A people that cook and eat together stay together

On Tuesday, in a Nairobi hotel conference room full of East Africans of all shapes, sizes and ages, those good chaps from the Society for International Development (SID) launched the ‘‘State of East Africa Report 2008’’ (SoEAR).

This was the fourth such report. As is their custom, they didn’t disappoint.

This time, it was not dozens of pages of print and graphs. In keeping with the times, they boiled it down to just one big chart of clever graphics and illustrations.

Entitled “Nature Under Pressure”, it is nevertheless a serious, if disturbing report on the state of the East Africa environment.

We shall not list all the figures here, but the interesting thing is that looking at some of them helps explain the national social and physical characteristics, and temperament of East Africans.
Consider calorie intake. An expert in the meeting told us that if your intake per day is 2,250 kilocalories (Kcal) in Africa, then you can claim that you are eating. If it is less, then you are just getting by.

By this measure, the only East Africans who can be said to be eating are Ugandans. The average daily calorie intake of Ugandans is 2,380 Kcal. The rest of the East Africans are only pretending to eat.

Kenya has the second highest intake at 2,150 Kcal. Third is Rwanda at 2,070, fourth Tanzania at 1,960, and fifth, Burundi at 1,690 Kcal.

Tanzania recorded a 73 per cent increase in the number of hungry people and accounted for 42 per cent of hungry East Africans, up from 34 per cent 10 years ago. Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda all reduced their share of hungry people.

This report, one imagines, will be new ammunition for Ugandan cultural nationalists. A woman who has a full granary of food can afford to be generous and welcoming to visitors.

Not surprisingly, Ugandans are probably the most generous and welcoming East Africans. They believe that a full general fullness of stomach is one reason their women are the most beautiful and well filled in all the right places.

Yes, they will say, Rwandan women might be more pretty-faced, but when it comes to the complete package, Ugandans are unbeatable.

This has its downside. Detached professional observers have noted that Ugandans tend to put a very high premium on a well-filled backside.

As a result, the health and fitness-consciousness of the women have been struggling unsuccessfully for years to find a formula on how to look lean everywhere else, but not in the back view.

Kenyans, meanwhile are the most brash, go-get, and enterprising East Africans. It is the region’s most industrialised economy, and, notes the SoEAR, has a “world-class horticulture industry”.

The report's figures tell it all. Kenya is, by far, the highest consumer of energy in East Africa. However, by 2020, its demand could have exceeded what domestic energy sources can supply.