Kipilefti

Sitting with my friend at her duka in the afternoon, her daughter brings food and we move behind the counter to eat it. As we eat the ugali and beans with our hands I flash back to the trip I tagged along on with my father, when we went to Zambia. In Livingstone, the town on the Zambia side of Victoria Falls, we sat outside, under a tree at a beautifully decorated restaurant that served local food to tourists. We ate with our hands: nshima (ugali by any other name is just as bland), beans, fish, spinach. At the time I regarded the meal as an interesting insight into how locals lived, never once thinking that a few years later I’d be living in a nearby country and eating such food as a matter of course. I remember to remind myself that the future is more infinite than I can possibly envision.