Food brings the family closer

Sharon Anyango grew up in Kisumu, in western Kenya. “Fishing and farming are the main sources of livelihood there. I lived with my mother, two sisters and two brothers in a homestead in a village just outside the city. My father has two wives; my mother is the second wife. We lived next door to each other, but the households are separated. Only at Christmas do we eat and cook together. Kenya has 43 tribes; I come from the Luo tribe. In many tribes, polygamy is common and legal.”

Her mother, with a government job and her own catering company, was the breadwinner. Both Anyango’s parents are now retired, but her mother still regularly cooks at parties and celebrations. “Among the Luo, many traditions are linked to food. Weddings and funerals can last up to two weeks, with huge amounts of cooking and eating every day. We eat a lot of ugali [a kind of thick cornmeal porridge] with vegetables and meat. In our village, family members are buried in the homestead garden; in the big cities you have cemeteries.”

Like most children in Kenya, Anyango went to boarding school. Typically, the aim is to teach discipline, because fathers often live and work elsewhere. Working mothers have little time left over for the children. “I had to go to boarding school from the age of 9. Luckily, my sister was there to help me. You were expected to do everything yourself, including your own laundry. If you didn’t do it right, you were caned. I hated it. I went to primary and secondary school there. We were fortunate enough to go to university, which was a struggle for my parents, but we managed. Partly because my eldest sister helped pay for our education, and I helped pay for my younger brother’s education—that’s normal in my culture. My classmates’ education usually stopped after high school.”

She learnt to cook from her mother. “As a daughter, you were expected to help your mother around the house, including cooking. I’ve never seen my father cook.”