Clement Nyirenda

One of the lovely Japanese friends that I have here is Shimpei Mori. I got acquainted with him in 2002/03 when he was working as a JICA volunteer at Mikolongwe in Malawi. At that time, I was working as a staff associate in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Malawi Polytechnic. Almost every week, Mori used to visit Eiji Kutsuoka, his fellow JICA volunteer, who used to work in the Department of Architecture at the same institution. Because I was so close to Eiji, with time I got connected to Mori and a few other JICA volunteers as well.

Some time in August 2009, Ki-Africa, a Japan based pro-Africa non-profit organization, invited our group of a few Malawians to a cooking party for African foods. We were specifically asked to teach the Japanese people who attended the event how to cook nsima, Malawi’s stapple food, and beef (nyama ya ng’ombe), in the Malawian way. The event took place at Hacchobori in the Chuo Ward of Tokyo.