Overcoming Gluttony

Ever since I was a boy, I have always had a weakness for food. I vividly remember the nights in 1993 when I competed with my brothers on who would wolf down the greatest number of chapattis, one of my favorite delicacies that we cooked once in a week.

My brothers Paddy and Symo also loved chapattis because we would beg them from Mrs. Memia, a kind and generous neighbor who has long since emigrated to Great Britain, whenever we smelled the sweet aroma of chapattis drifting from her house as we grazed cattle. That's until Mum scolded us to save our family's image.

But I continued loving food. When we visited Prof. Charles Nyamiti at his residence in the late '90s for instance, I gorged myself on food during lunch. And during ten and four o'clock refreshments, I drank several beverages (cocoa, coffee and the like).

Then when I was at Starehe Boys' Centre where I had my high school and college education, I developed a habit of "combining" food in the dining hall during my junior years and well into third form. ("Combining", in Starehe parlance, meant eating extra food on the table.) Had my housemates not made me realize that "combining" was inappropriate, I would have kept on doing it.

Leon Osumba, who oriented me to the Starehe way of life when I joined the school in January 2002, was the first one to point out my poor eating habits when he said to the housemates at our dining table, "This Thuita doesn't chew his food!"

During another meal, 'Sir' Emmanuel Karanja, a brilliant housemate who inspired me to learn computer programming, told me something along these lines, "Thuita, resist the urge to 'combine'. Wise and intelligent guys don't do that. Look at a person like George Waithaka - do you ever see him 'combining' like you do?"

George Waithaka, if you wish to know, was another brilliant housemate who was among the four students selected in 2003 to represent Starehe at a conference in South Africa. He emerged as the fourth best student countrywide in '04 KCSE exams. His exemplary character and brilliance must be the reasons he was awarded a scholarship to pursue a post high school education at Aiglon College in Switzerland from where he was accepted at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States.

The remarks by my housemates compelled me to overcome my gluttonous behavior in the Starehe Boys' dining hall. So I ceased "combining" food.

Reducing the amount of food I took didn't affect my vigor and vitality. In fact, I grew healthier because I can't remember having coughs in my senior years at Starehe like I did in my junior years. We therefore don't have to eat more to be healthier.

But you know what? Over the past few months, I have again become gluttonous by putting too much sugar in my tea and waking up in the middle of the night to gobble leftovers. That is a bad behavior I will strive to change in order to lose the excess weight I have gained. So help me God.