I have always been a skeptic. It is driven by a yearning to do research on any new information that I gather before accepting it as gospel truth or dismissing it.
This has often worked to my advantage but sometimes also lands me in trouble, like it did some 10 years ago.
Right after the class in which Mutiso handed me the book, the history teacher entered the class. He was a burly man, with a comically shrill voice that made students chuckle whenever he started speaking.
It was especially funny when he got angry, just as I made him those 10 years ago.
On that day he was carrying a bulky book bound with a brown cover. From my seating position, I could partially read the title. Written in a bold League Gothic font, it said “The History of Food in….”
He placed the book on top of the table and declared, “Who knows what Zea mays is?”
I am certain that none of us knew what he was talking about, but a voice mimicking his came from the back bench, “Mimi!” Laughter.
“Who said that?” He demanded. What followed were only blank stares and cricket sounds, sounds, sounds.
He continued with the teaching, desperately trying to mask his anger now that the culprit was unknown to him.
He then started stating all the food crops that we knew and their origin. He started with the hallowed wheat products. He told us where the crop came from.
Then he got to rice, which itself was a rare food item. During my childhood I ate more rice as an uninvited guest at local weddings than I did at home.
Then he got to what he had called Zea mays.
“Maize was brought to Kenya by Portuguese traders in the 1500s”, he proudly declared. That’s when my skepticism kicked in and I found myself asking,
“So you want to say that Kenyans were feasting on stones before then?” Laughter.
The only memory I have of what happened next is me flying through the door, missing the metallic edge to my right by an inch.
Strangely enough, I still had the book, “Njamba Nene and the Flying Bus” in my hands.
Having no other choice now that I had been kicked out of class, I went to the field to read some more.
“O.K I’ll explain how we can help ourselves. We must first of all find out where we have come from…”, read the first line.
The events of that day became clearer to me sometime last year when I saw what was happening around the country.
There was a serious food crisis precipitated by a maize shortage.
People queued and queued and queued for the commodity. At some point, supermarkets were forced to ration the number of maize flour packets one could pick on the almost-empty shelves.
By June of 2017, a 90 kg bag of the grain was retailing at almost Ksh. 7000, an increase of nearly 100% from the previous year.
The government went into panic mode and started ‘importing’ (Ooh dear, there goes the skepticism again) from Mexico, Uganda, and other countries.
The Kenyan Red Cross even started mobilizing funds to raise Ksh. 1 billion for feeding the nearly 4 million citizens facing starvation.
I sat there, just watching the news and wondering how we got here.
Then, out of the blues, I remembered Njamba Nene’s words: “We must first of all find out where we have come from”.
How did we become so over reliant on one crop? Studies have shown that this over-dependence on maize continually threatens our food security.
So I stood up, and went all the way to the Buruburu National Library. I located the book Mr. Wachira had been carrying that day.
It still has that brown cover with “The History of Food in….” written in bold League Gothic font at the very top.
I read about the food we had forgotten, the orphan crops we must remember for food, nutritional and economic sustainability.
These are the food crops that can serve as alternatives to maize for they were used before it landed on our shores.
We have no reason to be starving when we have these forgotten food crops:
- Sorghum (Mtama)
- Finger Millet (Wimbi)
- Millet (Mawele)
- Cassava (Mihogo)
Our attitudes need to change as to what makes food food. These crops have become victims of our national obsession with maize despite being, to a large extent, more nutritious.
Given that 1 in 5 Kenyans is undernourished (you might be that 1 person, btw), these crops are a ready solution waiting to be tapped into.
More importantly, they are more adapted to the local climate being native to the region. They are drought tolerant in ways no maize breed is.
These crops perform exceedingly well in areas where maize does not.
One does not need to be a food expert to understand that with such potential, we cannot continue having a population in which 25% of the children are stunted due to chronic malnutrition.
The great thing, however, is that there is some light at the end of the tunnel (Who dug this tunnel btw?).
The government is in the process of formulating a policy that will compel millers to blend maize flour with those forgotten crops.
This, hopefully, will increase utilization of these crops hence raising demand and, consequently, driving up production. At the same time, it will lower the demand for maize.
This is a step in the right direction, but then, let’s wait and see. Kindly forgive my skepticism, and all the other non-food related stories along the way.
Farm Kenya 
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