Everything was going well. My brothers and I were seated on our special skin mats waiting for dinner to be served.

Wait a minute! Did you just read skin mats? Who uses skin mats? Do they even make them any more?

Oh yes...to all your questions...This event took place many years ago…let's just say that it was before modern chairs became common in our part of the world…At that time we lived in a hut....a circular hut, with tons of space for four brothers and their parents!

Back to the story….my brothers and I had our individual spots on that mat. We sat according to our ages, and depending on which side you started from, the eldest at the mat's far right. I sat next to him. Then our third born and finally the baby of the family who sat at the extreme left. Each one of us had a bowl. This was no ordinary bowl. It was made from….you guessed it....it wasn't ceramic, plastic or glass.....it was a calabash plate!

Yes, calabash can make excellent plates. So, mum would serve our food in it. It was leak proof so there was no chance of any soup leaking on to the mat or floor.

Dad had his own special mat as well. At that time, the head of the family sat a respectful distance away from his family. As a result, he did not serve his food from the same bowl as the rest of his family. I have no idea how this practice began but I do know that it was considered disrespectful if his food was served on the same "utensil" as everyone else's! So mum did the needful: she would serve him on his own skin tray and calabash bowl.

Our meals were mainly millet ugali, vegetables and lots of milk. The milk could be either sour or fresh. I loooved milk so much that it didn't matter to me what type of milk it was, as long as it was milk!

Let me tell you a bit about the millet ugali. Some people call it the African cake.

Mmm... I can hear you asking "How different is it from the normal sweet cake?"

Well, one is baked, the other is poured into boiling water, mixed into a paste and left to cook on low heat for while. By the time its cooked, the water has evaporated and a semi hard lump is all that is left. Like the sugary cake, it takes on the shape of the utensil it is cooked in......and yes, it's absolutely delicious! It has a sweet nutty taste.

Once cooked, mum would scoop it, place it on to the serving hide and pat it down to look like a cake, making it easy to cut into slices for all.

Now mum would cook enough for her and the five hungry men, of whom four were of course little gentlemen! However, this did not mean that the ugali was of a small portion. It was pretty big and would therefore have its own skin hide "plate"!

Mum was keen on good manners, so under her watchful eyes, we would cut small cake-like slices, and go for seconds if absolutely necessary…which was ….more often than not ….ALWAYS! That my friends, was the routine every meal time.

This evening was however extra special. I had done my standard four national exams and passed extremely well. I was happy. My family was pleased with the results......and so was the government!

The government? Yes! I had no idea why but I later came to learn that it was all about future civil servants. A civil servant is someone who works for the government. At that time our country was steadily moving towards independence and the government was training and looking for people who would later take over from the colonial civil service.

We were still young and hardly thinking about our careers, let alone the future but someone somewhere had already started preparing the way for the next generation of government employees. So to those that passed, the government would give each child a present.

And what a present it was! It was a special tray. It had the queen's image right in the middle of it. She was at that time in charge of all the countries that were under British rule. It was therefore a fitting gift. It was made from tin and had maroon edges. The queen's portrait was right at the centre. When I first saw it, I thought that it would make for an eye-catching wall decor. It was certainly fit to show off in every household

We, however, went a step further! We were not just going to display it as a tribute to my academic prowess. Noo…., we had grand designs for it! This was going to be part of our colourful crockery, representing African and British culture!

We now had another serving plate big enough for our ugali! Dad even set aside tradition and we had our ugali from the same "plate"! We also had a calabash of milk to wash down the hot ugali. It was perrrrfect!

While we ate, dad kept us enthralled with an amazing encounter he had a few days ago. On that particular morning after taking breakfast he announced that he was going to visit our relatives who lived on the other side of the valley. While each one of us wanted to accompany him, he was strangely not keen on the idea. He wanted to go and come back the same day. Our tagging along would only slow him down.

"Plus," he had said, "I intend to use the short cut that passes through the forest."

Now that bit of information did shake me to the core and in that instant I lost all interst of accompanying him. The forest was not one of my favorite places but if you wanted to travel fast, then passing through the forest made sense. Since he had no intention of sleeping over at our relatives home, it was the right decision. It would take dad about an hour to get to the path that cut through the forest and another hour to get to the other side. From there it would be another hours walk to get to his destination. I had been on that path before and I did not like it!

Some people or person, had created the path from one end of the forest to another. No one really knew how that path had come to be. However frequent use had made that a permanent trail and it was like light in a dark tunnel. Finding it meant that one would not get lost in the dark forest. Somehow light managed to stream in through the canopies shedding light into it. Were it not for the areas that were not covered by a canopy, it would have been very dark. I did not like the dark. What's more, there were wild animals in this forest. The kind I did not want to meet.

I had heard people talking in hushed tones about seeing leopards from a distance. That scared me!

Those that lived not too far from the forest spoke about hearing bears howl at night and seeing other strange creatures that came out of their hiding places at night. I don't know how true those stories were but I did not relish the thought of meeting one.

Father, on the other hand, had a very close encounter with a leopard that day. Boy am I glad that he refused to take us with him! The very thought makes the hair on the nape of my neck stand. Meeting one leopard is terrifying enough… but three of them?

Oh yes. He met three leopards: a mother leopard and her two cubs! As I said, this was a long time ago, before national parks and zoos were created, so it was not unusual to meet wild animals, especially in the forest. The forest was after all their home. So, there was dad…. and the leopard, eyeing each other. Who would make the first move?

The cubs were of course oblivious of the situation and if it were possible they would have rushed to check out this unusual two legged being. However their mum gently growled at them and they stayed put. They understood that the growl was a warning. So they did what cubs do when alerted of any danger and their mum happens to be near them. They sought shelter beneath her belly and stared curiously at the tall two legged creature.

That was a dangerous situation. The mother leopard would do anything to protect her cubs if she thought they were in danger. Father was well aware of this so he did the next best thing. He stood still.

Mother leopard stared at dad. I guess she was weighing the options: to attack or not to attack. She finally nudged her cubs and they proceeded to go deep into the forest. She was satisfied that this human being had no evil intentions. Phew!

While dad was relieved and glad to see them go, he didn't move until he was sure that the leopard family was not nearby. A false move could have disastrous consequences. The entire incidence had not taken more than a minute but to him it did feel like it had taken forever! The one hour walk through the forest took him about thirty minutes because he calmly started walking very very fast.

So did he use the same route on his way back home? Absolutely not! He preferred to use the longer route even though it meant that his visit to our relatives would not be as long as he had hoped. He did not want another wild animal encounter. Naturally, we had many questions when he came to the end of his interesting tale and so we chatted as we ate.

In the dimly lit hut, it was at times difficult to see very well so none of us noticed any changes that the hot ugali had on the tray. Someone, I do not remember who, reached out and picked the last slice of ugali and we suddenly realized that the queen was no longer there. She had vanished!

So startled were we by this unexpected turn of events that for a few seconds we stared at the tray in stunned silence. Where had she gone?

Upon close examination of the tray we concluded that the hot ugali had somehow caused the queens image to fade away. Dad's leopard story must have been so captivating that we did not notice any strange taste in any of our ugali slices. It really was a hilarious moment!

I'm all grown up now. I'm actually a grandfather, but I still laugh whenever I remember that day. Mercifully none of us got sick from consuming the maroon stained ugali. That really was an interesting outcome to my celebratory dinner!