It rained in long white lashes. We had come from a funeral and driven into a misty, dark and rainy Kisumu. Water overflowed from the drains and gushed down the road.
My brother had been talking about aliya the whole way. How he craved it with osuga. These are foods my mum cooked when we were young. Maybe it was the burial that had stirred this urge, seeing so many of my aunts and uncles, now in geriatric shoes, wobbling about.
Maybe it was the realisation that we would soon be burying more relatives, and then we would be next.
Or we are next. Who knows, man?
They say grief is an aphrodisiac. Whatever it was, he wanted aliya and osuga. Either that or he was pregnant. Unlikely, seeing as he had a beard. But then again, I’ve seen people with beards who… anyway. We arrived at Kosewe in the pouring rain.
It was really pouring. When you looked up, you couldn’t see anything. You only heard the rain, drumming on the parked cars. We ran inside, into soul music and great cheer. A handful of people had come in from the Friday rain too, shaking water off their jackets like survivors of a shipwreck.
My brother and his wife ordered their aliya and osuga. Aliya is dried, smoked meat; osuga is a traditional leafy vegetable with a deep, green taste, like chloroquine. It’s an acquired taste.
When it came, the meat smelled rich and earthy, the soup a deep brown and a tad oily at the top, as it should be. You can’t go wrong with the food at Kosewe. I wasn’t hungry, but watching them eat like a pair of ravenous carnivores, I felt as though I was eating too.
They ate. I watched. We listened to the rain and let the night pass. Outside, Kisumu felt like it was getting a great wash after a dusty season. Even the lake was getting wet. Inside, we were just fine with good music and great food, and the dead, for a few hours, could wait.