Umoja

After our driest Christmas since we were both about nine, we celebrated David’s birthday with lashings of Tusker, Kenya’s number one beer (at least in our opinion).

David turned thirty in a very pleasant manner. With no January sales, snow or cold weather to bother us, we took a leisurely trip around Kisumu museum. Other than a rather gruesome taxidermy display of a lion in mid-air pouncing and tearing its teeth into its prey, a pair of crocs and an African grey parrot in a slightly undersized cage, the museum exhibits include a rather excellent Luo homestead. This shows the proper positions of the gate, granaries, each wife’s house if it is a polygamous family, and each son’s, as well as describing the ritual process of setting up a new home. I’m not saying this just because I’m an anthropologist, David thought so too!

Nowadays, most Luo people build houses with corrugated iron roofs. This material, known in Swahili as mabati, was for many years considered a symbol of wealth and prosperity as the cost of a mabati roof greatly exceeded that of a traditional grass roof, but was much easier to maintain as a mabati structure lasted for years. Nowadays however, following years of inadequate rainfall, grass has become very difficult to grow, and expensive. At Mama and Baba Omundi’s home in Seme where we spent Christmas, only one building has a grass roof, the traditional round boma where we took meals and met other visitors during our stay. It is this particular building, and not the other buildings with their mabati roofs, which is the most striking sign of the wealth that is present in this family home. At the museum, the cool, dark interiors of the traditional round houses with their grass roofs made us wonder at the continuing popularity of mabati roofs in some parts of Luo land, where houses become almost unbearably hot and stuffy during the day, and whether the trend in building style may come full circle so that grass roofs become a sign of wealth and prosperity.

We left the museum and David make a quick cyber stop to pick up his birthday messages, and then had lunch at a cafe in town owned by a pair of Germans who retired to Kisumu to live the quiet life by the lake. After picking up David’s birthday cake from the bakers, we came home and shared cake and chai with all our neighbours, we lost Tommy temporarily under a pile of blue icing - you’ve got to wonder about the food colouring! If that were not enough, we ended the day with a meal at our favourite local restaurant, Hays, which is owned by a Finnish woman (she’s the chef) and her Kenyan Sikh husband (he runs the front of house). They only have twenty covers, so the food is always top quality, and they source lovely fish and meat, which on this occasion was topped off by the world’s tastiest home-made lime meringue pie, on the house!

Not a bad way to spend your birthday, I’d say. Although we did feel a bit over full by the time we got home! By the way, we’ve received a few Christmas cards so thank you for sending those, and for all your Christmas messages.