Food Glorious Food

Sometime earlier this year I was checking out the kindergartens in my neighborhood. Little man is 2 years old, the right foundation for his education is very important. I was looking for a place where children are allowed to play first and learn later. Do you know there are kindergartens that give homework and exams to kids in playgroup? That is too foreign for me to understand so I don’t want to deal with it.

There was one particular kindergarten that stood out thanks to an interesting conversation with the owner. After a quick tour of the house/facilities, she gave me the lunch menu as the apologetically explained that some items in the menu will soon be removed after parents complained. Before she mentioned that I wasn’t even looking at the menu, so now I looked to see what these contentious issues were.

She continued to apologetically explain that she was only trying to meet the children’s dietary needs the way the met those of her own children 30 odd years ago. She continued to explain how opening the kindergarten/daycare forced to get in with the times.

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So the problematic foods in the menu were Matoke, Ngwaci (sweet potatoes), Ndumas (Arrow roots), Njahi, Mukimo… even ugali was a problem food! Apparently, young mothers want their babies to eat pasta, meatballs, rice, fries, cabbages (yuck! You cannot pay me to eat that tasteless mass of fibre!) and other city foods. My gosh we are a lost generation – my thoughts as she was speaking. I left having kept my shock to myself.

Days later at a salon in one of the new fashionable malls near my neighborhood, one of the ladies working on my head exclaimed her disgust when she discovered her child in kindergarten was being given stewed sweet potatoes with traditional greens cooked in milk. She said ‘I escaped from the village and left backward things like those there, my child should eat like a child from Nairobi! I pay good money for that’. Her words, not mine.

It seems to be modern is to forget or ignore everything that is not ‘urban’. I felt somewhat silly as a mother because just around that time I was trying to introduce little man to grilled bananas with milk for brekkie (if this doesn’t sound heavenly to you, I am profoundly sorry for you).

I know that there are wonderful nutritional benefits in these traditional foods but I like my food to be yummy first and healthy later. I have enjoyed roast bananas and milk since I was a child, my relationship with Ngwaci is legendary, honey glazed baked pumpkin (which my house-help thinks is madness and steers far away from). Arrow-roots are a fairly new and I’m very choosy about it. More recently I have a yearning for Mukimo with fresh maize and nettle leaves (don’t know their kikuyu name) I want my babies to enjoy that food too. But when parents threaten to pull their children out of school for offering these delicacies, I fear my kids might dislike these foods out of peer pressure. I will try though to give them the same yummy magic my mummy gave me and hope they become traditional food ambassadors someday. Besides, these foods are so healthy, there’s no point discussing the nutritional value here. Its like trying to explain why gold is precious. The way things are going, these foods are getting as hard to find and as expensive as gold anyway so the comparison is quite appropriate. On that note, where can I find nice Ndumas? The ones that cook into deep purple.