Today AC & Isaac welcome herbalist and teacher Olatokunboh Obasi back to the Plant Cunning Podcast for a second interview, now speaking from outside Nairobi, Kenya. Obasi shares that she’s finishing a doctorate in clinical nutrition while working toward opening an integrative women’s health clinic, and explains how nutrition, changing food systems, and modern indoor life affect herbal outcomes. She discusses divination and geomancy, genetics as “codes” responding to environment, and how she navigates multiple traditions—Yoruba as her root, alongside Taíno and Kenyan indigenous practices—without collapsing them into one. They explore Kenyan healing culture, including lineage-based herbalism, diviners, birth workers, and bone-setting (lila) meridian work, plus a story of discovering an East African betony for headaches. Obasi also defines traditional African medicine as diverse, spiritually centered, and regionally distinct, and critiques material reductionism in Western herbalism while pointing to figures like Culpeper and Hildegard as bridges back to spirit.
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
01:45 Ola’s Life in Kenya
03:50 Why Clinical Nutrition
05:52 Divination and Genetics
09:31 Lineages and Training
11:41 Navigating Multiple Traditions
16:47 Plants Calling in Kenya
22:15 Healing Culture in Kenya
24:40 Bone Setting and Lila
28:32 Community-Based Medicine
34:32 Defining African Traditional Medicine
36:16 Spirit First Healing
36:47 Lineage And Bioregions
37:45 Cross Cultural Herbal Exchange
41:37 Reclaiming Spirit In Herbalism
44:02 Traditional Western Medicine
45:44 Astrology, Culpeper, Hildegard
50:17 Centering Over Scrolling
53:07 Rest Boredom And Reading
54:07 Rethinking Academia And Art
58:27 Craft Culture And Kenya