Every famine comes a new word and strange deeds

By Michael Ouma

While in Nairobi most of us know ‘bamba’ to refer to the Safaricom airtime denominations of Sh20 and Sh50. Yet in my home village in Ugenya, bamba 80 means something totally different.

I came to learn about this new meaning during a recent trip to the area a few weeks ago. As is the norm in the village I went to visit a neighbour I had not seen for while to see how they were faring on. She said that all was well except for bamba 80.

For a moment I thought that the mobile phone company had introduced another airtime value to this villagers. In the face of the declining economy this was preposterous.

Enquiring further, however, I learnt that given the current scarcity of food in the area, which has been worsened by delayed harvest the price of maize flour has gone up drastically. This has led to the price of a two-kilogramme tin of maize retailing at Sh80 hence the term bamba 80.

Yet such tags are not new to this area, in the past they have adopted names for long periods of famine. The 1979 famine, for example, was known as Nyayo as it came when former President Moi had just ascended to power.

Yellow maize

Few years later the Government brought in yellow maize in response to another famine, this was also christened Nyayo maize.

The famine that followed the 1980 drought was referred to as rom gi mer, which translated means ‘meet with your mother.’ I never got to know what this meant.

But I believe the most interesting name was reserved for the 1994 famine, which followed the country’s infamous inflation resulting from the first multi-party elections of 1992.

It was christened Kibiriti oluar ipi, which means ‘the match box has dropped into the water’, and therefore, cannot be used to light fire. This meant that a visitor was expected to understand if he left without being served a meal.

The name given to the 1997 famine was Iranga ga an ma an go, which loosely translated means: "stop looking or don’t look at me as I also don’t have (food)".

Men in the kitchen

The current famine has also led to the emergence of amazing if not funny behaviour by some men in the area. The men are now taking over kitchens to the surprise of their wives and community at large. In one instance, locals identified a married man who has taken it upon himself to prepare his own meals, while the wife prepared another meal for other members of the household.

When confronted by elders why he had taken this route, the man replied that if he had to wait for his wife to cook his meals, he would die of hunger as the wife is always out and came home late.

The interesting bit is that even when he prepares the food, he eats it alone and will not even share it with his daughter and granddaughter.

In another instance, a husband began preparing his own meals after his wife was admitted in hospital with an undisclosed ailment. Fearing that the wife would infect him if she prepared his food, the man has also resorted preparing his own food in the traditional three-stone hearth.

He, however, shares the food with one of the daughters, but the other daughter, the mother’s favourite, is never invited as according to the father, ‘the mother turned her against him’ and he can not afford to see her share his food.