Ugali, Sukuma Wiki, and Chai Masala: Eating in Kenya

A woman in the village who sold me vegetables

       In Western Kenya, people eat ugali. Only ugali (ok, ok, I’m exaggerating, but just slightly).  The bulk of a Kenyan meal consists of ugali, accompanied by boiled vegetables and, if you can afford it, meat.
  

Ugali

       Ugali is made from ground maize that is then boiled in water—much like you would make grits or polenta, except less water (and zero seasoning) is added so that it forms a doughy consistency.  To eat, you pinch off a piece of ugali, roll it around in your hand a bit, and then use it to scoop up the vegetable, sauce, and/or meat.

How to eat ugali:

Foreigners generally aren’t fans, but Kenyans (literally) can’t get enough of the stuff.  “It is not a meal unless you have ugali,” “If you haven’t eaten ugali you haven’t eaten,” and “Ugali will make you strong” are the oft-used mantras when it comes to discussions of food. Kenyans could eat a plate of rice the size of your head, but if they haven’t had any ugali they will still complain of hunger.

Vegetables
       The most popular vegetable dish is sukuma wiki—sautéed kale with tomato and onion.  Translating into English as “to push the week,” sukuma wiki, as the cheapest dish available and therefore used to stretch meals, is pretty standard fare (try visiting Kenya without eating any ugali or sukuma wiki. I dare you.). Other popular dishes include sautéed/boiled pumpkin leaves, cabbage, and the slightly pricier lentils.  Sweet potatoes are a major crop, but I never saw my roommates cook them so I’m not sure how most Kenyans do it. If I had to guess I’d say they fry them in oil, as they do white potatoes (which they call “Irish Potatoes.” Side note: if you pronounce “potato” in the usual American way, you will get a blank stare in return. You know the phrase, “Potato/potato, tomato/tomato”? Kenyans pronounce these words in the second fashion—with a short “A”).

I don't remember the name of this vegetable, but students
came after school to help my roommates prepare it

Tea and Snacks
       Black tea, or chai, is hugely popular in Kenya. It is drunk from morning ’til night, in hot weather as well as cold.  The favorite way to drink it is with milk, spices, and large amounts of sugar—alternately called “milky tea” or “weak tea”.  “Strong tea” is made with tea, spices, and obscene amounts of sugar.  “Masala tea” is strong tea with the proportions inverted—heavier on the spices, but lighter on sugar (masala means “spiced”).  Most people buy a pre-made masala mix from the store, containing ground cloves, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, etc. 

Mandazi and chai: this photo makes me extremely hungry
(http://tinyurl.com/b69hn9w)

       Snacks in Kenya generally consist of various forms of fried dough.  The snacks available for sale in our school kitchen are chapati, a thin, oily, tortilla-like flatbread, and mandazi, which is best described as doughnut batter fried into little balls, squares, or triangles.  In larger towns or trading posts, the most readily available snack (apart from maize) is mandazi and boiled eggs.  This was my favorite combination on long journeys—when your matatu is stopped you can poke your head out of the window and, more often than not, a vendor will be nearby selling one or both from large buckets.  When a vendor only had one item, i.e., eggs, I could simply say, “Can you get me some mandazi, too?” and she/he would run off to find it for me.  Samosas, also popular, are my all-time favorite snack, but these are more difficult to find on the streets.  


     Another beloved Kenyan treat is soda.  Coke and Orange Fanta are the favorites, followed closely by Sprite and ginger ale.  At 40 to 50 shillings (57 cents) a pop, however, sodas are a rare extravagance.

       At school, teachers and students eat the same things every day.  For the midmorning tea break, teachers have a choice of milky or strong tea, while the students have strong tea.  Nobody drinks anything but tea in the morning.  If I brought a bottle of water to a morning class, the conversation invariably went like this:
       "Madam, what are you drinking?"
       "Water."
      "In the morning?" Cue gasps and 50 pairs of eyes saying, more clearly than words ever could, “What the hell is this white girl thinking?”

       Tea break is the time you can buy snacks from the canteen—5 bob (5 shillings = 6 cents) for two chapatis or three mandazis. Whenever my staff room neighbor, Manjichi, bought chapatis he would take one for himself and place the bag with the remaining chapati on my desk and say quietly, “You can have this one.”  Too cute. 

Ugali and sukuma wiki

      For lunch, teachers get ugali, sukuma wiki, and beef.  On special occasions (i.e., the day of a board meeting), we would get rice and chicken, and if we were really lucky, a soda.  We also got sodas whenever there was a formal staff meeting (wish every job doled out rewards for attending required events) or other significant school activity, such as the orientation service for Form Ones or a soccer game.   Students’ lunch consists of a mixture of maize, beans, and chickpeas.  For many, school lunch is the only meal they will eat that day.

Here's a video of a special-occasion meal being prepared in our kitchen:

Rose, the principal's secretary, using our kitchen
to make a special lunch for the school board

mmmmm

Taking care of the chicken guts

       For dinner, most people eat ugali (duhhh), sukuma wiki, and boiled maize if it is in season.  My dinners were almost always some combination of potatoes, eggs, tomatoes, and onions, as these were the things I could buy from women in the village.  Fried tilapia from Lake Victoria was also readily available, but I passed on that.  Since the only kitchen appliance I had was a gas burner (no fridge; definitely no microwave), my meal options were limited.  I made it to the grocery store in Kakamega at least every other weekend, though, where I could buy rice, lentils, butternut squash, garlic, chili peppers, ground spices, bread, fruit juice, and CHOCOLATE.  My cooking irritated my roommates to no end, as I tend to pile on the garlic and chili peppers/chili powder.  Kenyan food is generally devoid of all seasonings (salt being the glaring exception), so they couldn’t handle my heavy-handedness with the spices and would literally run out of the kitchen coughing when I cooked.  Drama queens.
 

Where I bought most of my vegetables. Notice the fried tilapia on the left

Typical cooking setup. This is in Peter's mother's house.
The corn cobs will be used for fuel.