34 | NEWSFOCUS October 23, 2018 www.mygov.go.ke Bringing culinary delights to For over two decades, Alice Taabu hosted the landmark Mke Nyumbani cooking show that aired on the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation; she also authored a cookbook named after the show, which took first prize in a category of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in 2002. Her story is excerpted from a forthcoming book, Pioneers & Transformers: The Journeys of Top Achieving Women in Kenya, published by the Kenya Yearbook Editorial Board Pioneers & Transformers Journeys of top achieving women in Kenya A lice Taabu has lived by the advice she received from her grandmother, who once told her that she had a gift for cooking and should share it with as many people as she could. And that she did. For more than 20 years, Taabu hosted the popular live cooking show Mke Nyumbani which aired on Kenya Broadcasting Corporation (KBC) television. Her cookbook, also titled Mke Nyumbani, was a winner in its category at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in 2002. The book covers a selection of recipes she showcased on her show. During the life of the TV show that aired every Sunday, Taabu was able to impart invaluable culinary skills to millions of Kenyans nationwide. Despite the vast cooking knowledge she demonstrated on screen with ease and practicality, this was not the original career path she set out to follow. Before her culinary fame, Taabu had an eight-month stint working as a nurse at the Coast General Hospital. Growing up at the coast, the sixty-something mother of two daughters attended Ribe Primary School. But she didn’t go further than Standard Seven. “We were eight children and my parents felt that we should all get the chance to go to school regardless of the level we reached,” she explains. She always enjoyed watching her grandmother cook. “My grandmother and mother were the cooks in the family. I spent a lot of time with my grandmother and eventually learned to cook from her,” she shares. After primary school, she attended Ribe Intermediate, where she trained as a nurse but practised the profession for under a year. “I guess I wasn’t cut out to be a nurse. I had to go back to my first love, which is cooking,” she says. She joined the Young Women’s Christian Association in Nairobi (YWCA) where she studied home craft and home science for two years. In 1967, she was approached by Kenya Power, then known as East African Power and Lighting, with a job offer. They wanted someone who could cook and who spoke fluent English and Kiswahili. The selected person was supposed to give cooking classes as well as teach people how to use electricity and electrical equipment in the proper way. Taabu started the job and trained for four months, thereafter relocating to Mombasa to start public demonstrations; a job she went on to do for 37 years. “I loved it. Those were exciting times. I met a lot of people and I learned a lot,” she says. Despite her knack for cooking, she confesses that there were good times and also hard times. Taabu recalls with a laugh how she had serious issues with making bread. The first time she tried to bake bread she missed a crucial step – she did not add yeast. It came out funny and her instructor made her repeat the process eight times before she got it right. Her instructor insisted that she get it right before demonstrating it to people, she recalls. Her instructors always encouraged her to be patient, accurate and relaxed. She took this advice to heart, and with those virtues she succeeded. Then came her big break in 1976. She was approached by the national broadcaster Voice of Kenya (VoK) to take over from Maggie Gona who was about to retire as host of Mke Nyumbani. Taabu was not nervous about hosting the show since she was now used to cooking in front of a large audience. “It’s just the floodlights that were a bit uncomfortable in the beginning,” she admits. She juggled hosting the show and doing the demonstrations for Kenya Power, which was also sponsoring Mke NyumWORDS OF WISDOM The inspiration for the cookbook came when people started asking me for recipes. I used to publish my recipes in the newspaper and people would ask, ‘Why not just do a book - Alice Taabu • Never give up on your dreams. If you’re persistently pursuing them and things are not looking up, keep on trying. • Be patient. It all doesn’t happen at once. • Always remember to pray. bani. Every day was full of happy moments, but there were also embarrassing ones. “There was a time when I didn’t cork the lid of the salt shaker well. While attempting to add salt to the stew, the whole lot of it went into the stew,” she recalls. Luckily she did not panic. Instead, she took that as an opportunity to demonstrate
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