Monday Mix

According to the May, 2008, issue of D+C magazine, Kenya has more than 2,000 traditional vegetables, including amaranth (terere) which are more nutritious than cabbage.

Research has shown that families that eat terere more often rarely report illnesses, yet demand for cabbage remains higher.

The problem, according to Emile Frison, an official with Biodiversity International, is that traditional vegetables are considered “backward” and tend to be sold in poor neighbourhoods under unhygienic conditions.

Interestingly, he said, when one supermarket in Kenya started extolling the nutritional value of these vegetables and they were nicely-packaged, the number of consumers increased by over 1,000 per cent.

As one way to fight hunger and improve nutrition, Kenya needs to add value to these stigmatised foods. It can borrow a leaf from Germany where kales are processed into little green cubes that are then sold in 2kg packets. This ensures that one can get this vegetable all year round.

If this could be done locally with all our vegetables, it would ensure a constant supply of greens in fair or foul weather.

Changing the way we eat will not only help us to fight hunger, but also make the country self-sufficient in food production. After we take care of our stomachs, we can then turn our energies to industrial growth, if not politics.

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Pray that we should not need an election soon

Dear Kenyans,

From now on, you are under instructions to stop asking the President, the Prime Minister and their MPs to be accountable to you. Those people are no longer your elected leaders. They elected themselves to those high offices.

They did that in two steps. First, they signed the National Accord in February last year. What they did not tell you then is that this nullified the results of the 2007 General Election.

That is why they told Mr Justice Johann Kriegler that they were not interested in knowing who won that election. It did not matter. After all, they had done a little election of their own on the steps of Harambee House and we applauded them for it.

And last month, they disbanded the electoral commission and threw out the voters’ register. I can bet you two or even three packets of maize flour that you will not get even one registered voter.

When MPs changed the Constitution to send the ECK home, they also deleted, nay, expunged, the entire voter register.