There was one bar of soap that was common in every home. It was the Panga Soap brand, and it is still in the market today. We called it thabuni wa kibandi or thabuni wa muti. It was nothing fancy, just one long bar that you sliced into five or more bars of soap. It did not come wrapped in plastic like it is today. It was gold in color and it came segmented on both sides indicating bar sizes. A customer either bought the whole long bar or the shopkeeper cut for them the size they wanted. This Panga Soap was multi purpose. In my home, we used it for washing dishes, bathing and washing clothes.
There were bath soaps like Lux, Rexona, Sunlight and Lifebuoy in the shops, but we had never seen them upclose because our parents never purchased such “luxury” items. One day in the 1970s, our college going sister brought home a bar of Sunlight soap. Imagine our surprise to see a single bar of soap individually wrapped in a bright yellow glossy paper with bold black writings on it and it smelt so nice and fresh. We knew sophistication had finally come to our home. Its fragrance was heavenly and that is why we only used it for bathing; whenever we bathed, that is. Who is asking?
My mother and her friends declared Sunlight was no ordinary soap. It had ‘built in’ special oils that made the skin smooth and supple. That explained why they applied Sunlight on their arms and legs whenever they were going out, including church. It was called “Kwihaka thabuni” translation, applying soap. That is what it was literally. You wet the soap with water, lathered it in your hands and applied the whitish foam on your skin, rubbing it in until it faded into the skin. The outcome was a clean shiny looking skin. We were also recruited into the “kwihaka thabuni” club. Since we never bathed in the morning before going to school, we washed our faces with soap and water, then applied soap on our arms and legs “kurinda huunyu” translation “soak up dryness”. It did the trick. Our arms and legs looked clean and shiny like we had bathed. That was all we needed to pass the hygiene inspection at school, thanks to Sunlight soap. Bathing is overrated. But do not ask me if we ever brushed our teeth. I am not ready to discuss that subject and if anybody spreads rumors that we didn’t, I will deny it categorically like a politician.
From this background, you can understand my shock when I reported to High School and I had five bars of Rexona soap in my green metal box. The question racing through my mind was, “all these bars of soap just for me, how often did they think I would be bathing?” I found out alright. EVERYDAY!!! And my life was never the same since that shocking introduction to daily bathing. Now I bath twice a day, morning and evening, making some people around me wonder why. I guess I am trying to make up for the decade in OlKalou when I bathed only once a week. Who knows.
