Furthermore, making mutura is a specific skill, a skill that is slowly becoming harder to come by. Mutura has to be made by hand, unlike smokies, which can be industrially produced. Moreover, unlike the Farmer’s Choice smokies, mutura doesn’t have preservatives and so can’t be mass-produced. Even posh and/or colonial establishments that are gentrifying the product face this problem, and so, for them, mutura is mostly only served on special occasions, such as weddings.
Nevertheless, we go on. We mutura lovers persist.
I go to my mutura place.
“Niekee ya forty,” I tell my mutura guy.
That was then.
Now, things are different. Now, Nairobi is shut down because of COVID-19. Travel in and out of the city is banned, and there’s a countrywide curfew from dusk to dawn. Social distancing regulations announced by the government early during Kenya’s infection mean that restaurants and eateries remain closed, unless they meet stringent health requirements.
I walk around my neighborhood in the evenings. All the mutura joints are closed. I call Clifton, ask him if he’s been able to eat mutura ever since all of this began.
“No,” he tells me. “All my usual guys are closed.”
