Kamba delicacy and a granny's wit rock Devolution Conference
Eastern
By
Philip Muasya
| Aug 20, 2025
When thousands of people gathered in Homa Bay County for the just-concluded 9th Devolution Conference, one small corner at the Kitui exhibition booth kept attracting people like bees to nectar.
The magnet? A 66-year-old, smiling and wisecracking granny named Peninah Kavinya from Kitui County, with her sumptuous calabash servings of kinaa, a Kamba traditional porridge-like delicacy prepared using a mixture of fine millet flour and sour milk, and a bit of sugar or honey thrown in.
Kavinya’s corner became so popular with patrons that she had little time to rest. And she did roaring business.
From top county government officials such as governors, senators to high-ranking delegates, the granny served them all, as delegates queued shoulder to shoulder just to have a serving of the traditional meal.
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By the second day of the conference, Kavinya’s kinaa corner turned into an unofficial meeting point where politics and casual banter mixed with laughter and second helpings.
“Kinaa is the real deal. It not only gives you energy but also brings families together,” Kavinya declared.
“It is good for both men and women. The energy you get from it is comparable to none. And for men, well, it makes you strong where it matters the most,” the granny explained, throwing some of customers into gales of laughter while others nodded knowingly.
As she served her patrons, the woman cracked jokes, teased her customers and lectured them on the proper way to drink Kinaa – scoop it direct from the calabash with a specially designed wooden spoon.
She says that on the first say of the conference, she sold slightly over 100 calabashes, with each going for Sh100. She revealed that on the subsequent days, the orders kept increasing.
“It was good business, but I made sure that my utensils were well cleaned and the flour properly prepared. You don’t want to serve people a meal that will cause them a running stomach,” she stated. The woman who says she was taught how to prepare kinaa by her grandmother when she was barely 10 walks energetically and with a straight gait.
Save for a few missing teeth, the granny looks healthy and strong for her age. She attributes this to kinaa.
She explains that the millet is first dried and then roasted. What follows thereafter is a meticulous process of cleaning it with water to remove all the dirt. Once clean, the millet is then dried and ground into fine flour. This flour is then ready for eating. No cooking is needed.
Rose Mutuku, the Kitui County executive committee member for trade, who was part of the Kinaa eating patrons, hailed Kavinya for her entrepreneurial skills and for taking a Kamba traditional meal to a far off place and making it acceptable to people even from other tribes.
“Her small parlour has been a beehive of activity. I guess in three days, she has made sales that she could only make for a year if she was in Kitui,” observed the county official, describing the meal as tasty.