After Kenya's founding father Mzee Jomo Kenyatta left Lokitaung prison having spent seven years of eating githeri, government posho and sukuma wiki, his appetite for roast meat was unmatched despite health warnings.
Elizabeth Madoka, the president’s Social Secretary after independence in 1963, notes in her memoirs, Miss Uhuru 1963: Working for Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, that Jomo had no taste buds for sukuma and githeri.
It is reported that Jomo loved mixing herbal broth with roast goat ribs, worsening his gout which coupled with his eczema (a skin disease), ultimately condemned him to open leather sandals.
Madoka states that Jomo liked to accompany his roasted ribs with VAT 69 whiskey bottles, which he stocked in his limo and drank from a special elongated glass.
Furthermore, Madoka notes that Jomo's love for meat often put his two physicians at loggerheads.
Dr Eric Mngola, a specialist in general internal medicine, often encouraged Mzee to eat whatever he wanted since he was the president.
On the other hand, Dr Njoroge Mungai would lament to Mngola noting, “You are slowly killing the old man!”
According to Elizabeth, when eczema struck, there were times the president could not walk and was in excruciating pain.
She stated that Jomo resorted to unconventional methods to dilute the pain.
“Every time we went to Mombasa, he would ask me to apply mud from the ocean on his skin. I would also mix it with sea water to cool the skin,” Mumbi revealed.
"Mzee enjoyed walking along the beach in shorts, and a shirt Mama Ngina had bought him, and sandals but at times he removed them and his minders would carry them behind him as he swung his bakora, barefoot," she added.
In another book by Elizabeth Watkins, Jomo’s Jailer: The Grand Warrior of Kenya, President Uhuru’s dad was accorded special treatment in prison owing to his age (60 years) by being appointed the camp's cook.
North Eastern DO, J.R.M. Tennet, in his 1954 report, noted that Kenyatta was old and mellowing, and that cooking only aggravated his eczema.
To make matters worse, Paul Ngei once almost pushed Jomo into a furnace to protest his questionable cooking.
