I refused to take it with me the first time I arrived for boarding school. My mother tried to tell me that I would need it but I said: "There’s no way I’m putting that in my suitcase.” Made only of onions fried in cooking oil, it served the purpose of making school meals bearable. But the school had sent a list of requirements and other items students were allowed to bring. Appetiser wasn’t on the list.

I had been told that as soon as you arrived, your luggage would be thoroughly checked and your parents would be asked to take back whatever was unacceptable. They used the term "illegal”. I had also been told that some students in the school owed their nicknames to the illegal items they had brought on their first day. I loved assigning nicknames. There was always a sense of accomplishment when it caught on. And yet because I forgot, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” as soon as I read it in the Bible, I was afraid of nicknames.

It wasn’t long before I realised that appetiser was acceptable at the school. And when I took my first meal, I discovered that I needed it. The cooks insisted on drowning the beans in water, depriving them of salt, all the while refusing to discriminate against weevils and therefore refusing to remove them. I vowed to go to the dining hall only on Wednesdays and Saturdays; they didn’t prepare posho and beans on those days and we would say that we were eating "food.”

But when I ran out of eats and turned everything upside down to find that I only had a two-hundred shilling coin, reality struck...and so did hunger. I walked to the phone booth, inserted the coin, called my mother and said to her, "Please bring me appetiser on Visiting Day.” I put the phone down and walked to the dining hall. I asked my friend Anna to share some of her appetiser. I munched on the posho and beans and the taste wasn’t just bearable; it was pleasant. And From that day till my last day in boarding school, appetiser was with me. So here’s to appetiser, a great companion.