Alright, school meals—arguably the only thing keeping you from sneaking off and dropping out after yet another lesson on cations, monoliths, the Agrarian Revolution, surds, and dichotomous keys. Sorry for the PTSD flashback, but you get it.
So there you are, crammed into the dining hall, pretending to enjoy the same tragic excuse for food while your friends provide top-tier nonsense commentary on football (I’m not even a sports guy).
Meanwhile, the “cool kids” have somehow upgraded their meals with a spoonful of seasoning mix and an ungodly amount of Blue Band, as if that changes anything. (It actually does, I’m just bitter)
It truly pains me that some of you only ever attended day school. No wonder you’re spoiled, insufferable and entitled—you never experience hardship.
And let’s be real, you wouldn’t last a week in prison. Meanwhile, did you go to a boys’ boarding school? You could survive a nuclear fallout. Two years in Industrial Area or Kamiti Maximum? Please, that’s just nothing but a scratch. You did four in high school. 😂
Of course, experiences vary. I went to a so-called “national” school in Western Kenya—emphasis on “so-called” because there was nothing national about it. If you went somewhere nicer, just brace yourself and cringe through this post. I honestly understand.
I can’t believe I’m snitching on my high school just for a few engagements here, Mr Elima, you can’t do anything about this, so eat dirt. Should have made me sign an NDA hahahaha
The Hygiene and Hunger Crisis First…
How ghetto was my high school when it came to food? Well, let’s just say hygiene was more of a suggestion than a practice. A dead rat lying belly-up in the corner of the kitchen? Completely normal on a Tuesday afternoon. R.I.P Ratatouille 😞
And speaking of rats, there was once a rumor that one particularly acrobatic one attempted to jump across the open chimney, miscalculated,(or got overwhelmed by the steam and smoke) and took a fatal dive straight into the boiling giant pot of school lunch. Apparently, it wasn’t fished out in time, so it just… became part of the recipe.
Lunch tasted different that day after the news. I don’t know if it was my brain playing tricks on me, but a lot of students skipped their meals.
Some of us, however, had the hunger tolerance of medieval peasants and ate anyway. Easily one of the lowest points of my life. Feels therapeutic finally getting that off my chest.
The real thrill of high school meals, though, was never knowing what surprise ingredient you’d get. Two boogers and three toenail clippings? Not even fingernails—toe nails. Disgusting? Yes. But were you going to starve? Absolutely not.
Personally, I never saw a booger, but that’s probably because it had already dissolved into the soup. I did find a nail clipping once. And I wasn’t the first.
But unless your daddy had money, and so you had some for the canteen, were you really throwing your plate away? Be serious.
Then there was the hunger. It got so bad, food was being rationed that people willingly drank lab reagents just to get the free milk they’d be given as first aid. Survival instincts had to kick in, don’t judge.
Now, I never did anything that insane, but the worst I did? I struck a legally binding agreement with a rich kid: I washed his uniform, and in return, he would serve me his school dinner. (Because he used to eat from the canteen anyways) We even shook hands on it. Honestly, I’m mortified just thinking about it.
I haven’t even mentioned the part where your plate and cutlery are stolen, forcing you to eat with your hands like some kind of prehistoric savage.
But you know what? If this post does well, I’ll bless you with a part two. For now, let’s get to the actual topic.
Breakfast
Kenyan school breakfast usually falls into three thrilling options: porridge, black tea, or milk tea. Now, before you get excited, the porridge in question isn’t the rich, nutritious sorghum/millet kind your grandma ferments and stirs up—it’s the budget-friendly maize meal version because, well, cost-cutting.
That said, most students will pick tea over porridge any day because it’s considered classier. Porridge, unfortunately, has the unfair reputation of being the official drink of the struggling masses. Same as these other foods: Judging the 8 Most Hated Kenyan Foods
Which is a pretty dumb take, considering porridge is leagues ahead of tea in terms of actual nutrition. But, who needs logic when you can have misplaced elitism?
Speaking of misplaced elitism—let’s talk about my school. We were the privileged ones. No porridge for us, just milk tea. And we made sure to clown the neighboring schools that served porridge, as if our tea was some sort of five-star grade.
In reality, it was just a piss-warm mediocre tea in a cup. The kitchen department was so cheap, so cheap that the MILK TEA WAS STILL TRANSPARENT!
Supposedly, it was milk tea, but for some reason, you could still spot the bottom of your cup looking down. Gen Z would call it “transparent-aah tea.” I am Gen Z, but something about my suffering makes me feel like a millennial. Gen Z is too sassy for all this.
Bread was a luxury item, being provided by the school on Wednesdays and Saturdays. On the other days, you had to fend for yourself and buy it from the canteen—
When we did get bread, it was a humble quarter chunk from a standard loaf. Honestly, not the worst deal—it equivalented to about 4-5 slices, which, in boarding school terms, was practically a feast.
Look at me inventing a new word…”equivalented”…..Hello Oxford?
Lunch
Githeri is the staple of Kenyan school lunches, making up about 95% of all midday meals. Occasionally, it gets swapped out for rice and beans—because a switch up is important.
It makes sense why schools love githeri: it’s cheap, easy, and requires nothing more than maize, beans, and a willingness to boil them into submission.
Naturally, this overexposure has turned many Kenyans against githeri. Unless you’re from a region where githeri is a staple, chances are you’ve developed a lifelong grudge against it.
Eat the same thing every day for years? Personally, I have a complicated relationship with it—I resent it, but I also find myself cooking it occasionally for the nostalgia.
Now, let’s talk about my high school, “The Case Study.” Githeri was served daily, except on Wednesdays and Saturdays, when we were blessed with rice and beans.
Obviously, rice and beans were the crowd favorite, because githeri was universally despised. Our nickname for it? “Murram.”
Yes, as in the rough, gravel used in road construction. That should tell you everything you need to know about its texture. Githeri at home? Soft and tender. Githeri in school? A dental hazard. The cooks never had time to let it simmer properly, so half the time, it was just undercooked maize that had to be served at lunch, whether cooked properly or not.
Then there were the weevils. Oh, the weevils. If you think public high schools are buying premium-grade maize, you’re adorable.
They went for the absolute bottom-tier grain, which meant every meal came with extra “protein.” Seeing dead crusty weevils floating in your soup? Completely normal.
At some point, we just stopped picking them out. In fact, we started calling them supplements—free protein, talk about turning lemons into lemonade, my friend.
Not that rice and beans were perfect either. Some beans had weevils too, but at least they weren’t as plentiful. The rice, however, was another disaster.
It was the cheapest variety to ever grow on the planet, the kind that clumped together like ugali. From a distance, you couldn’t even tell them apart.
Speaking of which, if you’re still battling clumpy rice at home, check out my post on The Best Rice Brands in Kenya. You deserve better.
Dinner
Dinner was a strict affair: ugali and sukuma wiki, no exceptions, no surprises. Unless it was a Wednesday or Saturday—nyama day.
But before you get excited, let’s be clear: by “meat,” I mean one tiny, lonely cube floating in a sea of suspiciously clear soup. The soup, however, was the real deal, stretching that single piece of meat into something that felt like a feast.
Even the rich kids, who usually turned their noses up at school meals, humbled themselves in the dining hall on nyama days.
Ugali, while far from gourmet, was actually the least offensive meal in school. Kenyans have a deep-rooted love for it—it’s practically the national dish. In fact, there’s a reason why it made it onto my old post, The 5 Most Loved Kenyan Dishes.
And yes, ugali had its own underground economy. The exchange rate? One piece of meat for a whole extra slice of ugali. A deal that sounds ridiculous in the real world but made perfect sense in the trenches of high school dining.
And guess what? I was the guy handing over my precious piece of meat just to secure more ugali. No regrets.
The Canteen
The canteen was the ultimate proof that yes, money can buy happiness. If you had cash, the school dining hall was irrelevant—you could feast like a king while the rest struggled.
And our canteen wasn’t playing games; it was a full-fledged supermarket, stocked with everything you could dream of—at daylight robbery prices.
A single mandazi went for Ksh 20, the same mandazi that still costs Ksh 5 today. There were sodas, bread, milk, yogurt, maziwa mala, cakes, lollipops, and even gum (gum was later banned because of smokers). Think of it as a prison commissary, but with even worse price gouging.
Actually, in the first week after opening, the school cooks might as well have taken a vacation. No one was eating the school food; it was all going straight to the pigs. But by week two, reality hit. Everyone was broke, and suddenly, that questionable school githeri started looking kinda edible.
Special Diet
There was a VIP section in the school dining hall—Special Diet. This was for those with health or stomach issues, which conveniently translated to better food.
Almost as good as what the teachers were eating. But to get on this elite meal plan, you needed a doctor’s note and a monthly fee of around Ksh 3,000–5,000. Oh, and every meal came with a glass of fresh milk. Talk about a fine dining equivalent.
Naturally, we clowned on Special Diet kids—not out of genuine malice, but pure jealousy. Deep down, we wished we were them, but on the surface, we kept up the act: “Must be nice to be weak and unable to handle the garbage the rest of us are eating. Hope you survive your delicate condition, Your Highness.”
We even had a nickname for them—something along the lines of “the fragile ones.” Can’t remember exactly, but it was something like this…..
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