Irish Potatoes

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Irish Potatoes (Swahili : viazi)

***** Location: Kenya
***** Season: Cold dry season
***** Category: Plant

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Explanation

Irish potatoes are abundantly available in the cold dry season.
However, in Nairobi, we still have them in smaller quantities during the other seasons as well, since all fresh farm produce is brought to the huge Marikiti Market for sale all year round. In some rural areas, like Rift Valley or Western, Irish potatoes are only available during the cold dry season, i.e. May to August.

Patrick Wafula

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The potato was first introduced into Kenya by Irish missionaries, for whom this was the staple food -- hence the common name "Irish potato".
They grow well in the highlands of Kenya and have become part of the staple diet of the highlands people, such as Kikuyus and their neighbours. Potatoes are not normally eaten on their own, but mixed into vegetable dishes (together with cabbage and carrots) as well as into githeri. As climate change takes hold of Kenya and drought periods lengthen, Kenya's favourite staple, maize, is partially being replaced with potatoes, which seem to be more drought resistant.

Kenya also has many native starchy root crops, among them the sweet potato (Kikuyu : ngacî).
Isabelle Prondzynski


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Worldwide use

Japan

. Potato (jagaimo) 　


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Things found on the way



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HAIKU

Irish potatoes
peeping from an overstuffed sack --
a sweating cart man

Patrick Wafula


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another dawn --
his back curves under
a potato sack

Catherine Njeri Maina


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Great Famine potato makes a comeback after 170 years
"The Irish Lumper" returns, grown for the first time in generations
An Antrim potato farmer has re-cultivated a variety of potato at the root of the Great Famine, making it available in Ireland for the first time in almost 170 years.

The nutritious "Irish Lumper" grew immensely popular among impoverished Irish farmers in the early 19th century because if flourished in poor soil. However, the dependence on a single variety of spud proved disastrous. When the blight took hold in the 1840s, the Lumper was wiped out.

The potato variety had all but disappeared until Michael McKillop of Glens of Antrim Potatoes decided to grow the spud five years ago.
source : www.irishcentral.com


potato..
must we open
old sores

- Shared by John Byrne -
Haiku Culture Magazine, 2013



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Related words

***** Sweet potatoes (satsumaimo, Satsuma imo サツマイモ　) Japan



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