The wonders of african black olives

Edible and Therapeutic oil Atili oil is considered a healthy vegetable oil rich in crude fats and protein. It’s regarded in the northern parts of Nigeria as the local olive oil. It’s believed to be more nutritious and flavourful than ordinary cooking oils. It is highly medicinal, believed to cure ailments like ulcer, I recommend it for some of my clients, and they’ve come back with positive feedback.  Good for whooping cough, treating rashes and used as an ointment for healing wounds. It’s excellent as carrier oil. When integrated with certain other carrier oils and essential oils, this oil has the potential to do amazing things.

Atili oil is said to be used in parts of Africa as bridal endowment during a wedding ceremony. The resin contains 8-20 % of an essential oil, the main constituent of which is limonene; essential oils are important in the production of fragrant candle and it has a long shelf life.

In honesty, the benefit derivable from eating black African olive, (Atili) equates to using olive oil. It contains naturally occurring antioxidants and enzymes. It is natural moisturizing oil with a nutty and pleasant smell. It’s loaded with anti-oxidants and vitamins that nourish the skin and stimulate hair growth. It works wonders when integrated in skin and hair care products. Atili oil has a unique feel that other oils do not have because of the speed with which it penetrates the skin, leaving it smooth and supple.

Medicinal/Herbal importance

Resin from Atili was used as a substitute for gum-mastic in making wound dressings in World War II. It is believed that the resins collected from the atili tree can be used for preparing herbal medicines that treat intestinal worm infections and other intestinal parasites. It is an emollient, stimulant, diuretic and has action on skin infections such as eczema. The resin burns readily and is used as a bush candle. The resin is also used to repair broken pottery, for caulking boats and as a gum for fastening arrowheads to shafts. The resin is used as a fumigant against mosquitoes too.

A decoction is used as a treatment against hypertension, dysentery, gonorrhea, coughs, chest pains, pulmonary affections, stomach complaints, food poisoning etc.

The giant Atili tree offers protection to the soil against erosion, often left standing on cleared land to provide shade and also acts as a wind break. It has been planted for reforestation in Uganda. It can also serve as firewood that can easily burn to generate heat.

The wood is a good fuel, igniting readily and burning with a lot of heat. The flame is very smoky and soot is collected as carbon-black from the outside of pots held over it for use in tattooing and to make ink in Liberia.

The wood is light in weight; very soft; not very durable, being susceptible to fungi, dry wood borers and termites. It seasons slowly but fairly well, though there is a risk of distortion and checking; once dry it is poorly stable in service. Works easily, stains and polishes well. Used as a substitute for true mahogany. The timber is used as core veneer, for decorative paneling, parquetry, furniture, and flooring and for general utility purposes. Locally, the wood is used for mortars, planks, boats and canoes.

The heartwood is pinkish when fleshly cut but darkens to light brown mahogany colour; it is not sleekly demarcated from the 5 – 15cm wide band of sapwood that is white with pinkish reflections. The texture is slightly coarse; the grain interlocked, thus causing a fine striped figure on quarter-sawn boards.

Its thick barks become increasingly scaly and fissured with age. The pounded bark is used against leprosy and ulcers. The bark exudes a heavy, sticky oleoresin that smells like turpentine and solidifies to a whitish resin. It is obtained by slashing the bark and allowing the colourless expiation to trickle to the ground where it solidifies into a sulphur-yellow opaque resin. The resin is used as primitive illuminant and as incense and releases a lavender-like smell.

Its leaves are pinnate, clustered at the end. The leaves are boiled with other herbs and the decoction used to treat coughs.

Its Root is used against adenites whereas root scrapings are made into a poultice.

No side effects have yet been confirmed following consumption of atili fruit.

Propagation

Seed–Pre-soak the seed by immersing it in hot water and then allowing it to cool in the water for 24 hours prior to sowing. The seed can be sown in nursery beds or in situ.

The ripe fruits should be collected when they fall to the ground and allowed to decompose; the stones should then be separated from the outer fruit coats. Seeds can be stored for a long time.

Embracing the challenges of fatherhood

By DENNIS RAINEY

LIKE soldiers, we are called to do our duty even when the storms of life tempt us to abandon our posts.

That’s what a soldier does. He acknowledges the storm, but he doesn’t give in to it. He stands firm. As a friend told me, “If these men can stand guard over the dead, how much more important is it that I stand guard over the living—my wife and children?”

Like these soldiers, we are called to stand and do our duty while staring down the very storms that seek to rob us of courage, taunting and tempting us to neglect our duty and abandon our posts. These storms are packing some power.

Storm number one: damnable training by fathers

I once met a man who grew up in a remote section of our country. He admitted that the only advice he received as a boy from his father about women was, “Get ’em young. Treat ’em rough. Tell ’em nothing.”

I wonder how that advice worked for him in his marriage.

You could say this is a legacy of the “strong, silent, tough man” image often passed down from father to son. This is the type of misguided training in manhood that has corrupted so many men as the leaders in their homes—selfish men who control their wives and children so that their own needs are met.

And that’s just one part of the problem. Many boys grow up with fathers who are distant and passive. Fathers who rarely engage their families, and when they do, their half-hearted attempts to train their sons may promote irresponsible, or even immoral, behavior. Like the father whose idea of sex education for his 12-year-old son was to take him to a strip joint. There they sat for three hours as the women did their thing onstage. No words were spoken. When they arrived home later that night, the dad told his wife, “There, I did it! Now I’m going to bed.”

Too many men today were raised by fathers who didn’t step up to their responsibilities. Is it any wonder we have a generation of men who feel lost and aimless, not knowing how to face their fears or think rightly about themselves, women, and their own passions?

Storm number two: fatherless families

The relentless, howling winds of a culture of divorce have uprooted the family tree, and with it at least two generations of men. With our high divorce rates and the increasing number of births to single women, the number of children.

Children are the innocent victims of this raging storm. Dad is AWOL in far too many homes today.

The social implications of fatherless families are endless. For example, the greatest predictor of a child dropping out of high school, committing a crime, and going to prison is his or her experience of growing up in a home without a dad. Many young people grow up today in areas where the only adult male role models they know are live-in boyfriends or gang leaders. The fallout has only just begun: a crop of weak young men, and frustrated women who are looking for real men.

One of the greatest challenges any boy could endure is trying to become a man without a father to show him how. How can a boy know what it looks like to behave as a man, love like a man, and be a man in the battle if the main man in his life has abandoned him?

My friend Crawford Loritts works with young men to build their skills as leaders.

Many of [these young men] grapple with fear. … I think that the dismantling of our families over the past 50 years or so has almost institutionalized fear and uncertainty. Divorce, the rise of single-parent households, and the tragic assortment of abuse and dysfunction in our families have produced a generation with many young people who are afraid of risk, and afraid to make mistakes.

So many of our young men grew up in homes in which they had limited or no contact with their fathers, or they had dads who were detached and didn’t provide any meaningful leadership. We are left with a legacy of men who in varying degrees have been feminized. They are uncertain about who and what a man is, and how a man acts and behaves. They are fearful of assuming responsibility and taking the initiative in charting direction.