Yesterday, January 29, 2024 –marks four years since Dominique shared this life-transforming message with me:
“Babe, I heard God say we should extend the Daniel’s Fast (removing meat and sugars from our diet).”
We were just completing our 21-day fast in January 2020 with our entire family when he uttered those words to me in private.
Initially, I was taken aback.
I could hear myself thinking in my head: “Dude, all these years we’ve been together you’ve missed some of God’s words. Now, you want to be accurate? How convenient. Just when I’m ready to eat some fish.”
Now –that was in my head. But can you blame me?
In real life, my response was more diplomatic: “Are you sure, babe? I mean — Is this instruction for all of us or just you?”
Hoping he would say the latter. Instead, he gave me that look. And, I gave him that look back. Who won the look battle?
Clearly — Dom! We continued the fast indefinitely. Four years later, I am totally plant-based. I swear I’ve been bamboozled.
A week after we continued the fast, I took a trip to Uganda and Malawi with my business partner Naomi Cook at the Virtual Global Consultant (VGC) Groupto train entrepreneurs to leverage digital technologies to build their businesses through a grant awarded by the Alliance for African Partnership at Michigan State University.
While in Malawi, I stumbled upon a chickpea meatball on the menu at the hotel. I was taken aback. I had never heard of a meatball made from chickpeas — let alone eaten one.
I ordered room service, and it was delicious. The following day, Naomi was eating a burger, and it prompted me to ask the chef to turn that chickpea meatball into a burger patty and serve it to me as a burger. He was generous and honored my request.
I was taken aback– yet again — by how delicious and wholesome I felt after eating the chickpea burger. Finally, I am eating more than salads and smoothies. Eager to share the discovery with Dom and the children, I attempted to recreate it when I returned home.
You would think I would ensure I had enough chickpeas — the main ingredient– in the house, but I didn’t. Instead, I looked in the fridge and found mushrooms. I didn’t like or eat mushrooms at the time. I quickly minced it up as I would have done the chickpeas in a food processor, added several other items like onions and seasonings, shaped it into a patty, cooked it on a skillet, and served it to Dom.
He loved it so much, and in another life-transforming statement, he said:
“Babe, let’s take it to market.
Taken aback yet again, I looked at him and immediately asked: “You said what? What do you mean by that?”
At that time, we’d been married seven years, and Dom knows that after all these years, you can cut to the chase. You don’t need to butter me up because, me and you — this is forever.
He wasn’t buttering me up. He was serious. And four years later, we’ve gone from that moment, to producing samples from our home kitchen, to producing products to sell from a shared kitchen, to moving into our dedicated facility in Eastern Market, serving more than 100 stores across the Midwest.
But, how did we get here? I ask myself that question often as I reflect on our journey.
Four years before this past four years — so eight years ago — Dom whispered another life-transforming revelation to me in private.
(There is a pattern here, right? Dom and these darn whispers.)
“Babe, I heard God say to move to Detroit.”
My response: “You heard what? Oh boy, here we go with you and your hearing.”
You see, Dom had been mentioning the idea of “Detroit” since he took a trip with a friend from college weeks after our marriage. He’d never mentioned it before that trip. That’s why it was such a curve ball for me when he began speaking about it more frequently.
His friend spent a few days sharing the history and projected future of the city — Dom was locked in. I remember being in Ghana with Dominique. He left two weeks earlier than me back to New Jersey. In those two weeks, he took a trip to Detroit, where the seed to move was planted in his spirit.
He would mention Detroit randomly during the first year or two of our marriage, and my response would be undiplomatic:
“I know you did not bamboozle me. Marry me to move me away from my entire family — in the opposite direction of Africa! This can’t be real.”
Every time he brought up Detroit, I questioned our entire marriage. I am not being dramatic. Ask my eldest sister — Adjoa. I thought we were headed straight for divorce by year two. I would call her crying weekly in confusion.
He would shake his head in frustration.
Dom knew the only move I wanted to make out of New Jersey was to Africa. We courted for four years; I made this crystal clear from day one.
His response always:
“Babe, Detroit is the blackest city in America. You can feel Africa in Detroit. They are one.”
I didn’t know much about Detroit, and I had never been until the day I drove into the city with Dom for the first time to help prepare him for his new role at Rapid Finance downtown. We left our only child at the time, Autumn Eve, just 1.5 years old, with my mother and set out for our 9-hour drive by faith after being reaffirmed of God’s message to Dom during a prophetic revival at church.
By God’s grace, the Nissan truck we were driving with broken windshield wipers made it safely into the city just as it began to downpour.
It was a very gloomy day outside, and our emotions were high, but there was a light within us waiting to beam outward. There were so many unknowns — yet peace in the chaos of navigating our new home. I remember driving down Jefferson for the first time, seeing Canada just beyond the Detroit River to our left. We pulled into the first main restaurant we found — Townhouse–to our right.
We sat down at the table, ordered, and began to eat.
As I reflect on our personal and professional journey — especially as entrepreneurs– I’ve realized the symbolic significance of our first night in Detroit at the restaurant.
Detroit offers a buffet of opportunities. Your only job is to get to the table. Whether that’s by plane or train, bike or hike — in our case, a truck — your job is to get to the table–by all means necessary. Because when you do, you can partake of the bread of opportunities and eat for life. And as a result of eating, you too can feed others.
When we arrived, we didn’t know the assignment for our lives was to launch The Mushroom Angel Companyand produce whole foods made from mushrooms to spread the good gospel of mushrooms.
Our young family was challenged for years by unemployment despite academic accolades and work experiences. But, due to Detroit’s thriving business ecosystem, we’ve transformed our lives from unemployed to employers and have begun to create our version of the “American Dream” in Detroit for our family and those connected to our mission and vision.
It’s a gentle reminder that:
Sometimes, you have to be willing to go through the wilderness to get to your promised land.
This year, we’re committed to telling more people about what’s happening in the heart of Detroit’s food ecosystem in Eastern Market with The Mushroom Angel. We’re continuing to scale with our partners and expanding greatly into food service. If you can support us in any way, we invite you to reach out and join our journey to eat, fly, and fly high.
Known as The Digital Diplomat™, Wendy Ekua (W.E.) Da’Cruz promotes the adoption of digitalization to help drive economic development.