Ugali, our national diet, is officially 102 years old

You must have heard of the Kakamega dude who is facing a murder charge for killing his father because of ugali — that tasteless lump of paste.

Vincent Makhalasia is said to have dispatched Atanas Matayo to his maker in July 2013 after he returned home in the morning after an overnight funeral vigil, only to find that his dad had dealt with his share the previous night.

Vincent unleashed a stick, targeting his dad’s head over ugali which Okuyus call ngima, the Baengele call obusuma, while the coasterians know it as sima.

While that ‘certain community’ truly loves ugali, did you know it was not until 1920 that ugali became Kenya’s national diet? That was the year former powerful Attorney-General Charles Njonjo was born in Kabete.

Before then, communities were motorised by their own indigenous tubers, finger millet here, yams, legumes and cassava there. All these changed when some mysterious millet disease led to famine during World War I and instead of planting millet, locals consumed the seeds leading to a deficit.

Maize, which had been introduced to the coast by the Portuguese in the 18th century, reached bara and replaced millet with momentum growing when odieros began large-scale farming of maize for export. Workers slaving in the White Highlands were paid in Indian Rupees and bags of maize!

These labourers began growing maize in their small backyard shambas and on returning to shagz, introduced maize there, and gradually mahindi became a kawaida crop. When miros began selling their maize, jungus formed maize marketing boards to control market dynamics in 1935.

Surplus maize was created when world demand for maize slumped and odieros began importing hammermills that ground maize into posho via removing the pericarp that made maize meal look whiter, last longer and taste sweeter than whole maize meal. Unlike millet and sorghum, maize did not need dehusking.

Did you also know that Kenya had a Chief Maize Breeder? Well, MN Harrison was his name and in 1961, he went to Mexico and Colombia and returned and warned people to brace themselves for an “agricultural revolution as happened in the USA Corn Belt,” as Paul Roberts notes in The End of Food published in 2008.

Harrison brought the variety of maize that is now grown in Kenya and made Kitale home of scientific maize research. Now, someone lost his life because of ugali, which is 102 years old this year and still counting. That is hard to swallow.