The heading in The Standard said: “Nyama choma, smocha and other Kenyan street food now go global.”
But the story showed nothing “global”. In other words, the September 20 story by Peter Muiruri pulled your leg.
Even a photo of sizzling roast meat on the grill had the caption, “Nyama choma, a popular street food, is now being amplified through TikTok”.
That should be a juicy story. Tiktok was bringing Kenya’s most famous cuisine to the world? Who wouldn’t want to read this?
But what did they do with the story? It started out bold: “Kenya’s growing street food culture has gone global, thanks to local and international content creators.”
That was the intro unequivocally defining the argument, that choma had gone global. A reader would be expecting to read that folks in, say, Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, and Cartagena, Colombia, have found our choma, right?
Well, hold your horses. The second paragraph said: “Take smocha, a mix of smokies, chapati, and salad for example. It has become a staple street food competing for attention with nyama choma and captivating food lovers from all over the world.”
That’s about the time a frown would crease a reader’s forehead. “All over the world” starts to sound like a hyperbole, an extravagant exaggeration. Was this story serious? Did they know the meaning of something going global?
The only backup for this claim that Kenya’s cuisine had gone global came in the third paragraph.
“The vibrancy of the Kenyan culinary revolution is being amplified globally through TikTok, the video-sharing platform with hashtags such as #Food with 43.5 million posts, #FoodTikTok with 10.4 million posts, and #StreetFood with 1.4 million posts.”
See that? So this was about hits – and posts: 1.4 million?
Yes, it was. They didn’t tell you where these Tiktok posts were popping up. Who knew if these posts weren’t popping up within our borders, in Budalang’i and Loitokitok and Kinungi?
They didn’t bring you pictures of choma or smocha on any street outside Kenya.
The verdict: that story heading, its entire claim, was a sham.
