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East African Psyche

Ronald Elly Wanda - 5/17/2007

A soggy Saturday, my kitchen windows all fogged up with vapour, the Congolese genius Franco Luambo-Makiadi singing “Azda, azda, azda… Elly Wanda ni wetu…apewe, apewe, apewe…” while I chop and stir some roasted nyama (goat’s meat) that I’d bought earlier from expensive but expedient Kampala Foods ltd at West Green Road, in North London. Could an African cook’s life get any better? Well yes, the gory British weather could change from raining to a tropical sunshine and give me a deceptive conception (albeit temporal) of being in clement kakamega- west of Kenya or at congenial Mbale- east of Uganda where Franco and his TP OK jazz band are perhaps most celebrated. Nonetheless, I didn’t care much as I had a warm Tusker larger straight from Kenya (via Wood Green’s Morrisons) standing parallel to my chopping board.

My devotion to Franco’s compositions (seen here on the right) especially when cooking remains interminable. I find it enriches the Afro-cuisine experience. Incontestably, he remains one of Africa's supreme artistes, in spite of his poignant death almost 18 years ago in a sanatorium in Brussels; many of us continue to find his melodies philosophically ecstatic. Whilst in the 1950s my grandfather and his lot danced to Bolingo na Beatrice, Motema ya Loko (1957) and Mado yo Sango (1958). Nowadays we are still grooving to Franco (due to early awareness and exposure to high African culture) especially his later hit songs Mario, Azda, Tokoma ba camarade Pamba, Mado, Pesa Position as well as Kabasele in Memoriam which he collaborated with Tabu Ley in tribute to fellow musician Grand Kalle who died February of 1983. My favourite Franco hit of all time has to be mammou which Franco alongside Madilu System compactly delivered. Mammou which also came out in 1983 contains lyrics exposing “a lively conversation among two women, a divorcee and a married one who accuses the former of trying to break up her nuptials". I was ecstatic last summer while on a visit to Thika, when a Nairobi University band played and dedicated the song to me…brilliant!

Like most folks either born or brought up in Britain with East African derivation, we also grew up eating Ugali (maize meal) with sukuma wiki and kunde (greens) mixed with nyama in our Harrow-on-the-hill and later Stanmore domicile. When you have been and tasted the real thing from nyumbani (East Africa) you can’t afford to think of it anywhere else and hastily prepared by a laissez-faire cook like the BBC’s booziest chef Keith Floyd. I mean music and food in our village continue being delivered concomitantly.

Come 6 o’clock and I’d had a liberal rest following my jolly feast, Wafula who’d called me earlier, hoots the horn downstairs. I am ready so I sneak into my Safari boots and out I go. We stop over at Charlie’s flat nearby to pick him up. I rang the doorbell for flat 65. No answer. I rang again. With a squeal of paint, the window above me opened. A middle-aged Jamaican man with a ragged beard akin to mine stuck his head out of the window, a spliff in one hand and a can of what looked like a strong larger in the other. “Yeah man, what you want?” he bellowed. “Hello sir, sorry to trouble you, I’m looking for Charlie, a friend of mine whom I thought lived here!” I guardedly responded. “I am Haile Selassie. I am the son of Jesus Christ. Come in man!” the man yelled, victoriously waving his spliff and almost spattering me with his beer. Phew! Thankfully, Charlie who lived two doors away came. “Sorry about my neighbour. He’s jinx (schizophrenic), usually a good man but like many of our fellow brothers around here the system messed him up”, Charlie said inconspicuously, as he walked towards me like the Last King of Silver Street, holding half a cigarette and adjusting his slightly outsized and unbelted trousers. We made our way whilst listening to Samba Mapangala’s “Vunja Mifupa kama bado meno iko” later Nairobian Nonini’s nonsense followed by Kampalan Chameleon’s delicate Jamilia and fittingly Arushan T.I.D’s “Siamini kama tuko wote…” unambiguously engaging us with contemporary East African popular culture discourse.

Upon our modest arrival at Bill and David’s Pub-lies school of fun (The Three Crowns Pub) in Edmonton’s Fore Street, my friend Wafula seemed a little put out (“wouldn’t we be better off at The Gilpins?, bloody hell Wanda!”) however, he begun to melt down as soon as I’d asked the striking girl behind the bar for a Tusker. Poor old Wafula, I don’t know what he fancied more- the cordial woman or good old Tusker. The Three Crowns Pub is cheaply but cheerily done out, it has wooden floorboards, alien-style ceiling that looks deceitfully voguish and the walls simply painted black with some white. The only vague concession to East-africaness is of course its regular East African constituents and periodic dignitaries from Eastern Africa as well as the sporadic delivery of reminiscent (wazee wakumbuke) moments by Dennis, the resident Disc Jockey.

A swift glance around confirmed six impressionably loaded right wing ‘war lords’ from Semi-autonomous Juba (southern Sudan) sitting on my left discussing what seemed like another plot- perhaps to overthrow Bill and David and turn this happy place into… As I turned to my right I bumped into my old pal Robert who’s just returned from Lake Victoria’s sunshine city of Kisumu. “Mzee Wanda, it’s been awhile! Pewa kitu before I brief you” said Bob, (wearing a clannish vest that read ‘Jaluo in the House’) disapprovingly shaking his head. Bob proceeded like Raila Odinga’s 2007 campaign manager in Nairobian ‘Sheng’ (a concoction of Swahili and English):“Kibaki amefanya watu wanamanga mchanga. Eti Rift Valley fever! Hi gava niya makausi, yani original Mount Kenya mafia… hawa watu, my friend, hawana huruma jo! Kazi yao ni kuaribia wanainchi kazi yao. Eti privatisation! Eti Kenya Anti Corruption Commission! Regime ya NARC-Kenya ni nothing, imefuta mabuyu wamob job. Afadhali ile gava ya Idi Amin! Ingawaje Huyo jama alikua vicious, yani alinyonga ma intellectuals na akafukuza waindi! Kimpango, huyo msee alifanyia wateja wa UG maendeleo kiasi.”(Translation: “President Mwai Kibaki’s NARC-Kenya administration is very crooked”).

“Heeey yawa!!! Did you not see that?” Charlie said interrupting Bob’s annotations and my political brief whilst slyly pointing at a tall and agreeably gorgeous woman wearing an attractive Kitenge (traditional attire) navigating her way through Three Crown’s African crowd. It later became almost impossible to continue our conversation as our voices drowned amidst DJ Dennis’s deafening ragga gobbledygook, so we instead concentrated on our Tuskers whilst “Bird” watching - gender power disparity notwithstanding. Three hours later, my warm bed was calling me, I’d downed a couple of Tuskers; ate some succulent nyama choma with cassava, had unproductive as well as meaningful conversations, met a Chinese woman selling bogus DVDs, a Ugandan mechanic, a Nigerian “law-yer,” Sudanese warlords, as well as a man who claimed to be a Brigadier-General in the Kenyan army.

After my goodbyes, Onyango, another big fan of Franco’s music and sober as a judge, volunteered to drop me home. “The thing is”, he tells me, as we drive home in his Bavarian-made crimson limousine, “we Africans have a problem of not qualitatively appreciating our own artistry,” he continues, “it is only when we come to these colonial cities that we magically reawaken our senses of our arts, cultures and music”, I felt for a moment there that the man I’ve known for many years as a wobbly acquaintance actually had a point.