Masau

Muzarabani via Kambuzuma

The Great Masau Hunt

Everyone has that one food that instantly transports them back to childhood.

Mine is masau🤤

My love affair with them began in the most unexpected place. Not in a village, but on the front porch of my mum’s aunt’s house in Kambuzuma.

I still remember it vividly.

Spread across the porch were hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of tiny brown fruits drying in the sun. They glistened like little treasures. Naturally, curiosity got the better of me. After seeking permission, I picked up a few, popped them into my mouth and that my friends, was that.

I was hooked.

Later, I learned that my aunt’s husband was from Muzarabani, where masau grow in abundance. Every time they visited his rural home, they would return with sacks upon sacks of them, enough for the family and enough to sell around the neighbourhood.

As a child, I made a perfectly logical assumption: masau must grow in every village.

Then came April and our annual trip to Nyamweda. Netara. It trund out our neighbours were a lady witht two daughters, Theo and Hazvi, who became our firm friends for my sister and I, and our partners in adventure. We’d disappear for hours on wild fruit expeditions, returning dusty, sun-kissed and triumphant.

There were tsubvu.

Matohwe.

Matufu.

Matamba.

Nature, it seemed, was showing off. But, I was on a mission.

“Where are the masau?” I’d ask. Surely they were just beyond the next hill?👀

Or the next one.

Every expedition ended the same way. My friends proudly filled their pockets with every fruit they could find while I remained stubbornly hopeful that somewhere, somehow, a masau tree was waiting for me. It never appeared 😞

Only years later did I finally, in exasperation, discover the truth.  Masau don’t grow everywhere.

My childhood had quietly taught me one of life’s earliest lessons: not every place has the same gifts.

It’s funny how children assume their experience is universal. We think every family eats what we eat. Every grandmother tells stories like ours. Every village has the same trees. Then life gently corrects us.

I never did find masau in Nyamweda but I found something else; The excitement of searching. The joy and camaraderie of wandering with friends and believing the next path might hold exactly what you were looking for.

Perhaps that’s why I still smile whenever I see masau today. They’re more than fruit. They’re a reminder that some of our sweetest memories aren’t about finding what we wanted. 

They’re about the people who walked beside us while we looked🤎