11/08/2026
Lately, I’ve been reading more about the systems behind the things we often treat as individual experiences: wealth, poverty, ownership, labour and who gets to participate in prosperity.
Reading *How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America* has made me look at my own work differently too.
Even something as simple as an oil has an economic story. Somewhere, land was cultivated, seeds were harvested, knowledge was applied, labour was exchanged and value was created. The question I keep returning to is: how much of that value remains with the people closest to the source?
Building enyi while reading books like this has made me increasingly conscious of what ownership, sourcing and economic dignity actually mean.
A product can sit beautifully on a shelf while carrying a much bigger story behind it.
What does ethical ownership look like to you?
Some books make history feel much closer than the dates we memorised in school.
Reading *The Destruction of Black Civilization* has had me thinking about memory: what societies preserve, what disappears, and how much knowledge can survive even when the people who created it are barely mentioned.
Then I look at the oils beside the book.
Plants, resins, butters, herbs and aromatics have travelled through African societies for generations. They existed within systems of trade, ceremony, medicine, grooming, spirituality and everyday life long before many of their modern names and marketing categories existed.
Working with these materials makes me curious about the knowledge surrounding them, not only their benefits.
Sometimes recovering history begins with becoming curious about ordinary things.
What part of African history do you wish we were taught more about?
There is something fascinating about reading old ideas about magic while surrounded by oils and aromatic plants.
Across history, scent has occupied a strange space between the physical and the unseen. Oils were used to anoint bodies, resins were burned during ceremonies, herbs appeared in protective rituals, and fragrances marked sacred spaces across very different cultures.
Reading *Encyclopaedia of Black Magic* has made me curious about the human need to
