The other reason we never ate anything in town was the simple fact that we never had any money. Ever. Our parents made sure of that. To be able to eat anything in town, you had to have money. My parents did most of the shopping themselves making sure we never came into contact with money.
The few times mother sent us to town, either to buy something or mill flour, she gave us exact change and if there was any balance, it was a few cents and you had to give it back the moment you reached home. We were the kids who looked at the jars of sweets lined up on shop counters but we could not afford even a PATCO (thwiti ya hwaiti) which was the cheapest of them all. We studied every jar and its contents closely, salivating the whole time then swallowing hard (kumeria ngindi) as we headed out of the shop with our mother’s shopping and nothing else.
This trend continued even in high school where we were only given enough money for bus fare and nothing extra. We only started having money when we went to college and were given student “Boom”. I am sure if my parents had their way, they could have come for that too, keeping us penniless so that we did not get ‘spoilt by money’ (guthuukio ni mbeca). This explains why Kanyuri never received a dime from us, and we never tasted his famous Mandazis although we salivated as the aroma hit our noses as we passed infront of his hotel.
Today, if Kanyuri was still in business, I could sit in his hotel, eat to my fill and carry some home to eat later and the next day for breakfast. I now know the food prepared in hotels in town is not for travelers or town working people only. It is for anybody who is hungry and is willing to spend some cash. That is what my parents neglected to tell us because they did not want to introduce us to a lifestyle of expenses they could not sustain. I don’t blame them one bit, I could have done the same in their circumstances.
We do not understand the choices parents make for their children, until we become parents ourselves and realize they were up to something. They knew something we did not, and we all turned out better because of it.
Wild fruits, berries and Mibebe: Like all children, we craved sweets in any form, but there was never money to buy any from the shops in town or from the farmers market. We therefore concentrated our efforts in finding wild fruits and berries on our farm. We ate Ndare, Ngambura, Nathi, Nagu, Thigiyu, Kaiyaba, Ndanda Mbogo and Ndabibi leaves. Since sugarcane did not grow in Olkalou and we rarely got any from Gikuyu, we resulted to eating green maize stalks (mabebe) and we actually called them Kigwa. They looked a little bit like sugarcane on the outside and they had a sweet taste to them but not exactly like sugarcane. One of my brothers was an expert in selecting a “sweet” one and we depended on him to locate a good one for us. We cut the maize stalk down, chewed our spongy like “cane” and left the chewed out fiber in a pile. My parents stumbled into such piles and we got a lecture for the destruction of healthy maize stalks that could have matured and yielded a good harvest of maize had we not cut them down prematurely. We never stopped. So, every time we cut down mabebe for the cows to fill their troughs during milking, we also cut ourselves Kigwa for our refreshment. Our cows and us kids were on the same diet. How about that. So, for those friends of mine, who have ever wondered what is wrong with me, there is your answer.
