How bowling was played with ‘mawe ya torch’

For ages, the most used dry cell battery in Kenya was the Eveready brand.

There were Tiger batteries as well, but 90 per cent of the time, it was ‘Shika Paka Power’ that was ubiquitous in homes due to that small matter of most fathers having a torch and a transistor radio that required mawe ya torch.

And when batteries began losing their power, there were ingenious ways of ‘empowering’ them. One was milking more power via drying them in the sun after knocking their midriff with a blunt object giving them a concave shape.

A few others would tie them in a polythene bag then chemusha them for a few minutes. To test their new energy levels, you would see people lick the bottom plate to ‘taste’ the level of their power.

But kids had different use for batteries that had run out of power: bowling!

This involved parading used batteries in one long line before attempting to knock down the most with one stroke of stone throw from a distance. A few naughty boys would wittily line other batteries lying horizontally, just behind the ones standing to offer more stability thus preventing them from toppling when hit.

Gradually, ‘battery bowling’ became a childhood sport for those who could not manage to gate crush Bowling Green in Nairobi’s City Park, where the game was the preserve of muhindis from Pangani, Park Road and Highridge estates... before Village Market made bowling an indoor fad for Nairobi’s middle class.