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Snapshots: Chipo mwitu? What hapened to the old cuisines?

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 Chipo mwitu Photo: Courtesy

My late brother’s house has been uninhabited for a while. As a result, some creatures that would send a Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) game warden rubbing his palms happily have set up residence and turned it into a habitat.

Among them are mosquitoes, a species bubbling with foolish faith. The owners of that residence have been missing for years, but mosquitoes keep buzzing about the place in the mistaken belief that manna, in the name of a human being, will one day pop in for dinner. Wiser creatures would have migrated to the chang’aa den to spear my relatives who lounge around in unwashed and drunken stupor.

The second wildlife species that has turned the late engineer’s house into a habitat are ants. They have built a massive anthill next to the fireplace and from this fortress, ants are dispatched to nibble on this and that and bring a harvest of goodies to the fat queen mother who resides in the depths of the earth, churning out eggs like confetti. I have never known whether she has a husband, or what happens to the queendom when she catches hernia and kicks the bucket.

The third major wildlife species is bees. The hooligans have formed two massive ‘extensions’ in the ceiling, darting out to harvest nectar for free and then going home to manufacture honey.

Unfortunately for all these creatures, their blissful existence is about to come to an abrupt end. My father, the retired policeman, has issued firm instructions that they should all be subjected to extra-judicial killings. He has even gone ahead to assemble a killer squad to deal with the buggers and leave no evidence behind in case my old friends at Kenya Society for the Protection and Care of Animals (KSPCA) or the Kakamega County KWS warden receives intelligence of imminent poaching and come home with a posse of armed game rangers. The old cop wants a pest control chap to sneak in at night, create a gas chamber akin to the one former City Clerk John Gakuo erected for smokers and fumigate the bastards out of existence.

I am outraged. In days gone by, young boys would have dug out that anthill, arrested the queen mother, wrapped her fat behind in banana leaves and roasted her into a fine morsel. The bees would have been teargassed with smoke and forced to flee, abandoning ripe honey to be engorged upon. But now, everything will be destroyed.

Villagers are no longer interested in the foods of old. They want sukuma wiki, and are stuffing everything they eat in cooking fat. They are wolfing down chipo mwitu, fries that are roasted in transformer oil right at the market. Their fish is no longer smoked or cooked fresh. It is stuffed in a pan of cooking oil, as is chicken. They have thrown away the earthen cooking pots that boiled food on low heat and are now cooking food in twenty minutes in sufurias like confused city people. Porridge, sour milk, sweet potatoes, cassava...gone! Everyone wants bread and chapati. Meanwhile, guavas are rotting in trees, because villagers have discovered watermelons.

Could this be the reason cancer is having a field day mashinani?

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