Kenyans: Clinging to their fast traits in a “slow” Uganda

SOJOURN WITH KENYANS. With the spirit of East African growing by the day, home is always just a few hours away for Kenyans living in Uganda. No wonder most of them leave their families behind. A few days spent with some members of the community gave the writer insight on what keeps them going while away from home.

I throw two blue pellets of PK chewing gum into my mouth and walk in. Jamaican dancehall music is booming out of two big speakers positioned at the entrance, but it is not irritatingly loud. My eyes run from the counter, pool table, sofa like chairs, wooden stools around round wooden tables engraved with Bell in red. I take a seat at the counter and order for a bottle of water as my eyes adjust to the purple, green, blue, and red lights in the dark almost empty bar. My mission for the night is to “check out Kenyans.” Ouch! That came out wrong. I am meant to “know more about Kenyans” by being around them.

Uneventful evening
As soon as I am served with mineral water, a group of three men take up four stools next to me, arranging them to form a vague square. Five minutes later, a fourth but older man joins the group which has already ordered for three bottles of beer. As they get deeper into a conversation in English about passports, Swahili words fly about here and there but they keep to English. From their English accent, it is easy to tell that two of them are Kenyans and the only reason they are speaking English, is because of their Ugandan friend. After two hours of eavesdropping the loud conversation and prolonged laughter, of the now about 20 men in the bar, neither came to say ‘hi’ nor offer me a drink. Apart from the three girls tending to customers, I was the only lady in Kungu Maitu bar Kasanga and none of these men, most of whom were Kenyans, approached me. Puzzled, I concluded that Kenyan men are slow at approaching women and immediately headed out.

In pursuit to learn more about Kenyans living in Uganda, I had earlier on attended the “Kenyan Nite”, a corporate dinner hosted at Afrique Suites Hotel on Muntugo Hill. From our hostess Vicky, I leant that the theme night was meant to give Kenyans in Uganda a chance to celebrate the successful election process and swearing in of their President, Uhuru Kenyatta.
As though not to disappoint us with the fact that Esther Wanjuri, a Kenyan living in Uganda and my companion for the night and I were the first to arrive, Vicky exclaimed “All Africans are late comers.” It was not until we got into the room set with empty tables that I was in agreement with Vicky. It was 8pm when a group of gentlemen and a lady came in for the dinner that was meant to start at 6pm.

An hour before anyone arrived, I asked Wanjuri to translate the dinner dishes on the flyer from kiswahili to English. We read the dishes out loud as she went on to make corrections where necessary; Kachumbari (sliced onions mixed with tomatoes and a little salt), kuku wa Nazi (coconut chicken), mbuzi choma (roasted goat meat), biriyani ya nyama ya ngombe (meat mixed with spices), sukumawiki, Ugali (Posho), ndizi nviringo vimekyomwa namaganda yake (roasted bananas with peels), Vyazi nviringovimekyomwa namaganda yake (roasted Irish potatoes with peels) .“This food is even not worth Shs35,000,” Wanjiru openly told me.

We later joined Daniel Mutinda, a representative from the Kenyan High Commission in Uganda, at a table set for five. I soon found out he had only spent a month in Uganda. He then went on to tell me without my asking, that he was not pleased when he found out he was being posted to Uganda because then he did not understand the interdependence between Kenya and Uganda.

Eating the Kenyan way
The posho did not in any way taste different from the one I ate back in boarding school. The Kachumbari salad was the best I have eaten, however the utumbo (offals) along with the soup, which were not on the menu, did not go well with me but was edible. As I ate away the delicious sukumawiki, I found out it is called sukumawiki because it “pushes one through the week”. Tasty mbuzi choma which I wholly savoured was served with a roasted banana and a roasted Irish potato.

I had always asked myself why one would roast a banana with its peels than first peeling it and steaming it like we Baganda do and I kind of got an answer to this when I ate it. Roasted matooke or ndizi, as it is called in swahili, is hard, has a smoke filled aroma and tastes dry with no moisture. The dryness makes the banana difficult to eat without soup or sukumawiki. On the other hand, I had two roasted Irish potatoes to eat.

I carefully peeled one of them with a table knife and was content with the softness then Wanjiru and Mutinda pointed out that I was supposed to eat the peels too. Roasted Irish potatoes have a tough peel which one needs to chew well to comfortably swallow without worrying about a scratch in the throat.

Ugali, what is the big deal?
Cherishing Ugali I learnt, is synonymous with being Kenyan irrespective of tribe. My quest for what fascinates Kenyans about ugali did not end at the Kenyan nite. I further asked Elisha Edward Samboi an in-service Kenyan teacher and student at Kampala International University (KIU) about it. Samboi revealed that most Kenyans do not like Uganda’s fine posho. “Back home, we eat our posho with the maize husks.

Most Kenyans find Ugandan posho light,” he says. I later met Mama Mombasa the owner of Mama Mombasa restaurant located in John Garanga Hostel KIU. Halima Towett is Mama Mombasa’s real name, belongs to the Kipsigis tribe in Kenya though she is married to a Musoga. She sang praises for ugali, swearing that no one can tire of it especially when eaten with vegetables like sukumawiki, kundi, sagha, bamia (okra) and other greens that are not available in Uganda. Ugali is also eaten with goat meat, samaki (fish), beef as well as yoghurt.

However, after a long chat with a group of three Kenyan students and their three Ugandan friends, I discovered that some tribes and communities in Kenya prefer food like nyoyo (maize mixed with beans) and rice to ugali.

United by a language
When it comes to physical features and dress code, Kenyans are in every way like Ugandans. Samboi would pass for a Muganda while one of the friends he introduced me to, Maxwell Okoth Ojijo, a business student at KIU is the splitting image of a Ugandan from the North, Mutinda has features and a light skin like a Munyankole man, George Nyachenga another Kenyan friend of Ojijo who is from the Kissii tribe could pass for a Musoga.

Wanjiru and Mama Mombasa are plump, light skinned and curvy like the ladies from Western Uganda. It is almost impossible to just look at someone and pinpoint him or her as Kenyan. Wanjiru, Ojijo and Nyachenga all insist one can differentiate a Ugandan from a Kenyan from the way they walk. According to these three, Kenyans walk fast while Ugandans walk unhurriedly.
But Samboi believed one can identify a Kenyan from their English accent.

I fully agreed with him because all the Kenyans I had met, had an identical English accent. As we chat with Ojijo and his friends at his studio, another Kenyan friend, Geoffrey Nyauma, joined us. Like most Kenyans do when they meet one another, Nyauma said “Vipi” and we replied “poa”. It is rare for a Kenyan to greet another Kenyan in English. Kenyans also have the tendency to converse in kiswahili. In addition, they occasionally use Swahili words in English phrases.
The studio which I found quiet was loud and noisy as each of the course mates tried to make a point to me. Most Kenyans speak with haste and their aggressiveness surfaces through the loudness of their voices.

Although Kenyans in Uganda do not stick together in communities like Indians and Somali do, Ojijo informs me that when in Uganda it is kiswahili (Kenya’s national language) that brings them together. “There are tribes which conflict in Kenya, but when in Uganda Swahili unites us,” he says.