- Last night, she thought the ugali was a bit dry and tasteless. I thought, one-nil to me.
- Surprisingly, she asked me to make ugali again today.
Image: TRAVEL AND MUNCHIES
Diary,
I’ve been trying to get rid of my beautiful American friend Ms Harper from the US who just showed up at my door talking about old times. Nothing wrong with her, just that she’s the kind of woman who can trick a man into the hazardous territory of falling in love and getting married. I shudder just thinking about it.
Knowing how Americans like their food sugary and oily, I made her ugali and meat stew, hoping to make her hate our food. Last night, she thought the ugali was a bit dry and tasteless. I thought, one-nil to me.
Surprisingly, she asked me to make ugali again today.
“Why?” I ask.
“I watched you eat it, and I think I got the hang of it.”
She ditches the fork and digs in with her hands, kneading the ugali almost perfectly and dipping it into the stew. “Why do you have to mould it in your hands, anyway?” she says.
It’s another cue to make her go, “Yuck!”
“Actually,” I say, “it’s a really sad story and, in a way, disgusting.”
“Disgusting? How so?”
“We knead ugali in our hands to look for pieces of a guy called Onyango.”
She gags and almost throws up. “Pieces of who?”
“Not all Africans are cannibals, you know. Some of us don’t like to eat human flesh.”
“Tom, what are you talking about?”
“Okay. Way back there was this huge party and the ugali was so huge it was practically a mountain. I mean, it was so tall the people on one side couldn’t see those on the other. But someone still needed to pray, right? That task fell to Onyango. So, to make it so everyone could see him, he climbed on top of the mountain of ugali and began praying.”
“Then what?”
“He kept praying, and then he went quiet. People waited for him to say ‘Amen’ but he didn’t. So, one by one they started opening their eyes, and one by one they noticed that Onyango had disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” Harper made a face. “Oh my God! You mean he disappeared into the ugali?”
I nod solemnly. “Yes. And since that day, we’ve been looking for him in the ugali. As in, you’ve been eating food with Onyango in it.”
Harper stares at me for a while, making me wonder what’s going on in her mind.
Then she bursts out laughing. “I see what you’re doing.”
“You do?”
“You’re trying to teach me Kenyan ways. I love it.” She digs into her ugali, chowing down like a hungry native.
Scratch that score. It’s one-nil to Harper.