I am not sure I ever met Kanyuri, but I have never forgotten his name. He ran a hotel in OlKalou and was famous for making the best and biggest Mandazi in town. Stories used to circulate that it was tough to finish one mandazi at Kanyuri’s because of their gigantic size. Whoever said that had obviously not met us in our teenage years.
I am sure Kanyuri served other dishes in his hotel but nobody talked of anything else other than the Mandazi that made his hotel famous. To me, that is good enough because the people who went there for the Mandazi ended up eating whatever else Kanyuri served.
I never met Kanyuri because we never ate anything in town, other than the once in a long while mutura and soup we tasted at Wambiga’s butchery as we waited for our meat. For people who owned land in the Settlement Scheme, it was frowned upon if one left their home and went eating in town.
Josiah Wanyika: Sometimes in the late 1970s or very early 1980s, one of the Pioneer Parents from our Settlement Scheme opened the first modern restaurant in OlKalou town. It was called Aberdare Inn. It was the first restaurant that served tea as a mixture of milk and water and they gave you a teabag to complete the process for yourself. That was a new phenomenon in OlKalou and it was the talk of the town and beyond. Those who had the good fortune of enjoying a cup of tea at Aberdare Inn, talked in very exaggerated terms to describe their tea experience. For us who never tasted that tea, we believed it must have been something special, like nothing we had ever tasted before. We could not fathom how a brand new, fancy looking teabag could be used for one cup of tea and then tossed. Well, that was our introduction to modernization of tea service, helping us identify teabags and their use when we traveled to the city and other big towns in our high school years.
They also made fried chicken and chips, a meal that nobody had seen served in a restaurant before. Those glistening, heavenly smelling foods were displayed under a glass food warmer on the counter in full view of anybody who walked into the restaurant or happened to pass by. When my mother passed through there for the first time and saw the glistening chicken and chips, I heard her describe to her friends in her usual colorful language “Wanjiru arendia nguku na chibithi, ikumetameta gicicio-ini ta thahabu” translation: “Wanjiru is serving chicken and chips, they glisten under the glass like gold”.
The restaurant was in one of the buildings that face the tarmac road, across the street from the DO’s office. One could walk through the restaurant and exit at the back of the building. Teenagers like us who never had any money to eat anything in town took advantage of that through way, just so we could feast our eyes on the food displayed on the counter as we took deep breathes to soak in the heavenly aromas.
The counter was manned by Nyina wa Jane, the cheerful, customer oriented mother to our friends Jane and Karuga, whom we all called Bro, more like Buroo the Kikuyunized version. Some days as we passed through the restaurant, we saw our friends helping their mother at the counter or serving customers. We wished we could trade places with them, just so we could taste some of that food.
The Josiah family, everybody called him Jothiya, grew deep business roots in OlKalou town and none of us were surprised when they built the ultra modern TEWAN hotel which quickly became the place to have a meal in OlKalou town, as well as decent lodging facilities for those who needed them. They are still serving OlKalou customers and for that we thank them. Niwega Ithe wa Jane na Karuga.
