Kenya's favourite national meal a victim of chaos

By C. Bryson Hull

NAKURU, Kenya (Reuters) - If there is one thing Kenyans of any political stripe can agree on, it is nyama choma.

On Saturdays and Sundays, the Kenyan tradition of meeting friends over a piece of slow-roasted goat meat, beer and ugali -- a maize flour cooked to a soft cake -- is as entrenched as the rise and set of the sun.

But the eruption of violence and unrest around the disputed presidential election of December 27, combined with the annual Christmas break, put parts of Kenya into a nyama drought for three weeks.

In Nakuru, the trading gateway to the breadbasket of Kenya's Great Rift Valley where goats are abundant, butcheries were bare for the period save a bit of ng'ombe -- beef -- borrowed from suppliers, nyama choma sellers said.

"The beef is just a little, too. We still don't know when the goats will come back," said Valentine Achieng, cashier in the butchery at Nakuru's Chamber restaurant.

The lack of goat -- known as mbuzi in Swahili -- came as violent Kalenjin gangs in the Rift closed roads stretching across the centre part of it as they attacked and drove off members of the Kikuyu tribe in the area.

That choked transport for days, until police began accompanying fuel trucks that pass through the Rift heading toward western Kenya, Uganda and beyond.

The goats, coming from the north part of the Rift, didn't get police escort, butchers said.