There was only one bakery in Olkalou owned by a man named Kiihuri. He was medium built and very light skinned. Kiihuri was always dressed in well tailored, light colored suits with a white shirt underneath, making him look very clean and classy. I can still picture him in his signature light blue suit. He also wore a wide brimmed Godfather hat.
When you hear bakery, you think of bread baking in the oven and pastries displayed on the glass counter. Our OlKalou bakery had nothing of the sort. Let me give you a little background. There was only one bread company in the country and it was based in Nairobi. It was called Elliots. Every bread eaten in all the corners of the country was baked somewhere in Industrial Area in Nairobi, and distribution trucks left at midnight to take bread all over. I commend Elliots for such a wide distribution, it must have been a logistical nightmare, not to mention the expense, but they did it.
Elliots had only four products. There was regular bread wrapped in a blue and white chequered glossy wrapper. There was Premium bread (Mugate wa Iriya) translation milk break. This one was more expensive than the regular bread. It came wrapped in a beige and white chequered glossy wrapper. Then there were the scones (Thigonji). They were twelve in a pack. These came in a blue and clear chequered plastic bag. Through the clear squares, you could see the golden scones inside.
And finally, there was a half bread. We called it Kamugate ka Fote. Direct translation: Small bread of Forty. Story went that the name was derived from the price. The regular loaf of bread costed 80 cents while the small half loaf costed 40 cents. I know it is hard for the younger generation to picture a whole loaf of bread costing less than one shilling, but it did; yet majority of families could not afford it, because one shilling was a lot of money back then and it was better spent purchasing other necessities, not delicacies like bread.
One point to note about bread is that none of it came sliced. Nobody had ever seen sliced bread. It came years later and our eyes almost popped out of their sockets when we first saw the thin, delicate looking slices of bread, they were almost too cute to eat.
