Christina's Adventures in Africa: Delicacies of Kenya

I have had the opportunity to try many different foods in all the countries I have visited.

Gibnut: Belize (Small wild guinnea pig type rodent)

Jerk Chicken: Jamaica

Termites: Guatemala (The tiny ones found in trees and they taste like mint)

Chicken cartilage and Octopus: Japan

Tatarak: Czech Republic (Raw ground beef patty covered in a raw egg yolk)

Wild Boar: Hawaii

Cream Cheese Hot Dogs: Seattle, WA

My palate in Kenya has been a strange mixture of local and “lets see if this goes together” type of foods.

Githeri (Nyoyo): This is by far my favorite Kenyan dish. It consists of beans and corn being boiled together for hours. For those of you that know how I love my corn, you know I can’t go wrong! Give me a bowl of this stuff and a cup of chai and it’s a meal!

Matumbo: While learning Swahili, I was also learning the different names for foods. One fateful lunch I accidentally ordered this dish instead of the bowl of beans I had intended. I was horrified to receive a bowl of steaming cow intestine. Mmmm. One bite was enough, and I sent it back for beans.

Samaki (fish): For those of you that know me well, know that fish has never been a food of choice for me. I have sampled some of the finest Pacific Northwest Salmon and had homemade fried fish that I caught myself in a Minnesota Lake. I have tried it all, and never had a taste for it. Strangely enough what started out as an “I’ll eat it out of respect” turned into a genuine enjoyment of Lake Victoria’s sweet Tilapia. While visiting one of the Islands out in Lake Victoria, I found myself eating an entire fish for lunch and dinner.

Peanuts: My staple food. When you go to the supermarket at home and buy a bag of peanuts, you have no appreciation for what goes in to producing that nice, dried, edible nut. When a neighbor gave me a plastic bag of peanuts dug up from the ground I had no idea what to do with them. For your information they can be shelled, boiled and eaten immediately. They can also be dried, shelled, rinsed, then baked and eaten. Seems like a lot of work, but sometimes I have nothing better to do than sit on my porch and shell peanuts (that I must then rinse and bake before eating).

Kuku (chicken): Another food that you take for granted that you can just take it home and eat it; or just buy the pieces you want to eat. Here in Kenya, $2-3 will buy you an entire chicken. The catch is that you have to slaughter it, pluck it, chop it up, and then decide what you want to do with it. I would give anything to cut a chicken open and discover its body is entirely composed of white breast meat! You know how people in America pay almost double the price for a chicken that is “free-range Organic.” Well, they can take my stringy, lean, tiny breasted chicken and I will gladly take the genetically modified, steroidally enhanced, and juicy 2lb breasted chicken that has done nothing but sit in its pretty little cage. Sad, I know.

Meat: About 80 cents will buy me ¼ kilo of pure beef. Most Kenyans prefer the fatty pieces, so I can get a pretty nice cut for a good price. The only problem is that all the meat in Kenya tastes like a rotten, rancid, piece of gamey mystery meat. How on earth do we get our meat in America to taste like meat? Is this how meat really tasted before we regulated our cattle’s diet and pumped them with antibiotics? Anybody know how to turn a dead animal into a tasty meal?

Salad: The one thing Kenya does really well is garden fresh produce. The carrots are the sweetest carrots I have ever tasted. The green peppers and tomatoes have such powerful flavors that you hardly need more than olive oil and a little salt to call it a salad. Every person has their own chamba (garden) in which they grow what they need. It is fantastic. Now, if I could only get the people in my village to grow more than just kale, tomatoes, and onions.

Termites: Enjoying a warm beer I see a woman walk into the bar with a giant tub of “snacks.” These termites were essentially tasteless except for the salt on them. The bad part was how juicy their bodies were… like those gushers fruit snacks. The worst part was that some of them were not dead yet. It was awful having to watch the few live ones struggle to walk over the graveyard of dead ones in my plastic bag.