There were some other small bakeries based in Nairobi but their distribution was local. They mainly made sandwich bread, which was very long, twice the size of a regular Elliots bread and their shape was different too. Their bread was also not as delicious as Elliots, but nobody really cared, bread was bread and it was rare, making it a real delicacy. We only ate this bread when we had visitors from Nairobi, or our father brought us some from his travels through Nairobi. Everybody referred to that bread as Ndiiriga Mucii, translation, I have not been home for a while. The same bakeries made some round swirly Buns that we called Mikonye. You could “peel” off the outer layer of the Mukonye, eating your way around in layers, until you reached the round center for your last tasty bite. Those were fun to eat, whenever we got them, once in a long while.
Bread was a rare delicacy. Very few families afforded to eat bread. Any visit to a family meant you took them bread because that was the most precious rare item that everybody appreciated highly. We loved it when people visited and they brought us bread. We also loved visiting people in towns because they usually gave you bread with butter (Mugate wa Thiagi).
With the above rarity of bread in mind, our bakery owner in OlKalou was actually a distributer for Elliots. A wholesaler. His shop was where the Elliots truck from Nairobi dropped off bread for OlKalou and its environs and local shopkeepers came to the ‘bakery’ to purchase their stock for their customers. During the rainy season, it was not unusual to find Kiihuri sitting in his shop with empty crates, because the Elliots truck was stuck somewhere in Kirima.
Whenever we had bread in our house, the wrappers were saved and used for covering exercise books. These wrappers were glossy you could not write your name on them, but that did not stop us from using them for covering books. Other kids in school used them too. It was a way of showing off, letting everybody know that your family eats bread, which was a really big deal back in the day.
