Kala

     In this post I will talk about food. The Okoda grow three main crops, use a type of animal similar to ants, and hunt for carnivores.
  

—MINA

Growth: Mina grows from capsules full of seeds surrounded by a hard shell (called “nana”). It produces balls full of nutrients out of the top of it (called “sasu”) with sticky hairs attached to them. When the balls mature they release from the plant and float to another and stick onto hairs growing out of the side (called “sase”). The asase connected to the asasu grow to be the anana.

Use: The Okoda utilize both the anana and the asasu. The anana are dried until the shells crack. Then the seeds inside are crushed into a fine powder (often the shells are used to crush.) which is then mixed with sugar water and cooked in balls.  The asasu are soaked in sugar water and ferment. The juice that becomes of the water is drunk. And the remaining sludge on the bottom is often dried and used as seasoning.

—KADA

                Growth: Kada grows from fruit with a fleshy purple outside and a seed pod inside (called “nimi”). The fruit grows into a couple of kada plants that have leaves side chutes and a middle chute. The side chutes (called “natu”) have strings that grow from the heart of the plant that grow outwards and try to find another plant and touch the middle chute’s seeds, although often times the strings will break off and find the seeds that way which works too. The middle chute (called “nate”) contains a huge amount of purple seeds which when stuck to a natu

grow into inimi.

                Uses: The thing this plant is used most for is its sugar. The fruit it produces: the inimi are good for eating, but the anatu contain a great amount of sugar which is boiled out of them to make sugar water (called “tura”). Sometimes this is dried to make dry sugar, but more often it is left in the water. The less common use of the plant is using the strings of the anatu as fibers for making string and rope, but it is still done.

—SELA

                Growth: Esela grow from spores that land in the ground. The spores grow into tuber looking things (called “dena”) that send out feelers. If a feeler reaches air its top grows into a sela. The other feelers suck in water and nutrients into the dena. The dena then transfers the right amount of water and nutrients to each sela.

                Uses: The actual esela are very poisonous to the point of fatality, but the dena is not poisonous at all and is full of nutrients. The dena is dug out of the ground and cut from the esela. The esela’s skin is cut and its juices are squeezed out of it. The skin is then boiled and the resulting water is added to the initial juice. This juice is sometimes mixed with sugar water and mina flour to make a sauce for flavoring food. The juice is also cooked in with asasu bread.

—NAMINI

          The anamini are used more for power than for consumption, but there eggs are eaten quite frequently. The anamini are very strong and self-sufficient. They have concave backs which are used to carry things when scavenging. They are much like ants in that they live in nests in the ground and scavenge for food, but there are four different kinds of them. The digger (called “namini sazad”), the scout (called “namini torad”), the scavenger (called “namini ratad”), and the king (called “namini sizad”).

The diggers dig out the nest that the anamini live in. The diggers are all female and have string produced on their undersides. As they dig they leave the string behind. The king sends instructions via electric signals through these which the anamini pick up with their antennae.

The scouts are genderless as they produce a scent instead of string. (The string carries the eggs that the king fertilizes.) The scouts produce a scent that kings would normally produce to guide the anamini to a new nesting place, but instead of a new nesting place the scouts lead the scavengers to food sources that can be gathered and brought back to the nest. The scent that the scout leaves behinds tells the scavengers where the path is and how to get to the food.

The scavengers are also genderless. They do not produce anything special like the diggers and the scouts, but instead gather food and bring it back to the nest.

The king is the only male in the entire colony of anamini. He fertilizes the string that the diggers leave behind depending on what kind of namini the colony needs. He also gathers information from scavengers on changing environments and instructs any other scavengers on how to evade or overcome any new difficulties. To insure there is always a king the king always has two king eggs staggered so that they never hatch at the same time. If one hatches while the king is still alive he kills it and starts a new one. This process repeats until the king is not there to eat the new king. The first born king then starts a new king and the larger process repeats.

If there is no more food in the area then the anamini will leave to another place. Sometimes the anamini will be fed, but more often they are followed. Sometimes the anamini will go farther than they need to and so the king is held back which the anamini think means that is where he wants the nest so they build the nest and they stay there.

The anamini mostly eat dead animals so the carcasses of akasi (see below) are often fed to them.

—KASI

          The akasi are hunted and used for many things. They are mostly hunted by two people: one holds its arms behind it and the other uses a knife to kill it. The kasi is then brought back to the home where it is skinned; its bones are removed, and its flesh is cooked. Its hide is tanned and used to make clothing; its bones are used to make various tools and its flesh is eaten or salted.

                The akasi are also special for a sort of initiation where a child who has just finished his “learning” will go out to the woods and smear himself with fruit and sugar water to attract a kasi. When it comes he has to kill it on his own to prove his independence that he does not need to hunt in a pair.

                                                                                

                —Notes

          The Okoda hunt and eat many other animals, but they do not hunt herbivores that eat during the day due to the belief that they are diminishing the sun spirits power instead they hunt carnivores (as they eat the herbivores who are eating away at the sun spirits food) and nocturnal herbivores (because they would be eating away at the moon spirits food).