Why you should eat githeri, avoid sausages this Christmas

 Eat githeri this Christmas [Photo: Courtesy]

It is that time of the year again when families get together to celebrate Christmas and the New Year.

Most families visit entertainment spots and tourist destinations to unwind. Others will  travel upcountry.

In days gone by, families would troop to the village to spend time with extended families — this has since diminished.

Many who are born city will spend Christmas holidays here — as Nairobi is their shags.

When I was young, Christmas in the city meant eating sausages, hot dogs and other Western delicacies. So we loathed the village as such things were a rarity.

This was the only time we gobbled Tarino sodas until one almost died of a burst stomach.

I still remember the nice aroma escaping from every kitchen in the neighbourhood on early Christmas morning. My good mother and Aunt Sarah spent hours in the kitchen preparing breakfast and lunch.

Meanwhile we sat, fingers crossed, waiting for Christmas gifts that were often new outfits - which was a licence to go around the estate ‘feeling sugar,’ showing off to other children in what looked like a fashion show.

How fast things have changed! The foods we only ate during Christmas is now common fare, no longer making us salivate.  What is rare is traditional food.

Whenever I visited my grandmother in shags, the only thing that captivated me was her tasty and ‘original’ dishes.

The three stones with a cooking pot resting on them worked miracles. She would bake bread, and yes, the taste was different — and it was not sliced, which meant a bigger share for me.

My grandmother never prepared rice for dinner. She believed rice was not heavy enough to fill the stomach. So we ate ugali almost all the time.

As usual, being a born city, I found the ugali too heavy — it was made from a mixture of cassava, sweet potatoes and wimbi.

I preferred concentrating on the stew that had very big pieces of chicken. When it came to fish, everyone had a whole piece to deal with. 

After a sumptuous meal, we would top it up with mangoes and guavas. Most of these fell off the trees, imagine.

Many of us city boys gained weight after every visit to shags. Today’s ‘g-mail parents’ need to introduce their children to traditional foods or else dishes like githeri will soon be wiped out.

I always tell my friends to travel to Kampala, Uganda, and taste their foods, which are not only original but also come in great varieties.

Now that, you will not find in Kenya where genetically modified foods are the order of the day.

Most Kenyans will only have one type of food - rice and meat. Yes, we lack innovation and are bone lazy.

We could start by following in the footsteps of other East African countries. That would mean having rice here, meat there, ugali, greens, cassava, beans and bananas.

This we only see in hotel buffets or weddings - which is why, uncultured as we are, we fill our plates to the brim, not knowing that one can always go for a second round.

Let us go back to our healthier traditional foods to avoid future voters with high cholesterol foods. Let’s be more adventurous with the cooking and presentation and we shall have a healthier Christmas!

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@AineaOjiambo