Digital Story from the Bawso Stories Project. Chosen's Story "Baking in Kenya" was inspired by a visit to St Fagans National Museum of History. Seeing the bakery reminded Chosen of baking cakes using the traditional Kenyan methods, such as using a sufuria pot currounded by sand. 

English transcript: So, something else that I saw, it was the bakery, and it reminded me of how people back home, they used to bake. So, for us, we don’t use the method that I saw of big traditional bakery, but we use the sand. So, the sand, you put it in one cooking pot, the sufuria, and then you put another cooking pot inside it, and it will bake you a good, good cake. I never knew that I could bake with just my gas cooker, without the oven, so I just saw that on YouTube vlogs, and I invented that. Ok, I never invented it, I copied from them! The cake was the same. It was a marble cake and also, I made another one, a sponge cake, a banana cake, a carrot cake. I’ve made several cakes. So, at first I will talk about the banana cake. As I was going to the Church Fellowship, I collected sand because it was during the night. Nobody should see me collecting their sand, because it was not in our property, it was someone else’s property, and they were using it to build a house. So, I wouldn’t want anyone to see me taking it, because I never knew the owner. So, I needed to sneak and take it so fast and just rush in the house to use it for my benefit. Then I told my mum. So, I need these ingredients: I need two bananas which are very, very ripe, I need margarine, I need sugar, I needed also salt and baking soda. So, she bought all those things for me, and she trust me so much with cooking. So, the following morning, I woke up so early in the morning and I started the process. So, I made the mixture and then I started heating up the sand. So, after that, I put my mixture inside where the sand is already heated up and then I lower the heat and then I put on the lid to the second pot and then after that I just waited for like twenty minutes and my cake was really ready, but when your cake is ready, you’re not supposed to see evidence on the knife that you’re putting in the cake. So, I started putting something and then I was like oh my God, there is some evidence on the knife. So, my cake was spoiled now, but I think I should wait for some time. Then I did another ten minutes, just to be sure that it is cooked or spoiled. So, I waited and then after that I started feeling the smell of burnt, the burnt cake. Then I was like, ah I think now it’s ready. So, when I went to check again, it was nice and it was well cooked and we enjoyed. We never even waited for it to cool down. We ate when it was very, very hot but my mum enjoyed it, and she liked it. But then at the end, when I was baking for the fourth time, the sufuria started melting, I don’t know why! It melted and then at the centre of it, I started feeling the sand pouring on the gas cooker, and the gas cooker, it came off, and I was like, what is happening, I can feel some smell from the kitchen. So, I went there and found that the sufuria was melting and my cake was not yet cooked. So, I had to transfer the sand to another sufuria so that it will cook.