I had never seen a gas cooker up close and now I was being shown how to light an automatic one. The sight of an Afri gas cylinder brought back memories of my visit to Nyahururu with my mother a year earlier, where she freaked out about gas cylinders exploding and killing everybody. I was not keen on learning how to use it, because my mothers words were loudly echoing in my mind. I was only 11 years old and had a full life ahead of me, I did not want it cut short by an exploding gas cylinder. But, looking around, there was no other means of cooking food in this house. No pile of firewood stacked neatly under a shed like we did back home in OlKalou. There was no charcoal jiko anywhere in this kitchen that was cleaner than a hospital, and there was obviously no sack of charcoal standing in a corner like we did in my mothers’ kitchen. That left me with zero options. I had been sent out here to help, and if I could not help out in the kitchen because I was afraid of the gas exploding in my face, I may as well be shipped back to OlKalou immediately. I was not about to let that happen. The food here was too good and the bed too comfortable, I was not going to throw all that away before my one month was spent.
I therefore cast my fears aside, and opened my mind to the possibility of learning how to navigate this strange kitchen with all its strange appliances and gadgets. I figured, if there was going to be an explosion, nobody was going to blame it on me, because my mother was well aware of the dangers posed by propane gas, I had heard her voice her concerns loudly at a strangers house in Nyahururu the previous year. Feeling already exonerated, I approached the gas cooker, shaky legs, sweaty palms and all, but there was no turning back. It was like standing at the door of an aeroplane, ready to jump, trusting the parachute will open. You can only hope.
I cautiously learnt to light the gas cooker, and to turn it off safely when done. With time, I even started enjoying it and I remembered the words of the Bank Managers wife in Nyahururu when she raved how safe and clean cooking with gas really was. I was amazed that you can cook a meal without your eyes watering from smoke, your eyebrows almost getting licked off your face by violent flames, and the sufuria not getting a hint of black soot on the outside like ours did at my mother’s kitchen back in OlKalou.
The only question racing through my mind the whole time was: did mother know there was the monster propane gas in use at her daughter’s house, and now her younger daughter was being introduced to it without her knowledge? I knew in my heart that of all the stories I would be telling when I finally got back home to OlKalou, this was not one of them. I did not want to be responsible for my mother showing up at my sister’s house with a pick up full of firewood and reading my sister the riot act.
