When dating meant ordering fish and chips for Nyambura look-a-likes

By Nairobian Team

When Them Mushrooms released Going Places album back in the years, it was to sing their way into the hearts of many music lovers in Nairobi.

Among the songs contained in the Going Places album included The World Needs Love, Leo ni Leo, Love me Tonight and Nyambura.

The most popular is Nyambura-now part of the choral repertoire by Pambo Africa Choir. Nyambura was a song about you guessed it, Nyambura, who was loved like nyama choma with a refrain claiming “Nyambura I love you like fish and chips.”

Dating meant ordering fish and chips for Nyambura look-a-likes. Never mind fish and chicken was what most ‘fish and chips’ cafes served.

Others had fillet and not the elongated tilapia in the not so fishy sense of the word. For drinks there was nothing quite like the date sporting willowy ‘Kenyan Uniform’ dress pricking her thumbs for Woodpecker, Cider and Kingfisher.

Unlike wine by the bottle that is the definition of class in some quarters, those were the drinks for a pre-lady.

It now costs between Sh180 and Sh200 plus depending on the joint, but Kingfisher dented Sh150 fifteen years ago at the then popular Cactus off Moi Avenue and very much fancied by campus chics out to rinse a God-fearing then nursing Kenbrew lager from which just three bottles, a sure blackout would come calling.

Back to fish and chicken. Just to prove how much petho (stature) Laura had, she just shika shikad a thigh here, a chicken breast there before issuing that nime shiba line, pencil thin lips twisted upwards and not necessarily for nutritional emphasis.

But alas! Many an Akende, Kamene and Onyuro later went home to compensate with a mountain of jimbi and sukuma so green as it was not interrupted by any meat. Or nyoyo.