BANANA DRAMA

My uncle will never interrupt you when you are making a fool of yourself. The other day, I paid them a visit and found uncle feeding his cows and aunty knitting a multi-colored kiondo as usual.

Now, aunty is this kind pious soul who finishes every sentence with ‘mwathani agocwo’.God be praised. If she won’t be in heaven, then nobody is going there.

After enquiring about all my children, their classes, height etc, she dashed into her sooty kitchen and came back with a melamine plate full of githeri. Real githeri cooked in an earthenware pot.

Then she went into her granary and came back with a bunch of ‘wang’ae’ or sweet bananas. Her bananas are ripened by catalyzing with ‘meenû’, an aromatic shrub that gives them a distinctive flavour.

Now, one of the exotic culinary habits that I picked in my expansive sojourn in Northern Kenya is mixing ripe bananas with my food. Go to any Waria hotel and you will see them doing it.

So I peeled two bananas, cut them into pieces and mixed with the githeri. The interplay of the tastes of the sugary banana and the salted githeri is something to die for.

All the while, uncle was watching me keenly with increasing dread, slowly taping his sharp machete on his palm. All his life, he has never seen a grown man mix githeri with ripe bananas.

When I took my first bite, he tightened the grip on his machete. When I took the second one, he tightened the grip further. Finally, he could stand it no more.

‘Ira muruguo kiria aragucia nikiramuthukira!’He barked at aunty. Tell this your son that what he has been smoking is not doing him any good.

Then, he angrily ran his sharp machete against the whetting stone before sauntering of to Wakulima Bar.

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