Lessos, Mtatus, and Nyama Choma

As my time here in Kenya continues, so do the adventures! On Wednesday, Sara and I decided to ask Mum Jane (who takes care of the babies) if she wouldn’t mind accompanying us to go get some Nyama Choma. It’s a special treat for Kenyans – grilled sheep. Conveniently, there’s a restaurant relatively close that’s apparently famous for its Nyama Choma; and as Mum Jane told us, people will travel all the way from Nairobi to eat there.

So the three of us began walking down the road, each with a baby strapped to our backs Kenyan style in a lesso. Mum Jane had Joy, Sara had hope, and Jacob was with me. At the end of the road, we waited for a mtatu (Kenyan “taxi” vans) to come by, and fortunately one that wasn’t very full showed up almost immediately. We all piled in, twisting the lessos around so the babies were on our laps, and held on for the ride. Kenyan roads are full of potholes. Consequently, drivers are constantly swerving on either side of the road, dodging the holes, going around livestock, and passing slower vehicles. Fortunately our mtatu wasn’t very full, but you can often see them overflowing with passengers packed in as tightly as they’ll fit. (Not so pleasant when it comes to body odor.)

We rode just past Haraka (a town on the way to Njabini where the kids go to school) until we made it to the restaurant. The driver dropped us off past where we needed to be, so we began walking back down the road a ways, and as we traveled along in front of all the shops and businesses we got plenty of stares and laughs. Apparently it’s not a common sight to see two white girls with African babies strapped to their backs. One guy made the comment, “Oh, you have a black baby? How good!”

We finally arrived and ordered a kilo of Nyama Choma for Sara and I, and meat pies for Mum Jane and the toddlers back home. (It still amazes me how cheap food is here – 270ksh for a kilo of meat, that’s only about three dollars!) One of the workers brought out a big chunk of meat and asked for our approval before he chopped it up in front of us. Next we stopped at another stand to get chips (French fries) and then we waited for a ride home.

The first vehicle that stopped was the Tulaga, a bus much bigger than the mtatus. Mum Jane said she’d prefer to wait for a different option so we continued standing on the side of the road while a guy got off the Tulaga that had stopped and approached us. Sara and I were a bit taken aback, not sure how to react to him. He had his face painted with black and white stripes, his two front teeth were painted black, his pants had colored strips of fabric hanging off of them, his oversized shirt was stuffed to give him a beer belly, and the same was done to his pants – giving him a highly oversized rear end. He was acting a bit like a mime, trying to get some kind of reaction out of us by making faces at us and the babies and randomly laughing and dancing around. We waited to see what Mum Jane would do, and she talked to him and told us he was a comedian… though he definitely acted more like the drunk men you can usually come across walking around. When he finally figured out we spoke English, he made a desperate attempt to sell us his CD as everyone else standing nearby laughed at our awkward meeting.

After no mtatus were showing up, we finally decided to take the next Tulaga home. It was more spacey than the mtatu, but it was crowded, full of body odor, and like the mtatu, its walls were covered in advertisements for Eminem and various rappers. After our walk back down the road making up the last leg of the trip, we made it back to IAA. It turned out the shopkeepers had put ketchup on the fries so they were all soggy and half of the Nyama Choma was fat or bone, but the meat was delicious and I’d say it was a pretty successful venture – not too bad for mzungus.