Java Nanyuki. Coffee Meets Poetic License






I am at the brand new, mint fresh Java Nanyuki. Hail! Finally we have a foreign brand-dropping anchor in town. Wait, they are rather late to the parade actually, with the high expat population in town, every other brand is foreign. I can envision? middle class conversations as soon as they discover it is not as expensive as it looks. "Can we meet for coffee?" "Def, we should try Java, Shiro went there last week and it was wow!" Many selfies and a pissed off untipped waiter later, they will also agree it was wow. 

Java has hang their shingle at the new Cedar mall a few doors away from the Nanyuki KFC with a protein supplement, or steroid shop between them. Meaning, the ground floor of Cedar Mall is almost guaranteed to make you gain weight one way or another.  Like every other Java anywhere in the world, its emphasis on space almost makes you momentatily forget the gaudy art on the walls.  

I am assuming whoever they commissioned was told, to "give it a Kenyan feel" and gleefully rubbing  his paintbrushes  together and opening a drum of paint went like "Say no more!". He went ahead to paint several 2 meter by 1 meter bright textured acrylic paintings of whatever he thought the potential white clientele thinks the Kenyan country looks like (Yap I mean he, no woman would paint that). It looks like a coastal scene with a bright orange background and green leafy and brownish people.  By people I mean women. There is a scene from a shopping centre of a slummy part of Kenya  where people are buying and selling small things in tiny packages unlike the middle class elite who stuff their boots or trunks with enough shopping to feed a small village. Clearly the scene in the pictures is indicative of people who will never afford to get into Java unless they win a sportspesa jackpot or a government tender.  

The women portrayed are in brightly colored Shukas and their legs and buttocks in some instances are something else entirely.  The women are sitting on the grass mending sweaters or braiding each others' hair. The art is practically a  slide from a European man’s fantasy after visiting a human zoo in the early 20th century where they displayed big butted, clitted and other apparently exaggerated sexual organs of African women. (There were actually real Human Zoos [Its not an easy link for an African to read] where they would study among other things -like children- fat African women and hold scientific discussions about how their huge butts make them sex savages).  

Anyway, back to Java, the womens’ legs are the biggest and fattest parts of their bodies. I am looking at a woman’s calf that is bigger than the trunks of the trees in the background. Huge women with centaur-like bodies (by the way do we have female centaurs?) super fat lower torsos and legs grooming each others' African hair will garnish your latte or house coffee which goes for 160 bob for a single.

Poetic license is clearly an ass.

Its pretty big and pretty decent coffee. Beer goes for 360 a bottle which is probably the most expensive within town, however its not surprising since most people who can afford to drink here probably would not make a scene. Apparently they are nowhere near as expensive as I had imagined they would be. Probably cheaper than Dorman’s and Courtyard, but I have to investigate. 

The doors to the washrooms are hidden in a corridor that is harder to find than Hilary Clinton's victory speech but they are cleaner and probably smell better than my college dorm room. And you don't have to pay to use them like some places we are not mentioning today. The internet is the best I have used in a public place in Nanyuki. I am assuming this is only going to last as long as the torrent addicted old HP users don't start patronising the place to spend 3 hours strangling our internet to download a movie they can buy for 50 bob just for the bragging rights [You know yourselves, Martin and Jerry but I won't mention names...oops]

The staff have genuine smiles and they do not seem to have any racial preferences unlike some places I will write about someday. They are dressed in red sweaters and white pants, and they definitely deserve their tips, which like Kenyans will rarely give anyway. They have a wide selection of buns and Cakes apparently they are so good that when we were sitting at our booth, we noticed someone move them around from behind the counter and drop one of the buns on the floor. Turns out it was was too good to waste. I don’t think they saw us see. 

Verdict, it is not perfect but its’ probably the best coffee house in Laikipia. I am still not having their salad though, I hear it is not always vegetarian.

Comments

  1. Nice.... I like the fact that you see beyond the apparent

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  2. Ahhh, the fantastic internet! I recall this. A very nice place to watch other tourists! My favorite part was the British woman who brought her dog in and fed him a latte at the side of the table.

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