Kenyan Food!

My typical dinner, sukuma with ugali.  Sukuma is kale leaves cooked in grease until it becomes soggy and almost liquid like.  I had this or some variation of it about 4 nights a week.  I have never told my host family this (they will know now since I will post this on Facebook and they are my Facebook friends), but I thought this was probably the most disgusting food in the world.  While the house help made the best sukuma I ever tasted, it was still disgusting.  I would think something that had so many spices cooked into it would taste better.  A month into my visit in Kenya, I was gagging as I washed it down my throat with huge gulps of water.  But I do eat massive amounts of this as it helps A LOT with going to the bathroom (I am late to work every day the day after we have sukuma as bathroom time usually heads to overtime).  I learned from several bad experiences that I would rather have massive diarrhea than constipation so I made sure to eat all of my sukuma everyday (while it is disgusting to talk about poo, it's a huge deal here and very openly discussed among the interns, which are all female besides me).

I can't say ugali, the white bread like food, was much better.  It was basically ground corn meal boiled in hot water until it becomes starchy and sticky.  It has no taste and is also very disgusting.  The ugali is used to scoop up the sukuma to eat by hand.

Similar meal, different night, only with scrambled eggs this time.  Because protein is pretty expensive in comparison to sukuma, protein is rarely served here.  Fruits are even more expensive so that is even rarer.  But to put it into perspective, a bag of sukuma that feeds all of us (4 adults and 1 baby) costs maybe $0.80, beef is usually around $1.50 for a pound or so and eggs are usually $0.12 each.

On a side note, I had to eat just about every meal with my hands.  I was terrible at it.  I could never efficiently scoop up the food so it would take me several hours to eat one meal.  Eating with your hands is more challenging than I thought it would be.

Cabbage, scrambled eggs and ugali...much better than sukuma and ugali.

My favorite meal!  Pilau (rice flavored with different spices with meat and potatoes, mmmm...mmmm) with beans and mchicha (greans).  This entire meal cost about 90 cents.  I had this almost everyday for lunch at a local restaurant that did not even have running water.  I always thought I had a pretty weak stomach, but after eating at this place just about everyday and never getting slightly sick once, I think I have an extremely strong stomach as several of my fellow interns did become really sick with food poisoning after eating here.

The food in this picture and the picture below is classified as Swahili food rather than normal African food.  Normal African food is Sukuma and Ugali.  Every country in Sub-Saharan Africa has some variation of Sukuma and Ugali...unfortunately.  Swahili food is really good.  It has a heavy influence from the Arabs and Indians that used Mombasa as a trading post and has acquired an African influence to develop into something very tasty.  It is unique to the Tanzanian and Kenyan coast lines.

Chicken Biryani!  My second favorite food here.  It is chicken in a special curry sauce...mmmmm.  The tomatoes on the side are a dish called kachumbari, a type of a very delicious African coleslaw made out of onions, tomatoes, and cabbage.  I have the recipe and I hope to make it at home when I return back to the US.