I don’t know whether it’s only me or does everyone get meat cravings whenever they are near kiamaiko or smell meat cooking. Now there was this one time when I was passing by kiamaiko and like is always the case, I couldn’t beat that urge. Therefore I decided to treat myself and bought a whole goat stomach (tripe). If you have ever boiled tripe (matumbo) you probably know that it takes a whole lot of time to cook.

But since this time I was seriously in the zone after taking my jaba juice,I knew I will have the patience to wait. I did all the cleaning with the dilligence and zeal that comes with handas and placed it on my cooker to boil.

I don’t know whether am the only one who encounters this problem of getting univited guests when am cooking meat or it’s a universal thing. And alas here they came. But thank God they were chewing khat like they were in a grinding contest and therefore there was no competition for my matumbo;I thought. But just to make sure that I was safe, I added hot pepper without asking for anyone’s opinion- just incase push came to shove, those that don’t like it hot could exclude themselves.

Like in a normal miraa chewing session, jaba stories(story za jaba juice) are in plenty. And so we chatted until we forgot there was something boiling. That was until I heard one of us ask “kwani hii matumbo haiivi ?”. I rushed to the pot to check only to find that all the water had evaporated. I prodded the contents of the pot severally to check whether they were ready. But nothing was giving. I added more water so as to continue the boiling.

After what seemed like an eternity, I decided enough was enough and even if the matumbo was not well cooked, to me it was ready. Now it was time to chop up the matumbo for frying.

I poured the soup into another pot to be used later during frying. One of my friends asked for a cup of the soup so as to have a taste and he was like “hii supu haina chumvi”. I politely passed the salt shaker to him.

Aha, to my suprise, the matumbo was no matumbo but my doormat. After all that boiling marathon, there it was like nothing had happened to it. No wonder the cooking had taken that long. And there beside my jiko, lay my matumbo unpacked just like I came with it from kiamaiko.

As of today, am yet to know how or who put the doormat in my sufuria. If you are the culprit, you are already forgiven. But please come forward so that I can prove my sanity.