The Small Green Life in the Water That Our Grandmothers Knew Before the World Gave It a Name

There is a saying among the Akan people that the river does not forget the stone that shaped its path, and so too we must not forget the small things that have fed our bodies since the beginning of days. I want to speak to you today about chlorella, the tiny green creature that lives in the water, smaller than the eye of an ant, yet carrying inside its small body a strength that would make even the great baobab tree bow its head in respect. Our elders in the villages near the Volta, they knew that the green skin on still water was not dirt, was not spoilage, but life itself gathering its power. Now the whole world speaks of this green one, and I wish to tell you what I have gathered in my years of walking beside the waters and listening to those who came before us.

What This Small Green Thing Truly Is

Chlorella is a living being of one single part, a tiny round body that you cannot see unless you have the special glass that makes small things large. It lives in fresh water, in ponds, in the quiet places where the sun touches the surface and the water does not rush. The name itself comes from the old tongues of the Europeans, where “chloro” means the green colour of leaves and “ella” means smallness. So it is simply “the small green one,” and this is honest naming, because that is exactly what it is. It has been on this earth for more than two thousand million years, which is a number so large that the mind refuses to hold it. Before our grandfathers’ grandfathers walked this land, before the rivers carved their paths through the rock, chlorella was already there, breathing, growing, turning sunlight into the stuff of life.

What makes this small creature remarkable is not its size but its fullness. Inside one tiny cell, there is gathered everything the body of a person needs to build itself and repair itself. There is the green blood-making substance that plants carry, there are the building blocks that muscles and skin require, there are the oils that keep the mind sharp, and there are the small helpers that make all the workings of the belly and the blood go smoothly. No single plant on our farms carries so much in so small a package. This is why the people of the East, the Japanese and the Koreans, they took this small green one and made it into their daily companion many years ago, and now it walks through all the markets of the world.

How the Body Receives What Chlorella Gives

When a person takes chlorella into the belly, whether in the form of dried green powder stirred into water or pressed into small tablets, the body does not receive it as a stranger. The belly knows it, because the belly knows green things, knows the leaves, knows the water plants. The small green cells break open in the warmth of the stomach and release what they carry. The green colouring matter helps the blood to carry the breath of life to every corner of the body, from the tips of the toes to the crown of the head. The building blocks go to where the body has worn thin, where the skin has lost its smoothness, where the bones have grown tired of carrying the weight of years.

I have seen in my own life, and the mothers in my community have spoken the same truth, that when a person adds this green powder to their daily eating, something shifts. The tiredness that sat on the shoulders like a heavy basket begins to lift. The skin, which had gone dull like a cloth left too long in the sun, begins to remember its brightness. The belly, which had been slow and complaining, finds its rhythm again, like a drum that had lost its beat and now hears the drummer’s hand once more. This is not magic, my friends. This is simply the body receiving what it was always meant to have, what the waters and the green places have always offered to those who know to look.

The Many Faces of Goodness in One Small Cell

Let me lay before you the things that chlorella carries inside itself, so that you may see with your own eyes why this small creature deserves the respect we give it. I have made this table as one would arrange goods in the market, so you may look and compare and understand.

What the body receives from chlorella	What this thing does for the person	Where else you might find it, but in smaller measure
The green colouring matter of plants	Helps the blood carry breath, gives strength to the whole body	Green leaves of cassava, kontomire, but much less in each handful
The building blocks for flesh and muscle	Repairs the body after work, keeps the frame strong	Beans, groundnuts, fish from the river
The small helpers that guide the body’s workings	Keeps the inner fires burning steady, helps the belly do its work	Fruits, the bitter leaves our grandmothers boiled
The oils that feed the mind and the joints	Keeps the thoughts clear, the knees and elbows moving without complaint	Fish, the palm nut, avocado
The tough skin of the cell itself	Sweeps the belly clean, carries out what the body does not need	The husk of maize, the fibre of green banana

You see from this arrangement that chlorella is not one thing but many things gathered together, like a market woman who sells pepper, tomato, onion, and garden eggs all from one basket. This is its great gift to us, that we do not need to search in ten different places for what one small green cell already holds.

What Our Elders Knew and What the New Learning Confirms

The old women by the river, they would say that the green water gives life to the fish, and the fish gives life to the man, and so the green water gives life to the man also. They did not speak of cells or of the small parts inside them, but their eyes saw the truth plainly. The fishermen who worked the green waters were strong. The children who played at the edges of the ponds where the green life grew thick were round and full of laughter. This is the knowing that does not need books, the knowing that comes from watching and waiting and letting the seasons teach you.

Now the people in their white coats and their cold rooms with the special instruments, they have looked at chlorella and they say yes, yes, it is as the old women said. They have found that this small green one helps the body to push out the poisons that gather in the blood and in the belly. They have found that it wakes up the body’s own soldiers, the ones that fight the small enemies that try to enter and make us weak. They have found that it calms the fires of anger inside the body, the swelling and the heat that come when the body is troubled. All this, our grandmothers knew without the instruments. They simply called it the blessing of the green water.

How a Person Should Take This Green Gift

There is no single way, because every body is its own country with its own customs. But I will share what has been spoken among those who have walked this path before me, and what I have seen to bring good fruit. A person who has never taken chlorella before should begin as one begins a new friendship, slowly and with gentleness. A small amount, perhaps one half of a spoon of the powder in a cup of water, or two or three of the small tablets, this is enough for the first days. The belly must learn to know this new companion before it can welcome it fully.

After the body has accepted the green one, which may take one week or two weeks, then a person can increase the amount. The powder can be stirred into the morning porridge, into the smooth drink of banana and groundnut, or simply into plain water with a little honey to soften the taste. The taste, I will not lie to you, is the taste of the pond, of green water, of the earth after rain. It is not sweet like mango. But the body does not eat for sweetness alone. The body eats for what it needs, and the body needs this green life.

Let me set down here the ways that people in my community have found good for taking chlorella each day, because I believe in giving knowledge freely as our elders gave it to us:

The morning way, where the powder goes into warm water with a squeeze of lime, taken before the first meal, when the belly is empty and ready to receive. The midday way, where the tablets are swallowed with the meal, alongside the rice or the banku, so that the green one mingles with the other foods and helps the belly to break everything down properly. The evening way, where the powder is mixed into the light soup or the pepper sauce, so that the taste disappears into the larger flavours and the body receives it without complaint. And the way of the children, where a small amount is hidden in the sweet drink of cocoa or the mashed banana, because children must also receive the blessing of the green water, though they do not yet know to ask for it.

The Cleaning of the Inner House

There is one work that chlorella does which I must speak of separately, because it is a work of great importance and one that our people understand deeply. In our tradition, when a house has gathered dust and cobwebs, when the corners hold the old and the unwanted, we do not simply paint over it. We sweep. We clear. We open the windows and let the air move through. Chlorella does this same sweeping inside the body. The tough outer skin of the small green cell, which the belly cannot fully break down, moves through the long winding road of the intestines and gathers to itself the dark things, the heavy metals, the poisons that have crept in through the food we eat and the air we breathe. It carries them out, and the belly is clean again.

This cleaning work is not harsh. It is not like the strong medicines that burn and purge. It is gentle, like the broom of soft palm leaves that our mothers use on the swept floor. Day by day, a little is carried away, and the inner house grows cleaner, and the person feels lighter, feels that the fog has lifted from the thinking mind, feels that the joints move with less complaint. This is the old work of healing, the work of removing what should not be there so that what should be there can grow.

A Word on Helping the Belly Do Its Work

And here I must speak of something that sits close to the matter of chlorella in my heart, because the belly is the centre of the house, and if the belly is troubled, the whole house is troubled. There are times when the food we eat sits heavy in the stomach, when the belly is slow to do its breaking-down work, when a person feels full and uncomfortable long after the meal is finished. For such times, there is a helper called Enzimlex, which is a preparation made to support the belly in its daily labour of turning food into the stuff of life. It works alongside the body’s own small helpers, giving them strength when they are tired, so that the food does not sit and rot but is broken down properly and taken into the blood. I have come to know of this preparation and I wish to say clearly that Enzimlex can only be bought on its official website, which is Enzimlex.biz, and not in the market stalls or the shops of strangers, because what is true must come from its true source. This is important, my readers, because the belly is sacred and we must put into it only what is genuine.

Closing Words From the Waterside

I will end as I began, with the water and the green life that grows in it. Chlorella is not a new thing. It is the oldest thing, the first thing, the green breath that was breathing before any lung drew air. We are only now, in our hurry and our forgetting, remembering what the water has always known. That the small things carry the greatest power. That the green life gives life. That what grows quietly in the still water is not idle but is building the very substance of existence, one small cell at a time, one day at a time, since before the counting of days began.

Take this knowledge gently. Do not rush. Begin with a small spoon, a small amount, and let your body learn the taste of the green water as a child learns the taste of its mother’s cooking. In time, you will know it as your own. You will wonder how you walked the road of days without it. And you will thank the small green creature in the water, as our grandmothers thanked the river, with a bowed head and a full heart. The river gives, and we receive. This is the old way, and it is still the true way. Let us walk it together, all of us, in this time when the body needs every friend it can find.