Grandma’s Kitchen
Her kitchen was a small, detached structure with an earthen floor and the traditional three-stone fireplace. If you grew up in an African home, you already know exactly what I mean.
The kitchen itself was a world of its own.
There was something that looked like a table, although calling it a table might be giving it too much credit. It was made from sticks that had not been evenly cut or even properly smoothed. The top was made of pieces of wood joined together, and this was where the utensils were arranged. Nothing matched, nothing looked particularly polished, but everything had its place.
In one corner stood an old cabinet. By then, it had turned almost completely black. I could never tell whether black was its original colour or whether years of smoke and soot had simply given it a new one.
Above it was a rack where firewood was stored, and the mabati roof was heavily coated in black soot. The longer you looked around, the more you noticed that almost everything in that kitchen carried a little evidence of the fire and smoke.
There was even a small trench along one side that served as our drainage system. You would wash the dishes and simply pour the dirty water into it, watching as it flowed outside, behind the kitchen.
The walls were useful too. Nails had been hammered into the wooden walls, and almost every nail seemed to have a purpose.
Near the door, the keys and padlock would hang. There was a gunia filled with other gunias, which were taken out whenever we needed to go looking get pasture for the cows. Pangas and other farm tools were tucked against the walls. There were a few old kiondos hanging around too, probably waiting for the next job they would be needed for.
On the side where the utensils were kept, there were more nails where the sufurias would hang after they had been washed.
Some of those sufurias had patches in the middle, evidence that they had been repaired and given another chance at life. Nothing in that kitchen was wasted.
Everything had a purpose.
Everything had a story.
And in the middle of all this was my grandmother.
There was a particular chair that belonged to her. I don’t remember anyone else sitting on it. It was hers.
My grandmother never measured anything. No teaspoons. No tablespoons. No measuring cups. Nothing. She had her eyes and her instincts and somehow, they never failed her.
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If she needed salt or sugar, she would reach for the container holding it. Of course, it was not some fancy kitchen container. It was probably a container that had once held powdered soap. If you are African enough, you know exactly the kind I mean. Nothing in an African household was ever truly empty. Before you threw a container away, you had to first ask yourself, What else can this become?
She would scoop some salt or sugar into the palm of her hand, look at it for a second, and then casually dump it into the sufuria sitting over the fire.
That was her measurement.
Her palm.
Her eyes.
Her experience.
And somehow, the food always came out right.
Her hands were old and wrinkled, but they were incredibly steady. Those hands also possessed another mysterious superpower: she could take a hot sufuria straight from the fire with her bare hands.
I am still convinced those hands had been specially trained for the job.
But of all the things she cooked, there is one dish that has stayed with me. Cooked bananas mixed with potatoes.
Nothing about the ingredients sounds extraordinary. There were onions, tomatoes, salt, bananas and potatoes. That was it. She would put everything together in that sufuria over the three stones, and somehow, those very ordinary ingredients would become something I can still taste decades later.
The food was not particularly beautiful. If food had to audition for Instagram, this one would probably not make it past the first round. But the taste? My God. That taste has never left me.
There was something about the thick soup that formed around the bananas and potatoes. It coated everything just right, and every bite somehow tasted better than the one before it. Even as I write this, I can almost taste it.
And I have tried. Oh, I have tried. Several times, I have attempted to recreate that meal. I have bought the same ingredients. I have cooked bananas and potatoes together. I have added onions, tomatoes and salt. I have watched the food simmer and waited hopefully for that familiar taste to appear. It never does.
Something is always missing. Perhaps it is the exact amount of salt that only her palm knew. Perhaps it is the fire from those three stones. Perhaps it is the old sufuria.Or maybe — and I think this is the real answer — it was her.
Because some meals are not really about the ingredients. They are about the hands that prepared them.
I am grateful that I got to know my grandmother. I am grateful that I got to spend time with her as a child, to sit around that simple kitchen and watch her do things that seemed so ordinary then but feel almost magical now. At the time, I did not know I was collecting memories.
