Then, the other rules of eating mutura. Fatty mutura, you can’t eat it when it’s cold. All mutura, you eat with your hands, not with a fork. Custom allows the use of a toothpick sometimes, but only reluctantly. The little ones at the mutura place, you feed them first. You always call for another round (“niongeze nyingine”) regardless of any prior predilections. And, finally, the best mutura is the one eaten in the cold, after a long hike on the foothills of one of the many mountains that skirt the Rift Valley, in a little hut where the kikuyu flies over your head, with a steaming cup of soup to which the chile you’ll add gives it that perfect monster kick.
Here’s a story: Last year, walking in town with N., we bumped into Eddie B. Listen, I told N., this guy, Eddie B., he’s the one who introduced me to mutura. This happened in Kisumu, in ‘07. That year there was post-election violence in Kisumu, sawa, people’s houses being burnt, businesses being looted, protestors being shot in the streets, but there was also mutura, and the illicit joys and pleasures it carried.
