‘Bitings ….’

The term ‘Bitings’ is the Kenyan slang for snacks, nibbles, or, as we call them in Nigeria, small chops. It seemed an appropriate title for this blog update which is a collection of brief, not necessarily related musings.

Home

Wikipedia defines a home as ‘a dwelling-place used as a permanent or semi-permanent residence for an individual, family, household or several families in a tribe’. It goes on to describe the psychological significance of home ‘The strongest sense of home commonly coincides geographically with a dwelling. Usually the sense of home attenuates as one moves away from that point, but it does not do so in a fixed or regular way. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home#Psychological_significance).

I found myself reflecting on this a few weeks ago. I was asked by a new acquaintance where home was and found myself responding ‘Leeds in Yorkshire’. I surprised myself with that response. You see, I have been asked this question many times in England; it’s a question that many non-white British folk, especially those of us with non-Anglo-Saxon names get asked very often. I have always responded by stating that home is Nigeria, but that I am proud honorary Yorkshire lass. This has been my standard response despite have lived in England for over 30 years altogether; most of my adult life. So I found myself wondering why I responded differently here in Kenya.

The Wikipedia quote above suggests that the sense of home declines  as one moves away from the said place. I think it’s the opposite. My sense of home as Nigeria intensified the longer I lived away from it and I never consciously though of home as Leeds until I moved away from it these past few months. Despite 19 years living there; despite the fact that my family were in Leeds; and that the only collection of bricks and mortar I can lay claim to are in Leeds; I had never consciously thought of Leeds as home, until I moved to Kenya. And since first vocalising that thought, I find myself obsessively homesick for Leeds. I check the BBC website, specifically for Look North (our local news programme); I started following some Leeds-based twitter groups and I even found myself reading sympathetically about the woes of Leeds United football club despite having no interest in football beyond a bemused fascination with other peoples’ fanatical support for ‘the beautiful game’.

I do miss home and by home here I mean Leeds. Strange; or as we say in Yorkshire, ‘nowt as queer as folk’.

Home, again

I spent just under 2 weeks back in England in September, primarily to help ‘amazing daughter’ move down to London to start her training at a Drama Conservatoire. It was a hectic trip back, shuttling between Leeds and London and visiting every IKEA store in between. I must say that the instructions for assembling IKEA furniture seem to have improved somewhat, although we did have some ‘expert’ help (thanks Geoff!). But we got there eventually and amazing daughter moved in with a lovely bunch of housemates. As a side benefit, I’ve made some new friends too; the mums of the  new housemates have been wonderful and I felt better getting on the plane coming back to Nairobi because I know she has great housemates and that their mums will look after my girl while I’m away.

Now, if you had asked me in April this year, if I though amazing daughter would be alright on her own in The Big Smoke, I would have said ‘sure she will, I raised her right, our values are her values, she knows what we expect of her, she will be fine’. But no sooner had I left her in London than I began to worry … ‘will she know how to manage her money well and not rack up any unnecessary debt? Will she know how to pay her bills? Will she get on with her new housemates’ ; and so on and son on … The most absurd anxiety! I then moved from the sublime to the ridiculous and found myself thinking, ‘what if she meets some people in London and gets radicalised?’ Preposterous I know, but I thought it, albeit briefly and I blame that thought on stuff I had been reading in the media about radicalised young people. The absurdity of actually entertaining that thought was what I needed to shake me out of my spiralling anxiety. I’m now back to ‘of course she will be fine, I raised her right and God is watching over her’ mode. Just as I was beginning to relax and assure myself everything would be fine, we found out that the student loan company had missed up her application and her money hadn’t come through! Back to panic stations…!

Resolutions

I never make New Year resolutions. I know I won’t keep them. I do however set myself what I like to grandiosely describe as long term, self-improvement goals. Not putting a timescale on these goals, takes the pressure off and ensures that I do not have any sense of failure if I don’t achieve then over any time period (clever eh?). However, on moving to Kenya, I broke my habit and set myself a goal that seemed reasonable and achievable.

I have always loved the saxophone and for my 40^th birthday, many years ago, my gift to myself was a second hand sax and lessons. I had never learned to read music, so the plan was to learn to read music and learn the saxophone purely for my own enjoyment. My goals were simple; I wanted to play just three songs very well – A Change is gonna come by Sam Cooke; Summertime by Gershwin and, rather ambitiously, Just the two of us by Bill Withers. Well I did learn how to play Summertime (passably), and because my young, extremely cool saxophone teacher is a big Fela fan and was just tickled pink to meet someone in Leeds who knew about Fela and had been to The Shrine (once), I also learned a bit of Fela - Expensive S**t (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmXvpuseXWU). Then, swine flu happened, I had to cancel lessons because of work, and never resumed them and even worse I didn’t take the saxophone out of its case more than twice in the ensuing years.

So, since I would be in Kenya on my own, didn’t know anyone here and wouldn’t have any after-work family responsibilities, I reckoned this would be an excellent time to pick up the sax again. So, I deliberately did not take out a subscription for local cable television, lugged my sax, music books and teach yourself the saxophone videos all the way to Kenya. Well how have I done? Not great. I have only taken the saxophone out of the case twice in the 4 months that I’ve been here! Oh well, I guess that is some improvement – twice is 4 months is certainly better than twice in 6 years! And who knows, I might just bring it out again tonight, that will be thrice in 4 months!!

Next post will be back to more serious issues related to why I’m actually in Kenya …

Guilty of believing in a single story

Apologies for taking so long to update my blog, it's been a busy few weeks.

I promised to write about food a while ago, but food is too important to just describe by taste and texture. So these are my philosophical musings on the subject.

In her famous TED talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks of the danger of a single story. She relates the story of the reaction of her American roommate on first meeting this woman from 'Africa'. If you haven't read or heard that speech (which planet have you been on?) you can access it here  http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en.

I had always believed this was a problem for the west; that we 'Africans' by necessity have a broader understanding of the world and know that the British are more than just Londoners subsisting on fish and chips eaten out of yesterday's newspaper, that Americans are more than loud, unbelievably optimistic people living on burgers with cheese, and that the French are more than just designer wear and frog-legs. We, by necessity, understood the variety of the world better. I knew that Africa is not a country; I knew that there isn't a language called 'african', that we spoke distinct languages and not just 'dialects'. I knew all that, didn't I? Since coming to Kenya I have had to rethink my certainty and to realise that I too, am (or was) guilty, perhaps to a lesser extent, but guilty nonetheless, of believing in a single story.

Before coming to Kenya, I knew that Kenyans were different from Nigerians; that they looked different, spoke different languages, had distinct historical and cultural experiences. I knew all that but I discovered on getting here that I was guilty of believing that all Africans eat similar foods! How could I assume that food, a fundamental cultural characteristic would be consistent across such a vast geographical expanse as the distance between Nigeria and Kenya? How could I?

The consequence of my belief in this single culinary story was the total shock to my palate on discovering Kenyan cuisine! I am a foodie. I love food. There are very few foods I would total refuse to eat or define as totally unacceptable. I eat sushi. I eat jellied eels. I eat French escargot (but feel that the French would swoon at the experience of giant African snails prepared Nigerian style with my friend Nky Iweka's pepper sauce - see executivemamaput.com). But with Japanese sushi and jellied eels, I came prepared, expecting something different, something 'other' and therefore my mental palate came to those dishes well prepared. On the other hand I came to Kenyan food assuming a similarity to Nigerian cuisine with which I am most familiar. I had seen pictures of, and read descriptions of Ugali. I had assumed (correctly) that Ugali would be like the foo-foo made from yam, cassava or rice, eaten in many parts of West Africa. I had assumed that I would enjoy it as I do pounded yam and garri. I assumed that the staple foods with which I am familiar would be widely available in Kenya so that, should I wish, I could cook yam pottage made with palm oil or egusi soup with ease.

So Ugali eaten with nyama boil, sukumawiki and kachumbari, was a shock and a disappointment. Where was the thick tasty soup / stew to dip the Ugali in? Where were the spices, scent leaves and distinct 'African flavours'? You mean some Africans don't lace their food with fiery hot chillies? Really? Where was the Kenyan equivalent of the legendary and sometimes controversial jollof rice  (see jollofgate http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-29831183)?

My lack of psychological preparation for difference made me decide that I didn't like Kenyan food. My work colleagues attempts to reverse my opinion by taking me out to THE place for Nyama choma (barbecued meat) sadly failed as I compared it to Nigerian suya and found it wanting.

I have since eaten Kenyan cuisine that I enjoyed more; the coastal Asian-influenced curries, the 'food without borders' produced by my friend Binyavanga Wainaina (forgive me for name dropping); but I find that my belief in a single culinary story has coloured my appreciation of the food.

 Lesson learned.