How Many Chapatis can You Eat?

On the day of chapatis, everybody finished their outdoor chores quickly and they were ready for dinner at 6.30pm promptly. Everybody got their stew served in a bowl. The chapos were in a big basin (Besheni) next to my mother. She handed everybody their first chapo. Full. We never cut our chapatis in quarters or rolled them like some families prefer. Ours were served whole.  My brothers finished their first chapo and quickly came back to mother for a second one. Nobody ever asked for additional stew.

Meals in OlKalou always ended with a serving of a creamy cup of tea. I guess that was from the British influence. So, as we were eating our meal, tea was cooking on the fire. When tea was served and everybody got their 15 (the enamel mug) my brothers came back to mother for a final chapo to eat with tea. Think about that for a moment. Those are 3 dense Whole Wheat chapos in one sitting, not counting the one I sneaked them earlier. Yet, my brothers were lanky. They were all very tall for their age and slender. You wonder where all the food went. Today, I doubt they can finish two chapos in one sitting. If they attempted to eat the amounts they ate back then, they would definitely pass out.

But back then, they ate such unbelievable amounts with ease and woke up hungry the next morning, they needed a chapo or two to eat with their tea. My father often equated their stomachs to granaries. “Nda cigana makumbi” translation, stomachs the size of granaries. Another favorite of his to describe their food consumption was “Nda ikinyite maguru” translation: stomachs that extend to the feet.

My brothers were never deterred by his jabs. They ate everything in their path and then some. But considering how hard they worked, I think their food consumption equaled their labor output. Considering also how cold it is in Nyandarua, their bodies needed a lot of fat to burn in order to keep warm. My parents didn’t buy that theory and honestly, neither did we. All we knew was that we were hungry all the time and we could eat anytime food was presented to us, there was always room in our stomachs. Maybe father was right all along.

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