I’ll preface this post with a summary of my meals today:
Breakfast: coffee with crackers and cheese (from Kenya! very good!)
Mid morning snack: chapatti and milk tea
Lunch: vegetarian samosas, deep fried
Afternoon snack: Amigo’s salted chips
Notice a trend here? Besides the intense Indian-British influence on the food ? I’ve been getting my fill of fried goods and quite a dearth of vegetables since we arrived in Kenya. Most of this is due to the strict verboten-ness of fresh vegetables and non-peeled fruits. So no salads, no fresh tomato garnish or slaw. No one here wants a repeat of Mali 2004 . And following my no fresh veggies/unpeeled fruit rules I have been healthy and hale since we got here. But I’m becoming more than a bit concerned that my coronaries won’t recover from the 5.5 week fried food binge I’m finishing up. But I digress, what I wanted to talk about was food in Kenya.
Satter’s hierarchy of food needs is a sociological look at human requirements for food in a stepwise manner.

At the bottom is “enough food”, nevermind if its fresh, good tasting, not rotten. You will see that “good tasting food”, or what one would usually expect to hear discussed in a blog post on food, doesn’t even come in until the fourth rung of the pyramid. In case you were wondering, “instrumental food” refers to “choosing food for instrumental reasons: to achieve a desired physical, cognitive, or spiritual outcome.” My desire to eat vegetables to protect my future cardiac health is an example of seeking out instrumental food.
You may be wondering what this has to do with Kenyan cuisine. I’ve been thinking of this food pyramid a lot since we’ve been here because for most Kenyans food ranks somewhere in the last three rungs of the pyramid. There is real food insecurity in this country due to poverty, drought, and rising food prices. Ray and I have seen the child malnutrition ward in the district hospital – it ain’t no joke. But the national cuisine, or at least what I know of it, is essentially food that clocks in around rung three of Satter’s pyramid, the kind of food that fills you up and doesn’t let you down. It’s not particularly amazing tasting, but it will certainly fulfill the basic needs of food.
So what kind of food are we talking about? The first and most ubiquitous staple of Kenyan food is ugali, a starch that accompanies almost every meal in Kenya. It’s made out of maize flour that is boiled into a porridge until it sets and then is served in large slabs. The consistency is fluffy play-do. Kenyan’s say “a man hasn’t eaten until he’s had ugali” but it’s certainly not going to win any culinary awards anytime soon. The most common vegetable served is chopped up and stewed kale or spinach called sukuma wiki. The word translates in Kiswahili to “stretch the week”, a nod to food insecurity even today. When Kenyan’s can afford meat they prefer it barbecued, referred to as nyama choma. It’s not exactly melt in your mouth – these animals are as free-range and lean as they come – but it’s one of the tastier sides of Kenyan food nonetheless.
This isn’t to say that all the food in Kenya is utilitarian. Ray and I ate at Carnivore, a high end Nairobi homage to nyama choma specializing in strange game meats (we tried ostrich, alligator and camel). The fish in Kisumu, even at the most bare bones corrugated tin roof “restaurant” by the lake, is excellent, fresh and tasty. But generally higher end restaurants that cater to tourists and expats serve non-Kenyan food. They do it well but I’m not sure its a stretch for pizza to be pretty darn tasty. Then there is the influx of Indian-British food influences. Chapattis, samosas, and curry are all staples of most restaurants here due to the large Southeast Asian population. Heavy sometimes, but a large source of vegetables cooked into acceptable antisepsis. Thankfully the British influence on food is minimal (no shepherds pie or creamy peas) but they left a long legacy of milky, sugary tea that is alive and well 40+ years post colonialism.
Most days we end up eating a mix of familiar/western food and Kenyan food. The clinic has a few women who come and cook food for the doctors and clients. This is where the majority of our ugali and sukuma wiki intake happens. You can’t get a better deal than 40KSH (less than 50 cents) for a plate of goods there. We are also lucky to have the ability to cook at our flat and have produced, with our one gas burner, pasta, fried rice, stir fry and guacamole. In the end its been quite a learning experience to live in a place where food is a limited resource, both in quality and quantity. But there’s an element of voyeurism to it as we have the money and ability to opt out of the nutritional reality that exists for many Kenyans.
Rachel