cooking a fish

I’m a lover of fish, infact for a very long time I couldn’t forgive my uncle for not letting me taste a fish he once brought home, bought off a boy who had caught it in a river. I was six or seven, and I promised myself when I grew up, I would go to the Indian Ocean and catch myself a fish. I grew up and learnt that grand ma had said to uncle not to give the child any fish, incase I died and he’d be blamed. A lot of people won’t eat fish for a number of reasons. Fish smells bad my friend Mel says, the fish bones will kill you according to a lot of people in central province, majority have no clue what to do with a fish so they just opt for other meat.

When I lived on an island, I ate a lot of fish, different fish and when I came back to the mountains, I longed for the days I had bought 5 medium sized tilapia at Tesco for Rm.2.50 on holiday sales.

So when my friend suggesting a fishing trip, I could have jumped up and down.
I live in Tetu, and you can see a lot of Wangari Maathai’s green belt movement’s efforts. Trees are more than the population, unlike most places in Kenya, the beautiful surroundings are a treasure. There are a couple of public dams around my area, not many people make good use of them though and discovering the dams have been happiness itself.

I must say the scenery was more enthralling than the actual fishing itself, especially when the sun begun to set; the green reeds were reflected into the water giving the dam a soft green luster. The long legged white birds with the black, red breasted diving ducks, the kingfishers all completed the ideal setting for a fishing afternoon.

We arrived at 1.00p.m and at 5.30 none of us had caught a single baby fish. But you should have seen the determination. Someone caught a tiny one, which we threw back later, honestly, you can’t carry home a finger’s length fish and tell people you went fishing.

On another fishing trip at a different dam, on one Kamanda’s farm, the wife hailed her workers who came and dragged the net in the dam and caught us five fish-yeah!. We disappointed them though because immediately after we continued throwing our grasshopper baited hooks lines into the water. They left us to our mad experiments, and Maureen, by accident, haha, caught one, for which we celebrated.

Fishing is fun, as much fun as learning to play a guitar. I think you get the same excitement as you do when you learnt to play two notes of Snow Patrols’ Chasing Cars. I need about 15 more lessons before I can at least get a fish out of the water.

To cook a fish, unless it’s fish balls you’re aiming at, don’t boil the fish, like potatoes.