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Peerless pair that never drinks water

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Published on Friday, 29 February 2008 17:43

The last time Rhoda Kwamboka Obachi attempted to drink water, it did not go down well: she was nauseated for days.

That was four years ago when, goaded by her grandchildren, she drank water to force down some tablets she was taking for pain. That, too, was the first time the grand old lady of Gesusu in Kisii District was taking medicinal tablets. "She rarely falls sick. I was away when her grand children convinced her to use water to swallow painkillers after being injured in a fall," explains her second eldest son, 83-year-old Matthew Obachi Machoka.

When she did, she vomited so violently that it is not a suggestion she will accept again. For over a hundred years, Kwamboka has never drank plain water. And at 107 years of age, she is in robust health

Machoka says he has never seen his mother take plain water. "She neither sweats nor gets thirsty," says the elder brother of famed Kenyan radio celebrity Fred Obachi Machoka.

"Since that time, we use porridge whenever she has to swallow tablets mainly to relieve age-related pains. She has never suffered from malaria or even the common cold," he says.

Machoka says there has been no medical explanation for his mother's quirky behaviour. Kwamboka herself does not know why her body behaves as it does. "I do not feel like taking water," she says. "I have never taken it since childhood. They made me swallow medicine with it and I vomited," she recalls.

Her eyes look cloudy and she does not see clearly, but she can differentiate a woman from a man. In bright light, she can distinguish colours.

Out of curiosity, she wonders how we came to know about her. "From one of my grand children?" she says quizzically. "I have 50. Which one in particular?"

Then, hearing that it is renowned radio personality Fred Obachi Machoka, she rolls her cloudy eyeballs with obvious joy as she enquires: "How is he doing? And his children, are they fine?"

Kwamboka's hearing is good, most of her front teeth are still firm, and her memory is faultless. 

Slowly, almost effortlessly, Kwamboka starts on her narrative journey down memory lane. "I was a young girl growing up around Nyanchwa (the current Kisii town) when the white people first arrived. I do not know the year," she says.

"The first white people arrived in Kisii around 1907," chips in Machoka.

Overgrown babies

Kwamboka: "Their white skin gave them the look of overgrown babies. People would put out fires lest the overgrown babies stray into them. 

"But people became suspicious of them when the overgrown babies displayed objects that spit fire with a booming noise. That prompted a young warrior, Otenyo, to plunge his spear into one, killing him on the spot. He in turn died moments later, floored by the fire-spitting object. The place where the white people first pitched tent was known as Getare, which later grew into present-day Kisii town. Their porters were the forbears of the Nubian population currently settled at Nyanchwa.

Kwamboka was there, probably in her early teens, when cowrie shells were the dominant trade currency. "We would take vegetables to the place now called Kisii and get paid for them in cowrie shells," she recalls.

"The Kisii relished a form of sour milk prepared by the Luo, and we would travel to Mosocho near the Luo border for it, armed with cowrie shells. Livestock, foodstuffs everything was paid for in cowrie shells. 

"White people also used beads to do business with the local people," she reminisces.

"Later came coins with holes in the centre." These were rupee from India which replaced cowrie shells and beads.

Kwamboka had her first child in 1920, and by the time the shilling replaced the rupee as the official currency in 1936, she was a mother of seven. She gave birth to two more children.

She witnessed the appointment of the first colonial chiefs, among them the father to Nyaribari Chache MP Simeon Nyachae.

"To distinguish the chiefs from the rest of the people, the white man gave them red blankets, used as clothes at a time when everybody else wore animal skins. They were nicknamed amanyahanga (people of clothes). Among them was Gesembe in Nyaribari who was later replaced by Nyandusi, the father to Nyachae.

Kwamboka says Nyandusi and her husband, the late Zephania Machoka, were age mates. She was slightly older than her husband, she now confesses.

Like the Abagusii of yore, Kwamboka's favourite food is obokima (ugali) made from millet, sorghum or a mixture of both. It is eaten with fish, chinyeni (vegetables) or milk. There is no red meat in her diet. In her days, women never ate chicken.

She savours cooked matoke (banana) and other foods such as maize which she says came with the white folks. "We first saw matoke among the Nubians of Nyanchwa. They had come with it when they arrived carrying luggage for the white people. It was never our traditional food," she says of the the mash banana meal for which Kisii is famed today.

Maize arrived much later and the obokima from it was often eaten neat because of its sweetness.

When Kwamboka got married, shortly before the World War I, she joined her husband at Amasagu near Keumbu. "From here, we moved to Chibwobi in Nyaribari to be with our people as Keumbu was in Kitutu.

The Nyaribari of those days, recalls Kwamboka, was nothing but expanses of uninhabited jungle teeming with wildlife. "People lived in groups to protect themselves against the animals and the Maasai warriors who traversed the jungles with their livestock.

She has seen people multiply to the multitudes that choke the area today, leaving little room for farming and marvels that the fierce animals that they dreaded are no more.

Dislike for water

Across some 500 kilometres, lives someone nearly half Kwamboka's age, and with the same story. Ask 60-year-old Muli Munuve how water tastes and he will return a blank stare. And beer? He smiles from ear to ear.

"I enjoy my beer, but my most favourite drink is tea. I can take tea many times a day the way most people take water.

Munuve works in a hotel and serves the beverage to customers, a job he has done since 1971. At his house in Kitui's Majengo Estate where he lives alone, a flask of steaming tea is always at hand. 

Munuve also enjoys porridge and soda, but not milk. He only drinks milk occasionally.

Like Kwamboka Obachi, he does not remember ever taking plain water. "My memory cannot trace it," he says, thinking back to the time when he was a small boy tending his father's livestock in Thitha, Mwingi District. 

Not that taking plain water affects his health in any way. "I just do not like it, that is all," he says with an air of finality.

Both his parents had no problem drinking water until they died. His four siblings and his three children also drink water.

Munuve rarely falls sick. Except for small bouts of flu, he is never ill. When he has to take bitter oral medicine, he washes the tablets down with soda.

"I do not recall a time when I suffered from diarrhoea, typhoid or amoebic dysentery. I once had malaria and was treated by injection," he says.

Nutritionists say the consumption of plain water is not necessary for good health. "The human body requires at least two litres of water in a day for normal body functions, but that can come from sources other than plain water," says a city-based nutritionist.

The choice not to take water is dictated by an individual's taste and has no bearing on one's health. "All that one needs is water which the body can extract from other fluids and even alternative sources such as fruits," says the nutritionist. Food generally supplies the body with metabolic water whenever it interacts with oxygen to give energy.

People who get their bodily water requirements from sources other than plain water are less prone to waterborne diseases.