips?

Kemone: Tacos. When I fall off the wagon I go for tacos! Always. There's just something about authentic Mexican tacos! ;-)  For me, anything not made at home—I would go to a restaurant—was not good for me.

Q: What are some of your favorite sources for good-for-you food?

Kemone: I'm not too picky about where I buy my food and I know I should be! I do love Mariano’s, Trader Joe's, Valli Produce, Village Market Place on Dempster in Skokie and Rogers Park Fruit Market.

Q: What are some of your favorite sources for solid information about nutrition?

Kemone: While I read a lot of things on the internet and follow a couple different health pages on Instagram, I just pretty much stick to the basics and create my own nutritional plan based on my bodies needs and vitamins that my doctor says I'm lacking.

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Got your own questions about how to eat better to feel better? Consider asking Chelle, Michelle Gillespie, that is. She and I are starting a column/podcast called Ask Chelle, so she can share eating wisdom in between Health Hacks workshops.

Maudlyne Ihejirika on Being a Refugee

"I was that little boy."

In case you missed it, award-winning journalist +Maudlyne Ihejirika talked to WCGO's Daniel French in late January about the book she wrote with her mother, Escape from Nigeria: A Memoir of Faith, Love and War, colonialism, lasting tension in Nigeria and other African countries and being a refugee. I was in on the conversation too, though I spoke little. Maudlyne was just too interesting to interrupt.

Bookends and Beginnings got a shout out.

You might recall I posted a piece about our Evanston neighbor and her book back in July.

Maudlyne Ihejirika: My mom is my hero

Humans.
We go along.
We live our lives, day to day.
We know our stories and often take them for granted.
We tend to focus on the here and now and prepare for the future.
We often put in the back of our minds what is so incredible about our experiences, our history, where we’ve come from.

Maudlyne Ihejirika does not take her history--nor her life--for granted.

Maudlyne, with her mother Angelina Ihejirika, has just published their family memoir, Escape from Nigeria: A Memoir of Faith, Love and War.

Seems my journalism colleague, neighbor and friend—whose name I’ve only recently learned to pronounce correctly, E-hedge-eh-ricka—is a refugee of the Nigerian-Biafran War.

The war broke out in July 1967. It cut communication between Angelina and Maudlyne’s father, Christopher, who was studying abroad first in Sierra Leone and then in Evanston at Northwestern and Kellogg School of Management. For more than two years Angelina and Christopher didn’t know if the other was alive or dead.

In Biafra, an Irish missionary nun set off a chain of miracles for Angelina to locate her husband. In Evanston, an instructor at Kellogg, and his wife, with four other North Shore couples, performed their own miracles for Christopher to find Angelina and his six kids amidst the raging war.

Ordinary and extraordinary people, two U.S. congressmen, the leader of Biafra itself, churches and synagogues got involved in the Ihejirikas' plight. Funds were raised to pay for exit visas and seats on a rare missionary flight, the last out of Biafra before the airport was bombed.

The Nigerian-Biafran War is considered the first time starvation was used as a tool of war. Before the surrender of the short-lived Biafran nation in January 1970, blockades led to mass starvation and deaths of at least 2 million Biafrans, primarily Igbos. This genocide ranks fifth on the list of the worst crimes against humanity of the 20th century, behind the Nazi's atrocities during the WWII holocaust in Europe, the Ukrainian famine in the Soviet Union, the slaughter of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, and the Khmer Rouge massacre of the Cambodians.

From this horror, the Ihejirikas emerged. On June 9, 1969, Angelina and 5-year-old Maudlyne with her 5 siblings landed at O'Hare with only the clothes on their backs.

Currently living in Evanston, Maudlyne works for the Chicago Sun-Times as its urban affairs reporter.

The Ihejirika's memoir is available at Bookends and Beginnings and online.

I appreciate how this labor of love helps me know more about my friend and her family and a slice of history I'd known nothing about. This book puts into valuable perspective the current global refugee crisis triggered by the largest number of forcibly displaced people worldwide since World War II, as well as the current anti-immigrant/anti-refugee sentiments in the United States and other countries.

✿*•.¸¸.•*✿*•.¸¸.•*✿*•.¸¸.•*✿*•.¸¸.•*✿*•.¸¸.•*✿*•.¸¸.•*✿

If you'd like to meet Maudlyne and have her sign a book for you this weekend, she'll be at the Author's Tent on Sunday, July 10, at DuSable Museum of African American History's Arts & Crafts Festival.

The first public reception and book reading/signing to include Angelina will be Wednesday, July 13, 6-9 p.m. at the M Lounge in Angelina's current neighborhood, the South Loop.

In May, the Ihejirikas hosted a private party for the Nigerian community at the
DuSable Museum of African American History to celebrate Angelina's life and the publication of their
family's memoir. Lucky me captured some lovely moments at this heartfelt event.
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If you peek at the other image I made and wonder why Angelina
was showered with money, don't ask me. I'm guessing it is like
other customs that are meant to wish a loved one prosperity.

Frances Willard called Evanston "a paradise for women." Really.

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 Kris Hartzell will discuss why Ms. Willard might have thought of Evanston as a paradise for women during a walking tour starting at at Willard House and continue to Northwestern University and residential Evanston this Saturday, June 14, 2014. 

Ms. Hartzell is an architectural historian, Frances Willard Historical Association board president and co-author of Evanston: 150 Years, 150 Places with her Design Evanston cohorts. 

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