Press release
Spicy Tasty Vegan Cuisine will host the first international Vegan Fest in The Gambia. It will be held at the Kairaba Hotel from Friday to Saturday on November 23-25th from 9am to 9pm. Some of the world’s most renowned holistic healers and lecturers will be arriving to speak and conduct workshops to motivate, educate and heal people.
It will be a fun filled weekend with great tasting healthy food, kundalini yogo, music, vendors, and life changing healing information for your whole body and mind. The keynote speakers for Vegan Fest 2018 are Dr Llaila Afrika from USA Dr Umar Johnson from USA, Dr Melanie Stevenson from USA, Khensu I-Em-Hotep from Jamaica and UK, and Salieu Puye from The Gambia.
The Vegan Fest is organised by Mama Naasira Ageela and Dr Gregory Joe Bledsoe, co-authors of the bestselling nutritional guide on Amazon, Spicy Tasty Vegan Cuisine Series. They are also repatriates living in The Gambia for over two years. Their aim is to assist communities with weight loss and to help avoid health challenges by teaching people a natural and more sustainable way to nurture the body.
They believe that the food you eat can be the safest or the most powerful of form of medicine or the slowest form of poison. Currently the lifespan of Gambians have decreased astronomically from generation to generation. Gambians are dying from different diseases that can be prevented with proper eating habits and proper information. Yet, The Gambia has some of the most organic and healing super foods in the world, these include moringa, baobab, neem, bissap, peanuts, sour sop and more.
Dr Llaila Afrika is one of the world’s foremost authorities on health and nutrition. He has a doctorate in Naturopathy from Anglo Saxon Institute in England. He is a certified addictionologist with a degree from The American College of Addictionology and Compulsive Disorders. He is a certified nurse from Georgia Baptist Medical Centre. He is also an acupuncturist, metaphysician, and a US Army social worker nurse and psychotherapist.
He is an expert massage therapist, herbalist, historian, writer, lecturer, teacher and medical astrologist. Dr Afrika has over 45 years experience and training in ethno medicine, which is the use of disease remedies and diagnosis based upon the biochemistry of a race. Because of these tremendous credentials, he is one of the most sought after lecturers in the country.
Dr Umar Johnson is an activist and motivational speaker. He is the “Prince of Pan-Africanism,” and his ideology and movement is to bring all Africans in unity on the continent and in the diaspora. He has written several books entitled, Psycho_Academic Holocaust: The Special Education and ADHD Wars Against Black Boys, which is the first book written by African-American targeting black people with the strategies on how to fight back against special education and ADHD. Other books are The Heroic Slave – Walker’s Appeal and Dismantling the Matrix: Serenity for the Surveilled. He is also working on building a school in The Gambia.
Dr Melanie Stevenson has over 12 years’ experience as a holistic practitioner in health sciences, spirituality, and arts. She has a wide variety of licenses as an acupuncturist, esthetician, massage therapist, spiritual counselor, marriage counselor, grieving therapist, and medical astrologist. She brings a passionate uplifting energy in her lectures and practice. She is a unique and gifted spiritual counselor for individuals, couples, and families. She can help you learn the state of your vitality, emotions, passions, behavior, thought process, and overall persona.
Dr Khensu I-Em-Hotep aka Dr Hotep is a holistic nutritional counselor who specialises in African holistic health, he has been involved in the health industry since 2009 at which point he embraced a live (raw) food diet, and has never looked back, going on to pursue certification by the leading authority on Holistic Health in the western hemisphere, Dr Llaila Afrika.
Dr Hotep has since been teaching and carrying out one to one holistic health assessments between Jamaica and the UK, participating in numerous radio and TV programmes, he has established the Melanin Clinic based in Mandeville, Jamaica and carries out day clinics and seminars in Montego Bay and Kingston. Dr Hotep lives and works by the ancient principle of “food is medicine and medicine is food” the Melanin Clinics motto is “you were made with nutrients and only nutrients will maintain and repair you.”
Salieu Puye is a Gambian traditional herbalist who is member of the Traditional Healers Assembly (TRAHASS) in The Gambia. He is originally from Kololi and was taught about natural living and cultural ways from an early age in the provinces. He studied science and arts at Gambia College. As a former teacher, he began studying plants and the healing effects of local plants.
Mr Puye works specifically with natural herbs and by identifying the properties of the herbs, he helps to cure different ailments. He has cured eczema, edema (swollen foot), hypertension, hemorrhoids, stomach worms and so forth. He believes that the average Gambian does not eat a balanced diet. However, with proper hygiene and learning how to develop better cooking methods, more GambianS can live healthier lives. He has also identified many teas in The Gambia with nutritional and healing values to help Gambians heal themselves.
