JALAPENO

The way the cheese melted on the sizzling hot chips, bits of chicken sprinkled all over and cuttings of green jalapeño, peeping throughout the little bucket of a heavenly meal.

I was having a bite at Snack Attack at Sarit, their Classic Chips option. I hadn’t had it before but when I asked the waitress what it has, she had me at cheese. I love cheese. I’m a cheesie… Kwanza you guys should visit Brown’s Cheese in Limuru and sample like 10 types of cheese.

The meal was very delicious I must say. I dug my fork into the little bucket, took a chunk of chips, a few pieces of chicken and a jalapeño, cheese stringing still trying to hold on as I pulled it away and into my mouth. I chewed slowly enjoying the delicious heavenly mix of juicy spice in my mouth until I bit into the jalapeño.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, jalapeño, which before this post I always thought was spelt halepinyo…blame it on my English teacher who used to say lerax — this is a very difficult shrub by the way… Gosh! It’s even easier to say the correct ‘relax’ or if you have to shrub, ‘lelax’ or ‘lalax’ if you’re from Kambaland.

Anyway, the jalapeño is a type of not-so-gentle chilli.

Nothing happened at first. I kept on eating, took another bite which included another chunk of jalapeño. That’s when my tongue taste buds decided, enyewe huyu Mwamisi nikama haskii, wacha we tell him ndio iwe funzo kwake na wengine kama yeye…

There was a burst of hellish, electric heat that started from the sides of my mouth and ran up my head to my forehead like lava rushing down a mountain.

You see, I wasn’t alone. It was a meeting so I couldn’t do that thing “OH MY GOD . It’s so chilli, wah!” And fan my mouth. I had to hold it in like an eruptive fart. A vein appeared on my temples, spots of sweat burst on my forehead and a bead rolled down my right side. My eyes turned tomato…. Macho nyanya… I looked like I was about to morph into a red devil.

The worst part is that the chilli kept intensifying mpaka I shook and grit my teeth like a guy struggling with constipation. All this happened in the fraction of a second.

The gentleman at the meeting looked at me then ignored, I’m not sure if he noticed. The lady on the other hand did. “Is everything okay?” she asked. I couldn’t even talk because the chilli was now in my throat. I just grabbed my cold soda and sucked like those ‘stadadi’ one kids during break who were told, “just take a siiiip” and maximise on that sip yaani, only to stop because beyond that they’d literally die of suffocation.

I managed a deathly squeal, “It’s the chilli”. You see all this time I thought the green things were small pilipili hohos, in fact this post was supposed to be about the ‘the healthy chips meal I had had’ with the usual caption;‪ #‎CaloriesNeedAHomeToo.

Jalapeño aka halepinyo aka ‘hizi ni nini za green green?’