👵🏾The story of Mama Kuku’s Homestead
Picture this:
Amuzi, Nigeria. I’m nine years old. There’s a thick, gentle mist hanging in the air, soft rain tapping leaves like it’s got nowhere better to be. I’m tucked under the covers, half awake, already smelling breakfast. Not cereal. Wood smoke. Real food. Food cooked over fire by women who measure time in flavor, not by a clock.
The roosters are yelling. The village is stirring; but, I stay still a moment longer. That smoke? It’s sacred. It means my grandmother, Mama ke ukwu, is cooking in her mud hut. Even though my dad had built a modern house with running water and tile floors, she prefers the fire and the ash and the earth walls that were plastered by hand.
I’d fetch her firewood. Not because I was obedient—I was not—but because I was nosy. That hut pulled me in. It smelled like home and a vessel suspended in space, at the same time. It held a kind of hush. I never got much affection from her directly, but I learned early that some women speak through stockfish and smoke. That was her language.
Mama ke ukwu with sister, Udochi at our family compound in Amuzi, Nigeria
Sometimes, I’d try to sneak a joyride on her shiny new motorcycle, parked right under the pomelo tree. Every time, she caught me. Every time, the flip-flop came off. That woman was tiny, fast, and built like consequence.
Now cut to 2014.
I’m in Texas. Three kids deep. Jogging the Trinity River trails trying to reclaim a little sanity. And out of nowhere, boom—that smell. That same warm, woody smoke. I followed it like a cartoon character, nose-first through the oaks. Found some burly guy feeding the wood into a smoker. Thanks to him, I finally knew the name: “mesquite”.
And it hit me:
I’ve been chasing this scent my whole life.
Chasing what it means to belong to a place; without needing to erase where you came from.
That was the breadcrumb. The beginning of the thread that led me, of all places, to snails. I know. Snails. But stay with me.
See, snails don’t rush. They compost the world in slow motion. They make soil from scraps. And where I come from? Escargot is locally sourced, dinner. It’s Sunday. But somehow, farming them became something to be ashamed of. So-called “village work.” I don’t subscribe! I think that tension though; the shame around process, the glorification of product—is exactly where our healing begins.
So, eff social media! I’m following the snails!
Following them through research, through product design, through compost systems and community garden experiments and every damn obstacle a single mother in tech and agriculture could possibly face. And out of all that, Mama Kuku’s Homestead was born.
This isn’t a lifestyle brand. It’s a reckoning. It’s me reclaiming what the confused among us tried to call “backward” and turning it forward with intention.
We’re developing small-batch, high-integrity products: educational kits, gourmet ingredients, regenerative skincare—all from and around snails. These creatures taught me how to slow down, how to iterate, and how to make something beautiful from what others toss aside.
So here we are at Mama Kuku’s.
Me.
You.
Some snails.
A few traditional recipes.
And a fire that doesn’t forget.
Pull up a chair. You’re right on time.
Much love,
Ozi
