The Nairobi rains do not arrive gently. They return with attitude. One week, the city is dusty and sunburnt; the next, it is drowning in traffic and heavy downpour.
Highways become a slow procession of brake lights, turning into a test of faith. The sun, at least, retreated for a while, sparing the CBD from acting like a field of reflective foreheads.
But rain is not only an inconvenience. It is memory and petrichor rising from the soil. It is the earth breathing out. And if the timing is right, it is nzige wa mchwa , aka flying termites, lifting themselves out of the ground and throwing their fragile bodies at every source of light.
I saw them last evening on my apartment staircase, circling the fluorescent tube with stubborn devotion. Their wings shimmered in the glow. I stopped without meaning to. And just like that, I was no longer an adult with groceries. I was ten years old again, standing in a school compound.
Alongside was Omusula, my Luhya classmate, fearless with a reckless confidence unique to boys who had never fully met consequences.
During the free Physical Education lesson, he approached me, palm cupped like he was carrying a secret.
“We are roasting these,” he said.
Inside his hand were termites: fat, wriggling, fresh from the mid-morning drizzle.
He didn’t ask if I wanted to join. He just smiled, a smile that carried the quiet authority of someone who saying no to felt impossible. So, I followed.
The school caretaker had trimmed the trees and lit the dry branches at the edge of the compound. Smoke rose lazily. To most, it was just yard work. To Omusula, it was a kitchen in waiting.
His metallic school mug: battered and indestructible, had survived colonial classrooms. We set it over the fire, solemn like we were scientists in a secret lab.
The termites went in.
Then magic.
They sizzled, wings curling and dissolving in seconds. Bodies browned from pale softness to golden confidence. The sound? A crisp, tiny crackle, like popcorn. Smoke wrapped us in a fragrant secret.
Then silence.
Because every Kenyan school knows one truth: somewhere in the shadows, there is a Mr Mwangi.
The teacher on duty, a man who appeared just when rules started to fray. The cane was his philosophy. His footsteps made no sound.
Then seasoning. Omusula reached inside his shirt and pulled out a salt shaker from the teachers’ dining hall. I still don’t know how he got it. Some miracles never need explaining.
He sprinkled it, and we waited.
Then I tasted one.
The crunch was sharp, immediate. The flavor was nutty, warm, and complex. Like something familiar but never quite defined. I reached for another. And another.
Omusula smiled. “Now you know,” he said.
We devoured every last one, laughing about the audacity and a missing shaker no teacher could explain.
I felt alive for the mischief and the discovery. For Omusula, roasted termites were a gift from the rains, tied to our grounds after every downpour.
He grew up gathering them with his family, roasting them over proper fires, eating them with just comfort and familiarity.
When he offered them to me, he was doing what people do when they love something: they share it, hoping you’ll understand. And I did. Eventually.
