Older Kenyans and their strange hidebound ways

By Ted malanda

For a very long time, my grandmother refused to eat bread. Her reasoning was that she had no reason to eat something she had no idea in whose pot it was cooked.

She dug in quite deep and it was only in the late 1960s that she tasted bread, albeit with lots of reluctance. She never cottoned onto pit latrines, either, never mind that her children spent a tidy sum erecting one in her backyard. Only a fool would squat over a grave, she said. And she was nobody’s fool.

Another contraption on which she drew the red line was the chair. She couldn’t even countenance sitting on a stool and as far as I recall, she even cooked while seated on the floor.

stone age

It never ceased to amuse me that whenever she visited us, she ignored the sofa and spread her legs on the floor. Years later, her children, in a bid to remove her from the Stone Age, bought her a sofa. But when they came to check how she was coping with the new seating arrangements, they found her chickens brooding on the sofa. She simply wasn’t going to sit on something that could break any minute. She’s no different from another grandma who installed her cows in the guest room of the three-bedroom house that her children built for her.

My grandma was simply being Kenyan — a breed that is generally averse to experimenting and trying out new things. You might recall that when, in the 1990s, South Africans attempted to sneak their beer and cigarette brands into the Kenyan market, they were roundly ignored. When a Kenyan is raised on a Kimbo, he or she raises her brood on Kimbo — simple as that.

Boiled chicken

This brings me to rabbits and their meat. I am reliably informed that nothing mates like a rabbit and that the perpetually excited fellows give birth after a mere month of gestation. I am also informed that their meat is white, tasty and healthy. You can’t compare it with chicken, I hear. What’s more, it retails at about Sh500 a kilo, which is far more expensive than beef, mutton or pork.

Now picture this scenario. Elders have gathered to discuss matters related to dowry.

After heated negotiations, a deal is sealed, meaning the wise ones can finally have lunch. But instead of placing boiled chicken or goat meat on the table, the woman of the house arranges platters filled with rabbit meat on the table. Where I come from, that would be regarded as an insult so severe that it wouldn’t shock me if the proposed marriage were annulled on the spot.

Maybe I am an idiot, but why do we spend ten years raising a Zebu cow when we can raise ten rabbits in just one year? Why are Kenyans so averse to eating ducks, sheep and insects?

Why must we all crowd around Migingo Island and its tilapia yet the Indian Ocean is full of edible creatures like crabs, squids and prawns?