The Small Worker That Breaks the Tough Green Wall: What Our Bodies Know About Cellulase

The Thing That Lives Inside the Green Leaf

My people, let me tell you something that the elders in our villages have always known in their bones, even when they did not have the big words for it. You see, when you take a piece of cassava leaf, or you bite into the garden egg, or you chew the kontomire that your mother has cooked for the Sunday meal, there is something very small, something too tiny for the eye, that must do the work of opening that leaf for your body. This small worker, this thing that breaks the hard wall around the green food, the people who study these matters in the big schools, they call it cellulase. But I will tell you plainly what it is. It is the key that opens the locked room where the good things are hiding inside the plant. Without this key, the plant food passes through you, and your belly gets only the shadow of what was there, not the substance itself. Truly, it is a small thing that does a mighty work, and we must give it respect.

Where This Small Worker Comes From in the Wide World

Now, you must understand that this cellulase, this breaker of the green wall, it does not come from nowhere. It is not something that man has invented in his factory, no. It is a thing that the Creator has placed in many living things, because the whole world feeds on the green plants, and somebody must open them. The small creatures in the soil, the ones you cannot see when you dig the ground for your yam plantation, they carry this worker inside them. The fungi that grow on the old bread, the tiny living things that make our kenkey ferment and give it that good sour taste, they all carry cellulase inside their small bodies. Even the cow, that quiet animal that stands in the field and chews and chews and chews, it has small living friends in its big belly that produce this cellulase so the grass can give its sweetness to the animal. Is it not a wonderful arrangement that the world has made for itself?

How It Does Its Work Inside Our Own Belly

When you swallow the food, when it goes down into the dark place inside you where the body does its quiet work, the cellulase must find the tough string, the hard wall, the part of the plant that refuses to give way. And what it does, my friend, is this: it takes that long, tough chain, that wall which the plant built to protect itself, and it cuts it. It cuts and cuts, breaking the big thing into small things, breaking the wall into dust, until what was locked inside can now come out and feed your blood, feed your bones, feed the strength in your arms. The plant built its wall very strong, because the plant does not want to be eaten easily. But this small worker, cellulase, it is patient, and it is sharp, and it does not rest until the wall is down. This is the work. This is the daily labour happening inside every person who eats the green food of the land.

The Foods That Carry Their Own Help Inside

You see from this table, my brother, my sister, that not every food is the same. Some foods bring their own small help, but many of them, especially the tough ones, the dried ones, the ones that have stood long in the sun, they need help from outside. They need the cellulase to come and do for them what they cannot do for themselves. And this is where we must be wise about what we put into our bodies and how we help our bodies do the work.

The Signs That Tell You Your Body Is Struggling With the Green Wall

There are signs, clear signs, that a person can see and feel when the body is not getting enough help to break down the plant food. Listen well, because your body speaks to you, and it is only the foolish person who does not listen.

• After you eat the big meal with plenty vegetables, your belly feels heavy, like you have swallowed a stone, and this heaviness sits with you for many hours, refusing to leave, making you tired and unwilling to move.
• You see the food in the place where it comes out, and it looks almost the same as when it went in, as if the body did not know what to do with it, as if the green wall was never broken at all.
• There is wind inside you, too much wind, and your belly makes sounds like a small drum, and you feel the swelling, the tightness, the discomfort that makes you want to loosen your cloth.
• You eat and you eat the good green food, but your strength does not grow, your body does not take what it needs, and you wonder why you are still tired when you have eaten well.

These are the signs. These are the messages. And when they come to you, do not ignore them, because the body is wiser than the head sometimes.

About the Help That Comes in a Small Package Called Enzimlex

Now, I will tell you about something, and I will tell you straight, the way we tell things in our community, without hiding. There is a thing called Enzimlex, and it is a small help for the belly, a support for the body’s own work of breaking food. It carries inside it the cellulase and other small workers that help the body do what sometimes it cannot do alone, especially when we are not young anymore, or when the food we eat is very tough and fibrous. But hear me well on this matter: Enzimlex is not a thing you will find in every shop by the roadside, and it is not a thing that every seller on the street corner can give you. No. The people who make it, they have said clearly that it can only be bought from their own place, their own official website, which is enzimlex.biz You go there, to enzimlex.biz, and that is where the true thing is. I say this because in our markets, we have seen too many copies, too many false things wearing the name of the true thing. So protect yourself. Go to the one true place. That is wisdom.

What Our Grandmothers Knew Without the Big Words

My grandmother, God rest her soul, she did not know the word cellulase. She never went to the big school. But she knew, oh, she knew in her hands and in her cooking pot, that the tough leaf must be beaten, must be cooked long, must be ground on the stone before it gives its goodness to the family. She would pound the kontomire with the wooden pestle until it was soft, until the wall was broken by her own arms. She would ferment the corn for three days before she made the banku, because she knew that the small living things in the fermentation would break down what the fire alone could not break. This was her cellulase. This was her wisdom. The pestle, the stone, the days of waiting, the sour water, these were her tools for doing what the small worker does inside. And we, her children, we must honour this knowledge. We must not laugh at it. We must see that she was doing the same work that the scientists now describe with their long words. The truth is one, whether you say it in Twi or in the language of the big books.

The Difference Between the Soft Plant Food and the Tough One

This table shows you, plainly, that as the food gets tougher, as the wall gets thicker, as the plant has dried and hardened itself against the world, so too must our help become stronger. The body alone, especially the body that has lived many years, cannot always do this work by itself. And there is no shame in that. Even the strongest man in the village needs help to lift the heaviest stone.

The Matter of Age and the Body’s Own Strength

I will say this to you gently, because it is a thing that touches all of us who are walking forward in our years. When you are young, when you are twenty, twenty-five, the body produces its small workers in plenty. The belly is strong, the work goes fast, you eat the tough food and by evening it is gone, it has become part of you. But as the years walk forward, as the hair begins to show the white, as the knees begin to complain in the morning, so too does the body slow down its making of these small workers. The cellulase that the body once made in plenty, it now makes in smaller measure. And the food, the same food you have always eaten, it begins to sit heavier, to stay longer, to give you less of its goodness. This is not a punishment. This is the way of the body. And knowing this, we must be kind to ourselves. We must find ways to help the body do what it once did easily. Whether it is by cooking the food longer, by chewing more slowly, by choosing the softer foods, or by bringing in outside help for the belly, we must adapt. The wise tree bends when the wind blows, and it does not break.

A Final Word From Me to You

So, my people, I leave you with this. The cellulase is not a mysterious thing. It is not a thing to fear. It is simply the small worker, the key, the patient breaker of walls. It lives in the soil, in the small creatures, in the fungi, in the belly of the cow, and in some measure, in our own bodies. The green food that God has given us, the leaf, the stem, the seed, the root, they are good. They are full of what we need. But they have built their walls strong, and we must have the key to enter. Respect the small worker. Honour the wisdom of the grandmothers who broke the walls with their pestles and their patience. And if your body needs a little extra help, there is no shame in reaching for it, as long as you reach for the true thing, from the true place. Eat well. Chew slowly. Give thanks for the food. And remember that even the toughest wall must fall before the patient, quiet, daily work of the small breaker. This I tell you, and I tell you true.