‘Koroga’ is a very Kenyan term for having a cook-out. Many moons ago, it used to be standard practice to have a boys’ night out and meet up at some club that offered ‘bandas’ and cooking facilities. The blokes would get together on their designated day, cook, have a few drinks eat, drink and be merry. Slowly it became acceptable to have these korogas nights with families and nowadays it’s not unusual to find families at club bandas getting together and sharing a good laugh over a meal cooked together.

Keeping this same concept in mind, East FM came up with an idea called the Koroga Premier League (KPL). The idea had a juicy twist to it – the presenters at East FM were all to be known as Team Owners and they were to get together a team of minimum six people and a maximum of ten on their team for the ultimate korogas challenge. The prize? No small change, the first prize was a whopping Ksh 100,000/- for the winning team.

All of us got together our teams and the fun started when we started making individual on-air promos. With the help of Javed and Naftali, our creative producers, we went all out tearing each other apart with our promos promising to win the cash prize. We had so much fun doing the promos that we couldn’t wait for the actual competition to start.

The first weekend seven teams took part and three were eliminated and the following the same happened. There were fourteen teams in all and we also had listeners’ teams who participated in the challenge. Rules were given, as were ingredients for the korogas.  Within the time limit of two hours you could cook up whatever storm you wished to with your team members and present it to the judges.

Each team met, strategized, planned and vowed to cook better than anyone else. The fun that we had for the past four Fridays will forever be etched in my memory bank. I was gutted that my team ‘Urban Tadka’ lost but took heart that I had more points than Gupz’s team. He had been bragging that he had the East FM chairman Sudhir Vidyarthi as his chief cook and that had me tossing & turning at night. Sudhir is a renowned korogas cook and I could see the prize diminishing from my eyes. In an effort to have a VIP glamour factor I invited the big boss himself to join my team. Unfortunately Patrick Quracoo couldn’t make it on the day because of something urgent that had come up but he did join us the following weekend.

Yes Mr. Q, I know what was happening that day & I also know you were dealing with a matter that required urgency but you still owe me a drink.

The following weekends got madder and more fun and outrageous. The teams who made it to the finals could be nominated for some sort of Nobel Prize. The seriousness in which they put together their plan of action was amazing. The creativity they all came up with had onlookers nodding in awed approval.

In the end it was Seema Sarkar’s team that won the ultimate prize with my favourite Parveen Adam coming in a close runner up. I must say we all had an excellent time and each and every member of the East FM team should pat themselves on the back for having such great leadership qualities and team spirit. Those eliminated automatically went on to support and cheer the others and I discovered something else about all of us at East FM – we can all cook!

Mr Q, perhaps your next investment should lean towards the catering industry. You have fourteen people from the East FM team who can cook. Just saying! And don’t forget the drink you owe me…