Shallow-frying is the method used to convert a flattened piece of dough into a chapati, and that is not far from what Kenyans have been doing with President William Ruto’s remarks on Tuesday about the food.
He has been fried left, right, and centre, mostly because some Kenyans feel there are more urgent and pressing priorities— poor drainage systems, bad roads, wanting school infrastructure, corruption among others— that he should address before thinking of a machine that can make a million chapatis.
His remarks had all the ingredients for a perfect recipe to make jokes presented using computer-generated images, skits, and even puns.
After Nairobi, Governor Johnson Sakaja said the impediment to including chapati in his “Dishi na County” programme was a machine that can produce the flatbread for 300,000 mouths, Dr Ruto’s appetite was whetted.
“The governor has asked me that to add chapati to the ‘Dishi’ programme, I should buy a chapati-making machine. I have agreed to buy him one. So, Mr Governor, find a place to buy a machine that can make a million chapatis,” he said.
Afterwards, it was all oil frying in the pan of Kenyans’ imagination.
From images showing streets of Nairobi lined up with chapatis to depictions of Dr Ruto wearing a chapati suit, satire has been cooking everywhere you look.
The punchiest of the images depicted Nairobians submerged in water on the streets as they helped themselves to chapatis.
The meme came days after a heavy downpour submerged estates and converted streets of the Kenyan capital into streams due to poor drainage— a problem that Mr Sakaja had promised to fix during his 2022 election campaigns.
Sick and tired of potholes on Nairobi roads, some netizens turned some of the would-be millions of chapatis into concrete and attempted to ‘fix’ the roads.
Others carpeted entire streets with AI-generated images of the bread, apparently pointing to the governor that instead of patchwork and repairs, he should consider re-carpeting worn-out roads in the city county.
Corruption and misuse of public resources, one of the major concerns among Kenyans as illustrated in recent opinion polls (and which Dr Ruto vowed to fight), did not escape the imagination of Kenyans as they took issue with Dr Ruto’s chapo offer.
In the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) by Transparency International, Nairobi was ranked at position 121, with 32 points out of a possible 100.
Rwanda topped the region with 57 points, followed by Tanzania at 41 while Ethiopia closed the top three with 37 points.
And for this dismal show, both county and national parliaments, the watchdogs of the executive, were put on the spot over their weak checks and balances, amid claims of ‘rampant eating’ and corruption.
Consequently, Kenyan lawmakers, accused of becoming extensions and rubber stamps of the executive, were equally roasted with depictions of feasting — heavy stacks of chapati on assembly benches.
The Social Health Authority (SHA) is one of the pressing problems of the country and so someone quickly renamed the President’s plan to SHA-fashi, a funny way of pronouncing “chapati” in some Kenyan dialects.
Quickly, a name for the machine was suggested—El Chapo, the nickname for Mexican drug lord Joaquín Guzmán.
“Imagine how many lorries will be required to carry those. Remember, they are hot, and they sweat. I think everyone should be given a packet of flour to cook,” he said in a skit.
He also wondered what would happen if the chapati vehicle arrived ahead of the stew: “Will the kids choke out of eating plain chapatis?”
Another skit by comedian Terence Creative tried to depict the home of a “chapati cartel” that will divert chapatis from learners and ship them to his home, filling every available crevice with the products.
Under the Dishi na County programme, which was launched on June 20, 2023, Mr Sakaja’s administration constructed 17 central kitchens across the 17 sub-counties.
“The kitchens prepare meals that are distributed to schools, ensuring that students receive hot, balanced meals daily,” said a statement from Mr Sakaja’s office on Tuesday. “The program is designed to be affordable, with children contributing only Sh5 per meal through a tap-to-eat system.”
