Posho Is English
A shop sign in Entebbe, a friend who laughed, and the long way the word posho traveled: from a ration under British rule, into Swahili, and back into English.
When I arrived in Uganda in 2011, I was introduced to posho. Maize flour, stirred into boiling water until it's thick enough to hold its shape.
It was gritty, and rather flavorless. I didn't care for it much. I didn't hate it, either. And the guest house didn't serve it often.
I learned to love it later, in Kenya, with mbuzi choma, kachumbari, and mboga. But I digress.
In Kenya, I also learned another name for it: ugali, the Swahili word. Nobody had told me what language posho was. I assumed it was Luganda. So I filed it away. Posho in Luganda. Ugali in Swahili. Two languages, one food.
There were several things I didn't quite get right on my first visit. That was one of them.
Kawunga
When I came back in 2013, I saw a word written on a shop in Entebbe: kawunga.
I asked my friend what it meant.
"It's the Luganda word for posho," he said.
I paused. If kawunga was Luganda, then whose word was posho? Lusoga, maybe?
I asked.
My friend laughed. "You man! Posho is English!"
My jaw dropped. I had never once eaten this food anywhere English was the everyday language. And yet there was an English word for it.
The long way around
My friend was right. Posho is in English dictionaries. It means maize meal.
It has a second meaning, too: payment for work in food instead of money. That meaning is where the word began.
Under British rule in East Africa, people working on settler farms, on the railway, and on public works were paid partly in food. A daily ration of maize meal. A portion. In Swahili, the portion became posho. From Swahili, the word went back into English as the name of the food itself.
So the word went from English, into Swahili, and back into English again. The Swahili word for the food is ugali. The Luganda word is kawunga. And posho, the word I had assumed was Luganda, started as a ration.
I got it wrong twice, and I was still a little bit right.
Posho, ugali, kawunga. It's the same food. It still tastes best with mbuzi choma.
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