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"Macho nne, sipendi vile unavyoelezea kile umekila, Itabidi
nimekufuka hapa."
"Wale m
lio maliza kula, tafadhalini naomba muwapishe wale hawajala tuna
wateja wanatungoja kwa mlango."
The first statement was directed to yours truly and the second to
customers who were turning the restaurant into a lounge because the number of
customers Mama Mswahili attends to can sometimes be overwhelming.
You get a call from an campus pal one night and even though it
sounds bizarre, you receive it. You are in the loo making another call. A long
one that nature has bequeathed all and sundry as a way of relieving the body
off toxic wastes that are indigestible and undigestible.
It happens to be one of the buddies you were duped in campus with
calling you at an odd time. Yes you are busy pelting stools and you receive it
hoping those moments when the missiles force the body to squirm and the mouth
to utter incoherent words will not be a case in point. You know there are those
projectiles that usually refuse to be released because the body has not had
enough water and that means you ‘chur’ (This is a Luo word) loudly when doing
your thing. Worse is when the stools destroy the soft and delicate anal canal
when the muscles cannot contract forcing you to behead the poop as the
remaining portion awaits send off, while still being withheld in the rectum.
Apparently, your buddy just wanted to tell you that he saw you
partaking some chow at Mama Mswahili. Of course he has been a regular customer
there for close to one year. Hitherto, you had no idea that she was called Mama
Mswahili. A phone call that comes like six months gets you on the know. Dudes
can be animals, instead of even asking about how you have been, he goes
straight to the point asking if you were the person and you consent.
A few days later you meet him in person. As usual, he remains the
same. Employment has not changed him much. You know as a starter, you get paid
what is measly. The kind of attire he adorns and his not so smooth face
evidence the fact that somehow, he is still struggling. You too are. However,
you are not better placed to judge if you actually are ravaged by the same
effects because it is barely your first month in an office setting.
You wish you had taken up a job that never restricts to the
office. Why? It is too monotonous and tedious. Things never happen. You are
constricted behind the computer looking for ways to bring business and sales
but sometimes it gets boring but since they say patience pays, you actually do
that. Remain patient till the eight hours of duty come to a close.
The bugger promises to buy you lunch when he is paid. How we love
free lunch. He however never honours the pledge because it looks like things
are going south. He is moving out to leave on his own and in a place where he
won’t incur a lot of transport expenses because he has grown and needs to
exercise some independence (read girlfriends). You remember his caption phrase,
‘Ni tricky.’ Looking back, you recall those nostalgic days in the bed-bug
ridden hostel when you used to ask yourself whether you would ever be employed
with the consistent unemployment that has peaked and is still high no matter
the measure that are both macro and micro economic put in place to curb the
devastating effects.
Mama Mswahili’s dishes are what the average Joe cannot afford
(Most go to places where ugali and mboga goes for a Kenyan pound). My immediate
supervisor told me the reason he goes for lunch is because he cannot afford to
torture his temple all in the name of saving a figure you will find you
recklessly spent on some stuff you cannot be able to account for. Even though
in your former workplace you never went for lunch and got used to it, now
things have changed. You buy into his argument because you received some petty
cash due to a project that you had undertaken of coming up with the syllabus of
a certain course and the notes were approved and voila, you got the cash to
sustain your lunch.
Something funny about cash is that, you never know when you will
have it. Sometimes you get so broke you feel the world will tumble but you
keeping on moving ahead because what is in store ahead is better than what is
present. Life is not static. The moment you let the sorrows and frustration it
besets take the better of you, the moment you stoop into some unintended frenzy
panic and quagmire that clobber all positive thoughts.
Eating at Mama Mswahili is like dining at Hilton or Intercon. It
is the most expensive eatery that sells deliciously cooked food and you are
served to your fill. There is no surety that the owner of the food kiosk is
Mama Mswahili, though. But she is the recipient of cash. She has the eyes of a
hawk even though she remains strategically positioned so that she can see all
her customers.
Her two waiters are always on the move at lunch time. They serve
more than five hundred people on any given weekday. Her meals are pricey
because there are some places where you can get what she sells at half the
price of her meals. Credit must go to her for having been the one and only food
vendor that we trust. You see some folks from campus who also frequent the
place and realize you are not alone.
At Mama Mswahili, it survives on referral. The person who referred
me here was also refereed by another person and the chain continues. She
ensures her meals adhere to standard and the quantity serves you to your fill.
This could be the reason why cars are parked outside her place by the
proletariats who are willing to forgo the luxury of some more decent food joint.
However, amid all the hullabaloo of the eatery having many
customers, it’s like the infamous Club 36 found near University of
NAIROBI only that it is not open air. The walls are made of rusty patched up
metals and corrugated iron sheets that you oversee because this does not matter
especially those moments when you are hungry and need to eat after hours of
staying in the office without even a single meal since breakfast. The aisles
are so narrow that no two people can walk side by side. The wooden benches that
are synonymous with Kenyan eateries of low-end franchises are the medium of
sitting. The tables are never clean even though they have covers that are wiped
by the waiters one off. Looking at the rooftop, you notice holes that let in
air.
If you want to get out while seated at the far end next to the
wall, it means you have to disrupt the other customers who have to give you way
because the place is so squeezed. The floor is obviously not tiled or cemented.
It being a rickety structure, and the possibility of being run down anytime
being high, not much has been invested inside in terms of making the place to
look serene and buoyant. The counter where Mama Mswahili sits on slightly
elevated is full of plates and mugs that are used to serve customers.
Mama Mswahili is the talkative type. Guess this is a
characteristic of the coastal women. She is never quiet and makes so much noise
like a hornbill. And luckily she even knows us because we usually enter the
place as a group from our workplace. That means when she sometimes sees us, she
never fails to greet us because we have been loyal customers. Never mind that
there have been suggestions we sample out other eateries which obviously rival
this one but the suggestions have been just that, suggestions, as we have
deafened our ears.
Sometimes you are tempted to think that the woman bought those
food kamotes in her meals so that you find yourself sticking to her meals
without changing. But the reality is that as a people, when you get used to one
thing, it takes you ages before you can break off a bad or a good habit. Like
the habit of never changing something because you are content with the
situation.
Status quo could also be a disturbing tenet. How can you decide to
lower your status by going to a less pricey eatery (the cheapest food at Mama
Mswahili is sh.60). Looking into the future, when things will start looking up,
we might just move to the Panari’s, Eka’s or Ole Sereni’s of Mombasa road. Then
we shall be like, ‘How come we did not notice that we were probable of being
attacked by cholera or the odd of being devastated by other water born
diseases’ pesa mzuri ikiingia.
HASTA LA VISTA BABY
[Picture Source: My Own]
