A Feast in Kisumu
Learning how to cook using unfamiliar crops. Part #5
Part #5: Making a difference with SANGO-Kenya
You can read the first chapters here: Chapter #1, Chapter #2, Chapter #3, Chapter #4.
Having new crops to grow brings a host of challenges. The obvious one is understanding how to plant, care, and harvest it. But then… another question. How do you use it, store it, and market it?
The SANGO-Kenya training tries to address these.
The new crops introduced are mostly leafy greens similar to spinach or kale, rich in nutritional value and hardy enough to survive the ravages of climate change. They are African Traditional vegetables.
To address the question of using them we have Tom. A chef who loves to cook loves to talk about cooking and to demonstrate his abilities.
Tom also cooks for us occasionally and is adamant about preparing about four times as much as we can eat every time he comes over.
We set up a training session where Tom will talk about the vegetables, how to prepare them for a meal, will cook them and prepare dishes from them, and, as a bonus… we get a feast for the farmers.
Tom takes his chef-ness quite seriously. He shows up dressed for the part with all the ingredients and dishes required.
The farmers assemble as they did for other training sessions, sitting around in plastic chairs under a large tree, waiting for the action to begin.
Showing up in their green group t-shirts there is no question of their pride of belonging.
I’m not sure if this is true, but I am picking up an air of skepticism. ‘What will I possibly learn from this dude?’ Or ‘For this, they brought me here? I’ve been cooking since I was seven.’
Tom starts laying out the various vegetables, and the dishes.
From his podium, he starts describing each. What is the best way to use them in cooking, and how to prepare them? I’m not getting most of it. Because he is talking in Luo, but I get the gist from his gestures and pointing.
The women remain skeptical and reserved. Observing coolly from their seats.
Tom describes the dishes he will prepare and the ingredients each will need and starts preparing them.
This requires a lot of chopping, peeling, and setting things up in piles to be ready for the next steps.
A slight whiff of interest is felt from the audience's direction. It’s as if suddenly they are saying ‘This I know all about. But I can do it better’.
One by one they approach starting to take over the process.
Within a few minutes, they have taken over. There is an army of women washing, chopping, peeling, and sorting, with an efficiency that has rarely been witnessed.
They are taking part in the project but more than anything else they are showing Tom, and each other, that they know their stuff.
Most of the dishes are prepared similarly. The vegetables are chopped, placed into a pot with some additional seasoning, and cooked (and cooked and cooked).
Peeking at us from one of the doorways is a little girl. She has malaria. She certainly looks the part. It is so much a part of daily life here.
In fact, one of the farmers we visited later works six hours a day going around her community and measuring the temperature of people who are complaining and suspecting malaria. She doesn’t offer any treatment but can provide a referral to a nearby clinic.
The next thing to be prepared is the Ugali. Now this is a subject everyone here is an expert at. Ugali is served at every meal. It is prepared from maize, sometimes sorghum. Made into a solid paste with hot water, shaped into an igloo-type dome, and is eaten either on its own or as a ‘spoon’ to scoop up other food in the meal.
Tom describes his process for making Ugali.
The farmers will have none of it. That isn’t how it is done. Never.
A few of them get up and declare they will be making the Ugali. Because it has to be properly prepared by people who understand these types of things. Three or four of them go aside and come back about twenty minutes later with a choice of two versions of Ugali. I guess even amongst themselves a consensus was not reached.
To go along with the vegetables, Tom also brought tiny fish which are collected in the nearby lake. They are called ‘Omena’ and they are usually a bycatch in the fishermen’s nets who are fishing for Tilapia fish which Lake Victoria is famous for. The Omena are commonly added to food for protein since they can’t afford meat or chicken.
These are used as-is, seasoned a bit, and cooked (and cooked) till readiness is declared.
We are almost ready for the feast. The dishes are mostly prepared and laid out on a table.
But first, of course, come the speeches. There is a talk about the importance of nutrition, about the program, and someone from the Ministry of Agriculture has something important to say as well.
This of course is a tactical mistake since everyone’s attention lies elsewhere. But, we manage to endure and the buffet is declared open.
I need to develop the skill of using Ugali as an eating utensil. There is an art to it, and everyone else has a lifetime of experience. I do this by imitating and some of the food actually makes it successfully into my mouth.
The trick is to form the Ugali into a lump with an indentation and use that like a scoop. There aren’t many pictures from those moments because I didn’t dare handle the cameras in the condition I was in. Camera warranties often do not cover Ugali.
This next part is really only my opinion. I know millions of Kenyans think otherwise. I could not distinguish one dish from the other. To my unsophisticated pallet, they were all completely overcooked greens. Not un-tasty. And I was hungry. But very bland. As was the Ugali, but it did add a different texture. And after a while, I liked using it as a scoop.
The fish were very fishy. Nuff said.
We finished the feast to the last drop wiping the remnants with what was left of the Ugali.
Despite their initial skepticism, I think the farmers enjoyed the whole ordeal.
Many of the farmers in the program didn’t eat vegetables before they joined the program because they were too expensive. Now they eat them all the time. And their health and the health of their children has improved. Fewer trips to the doctor and they report better health in general.
It struck me how easy we have it. My dinner preparation starts with checking what’s available in the fridge, getting the other ingredients from the cupboard, and turning on the stove, or the oven, or the microwave. Every component must be maintained here, including water, wood, and vegetables. There is no refrigeration so one starts fresh every time. The saying ‘from scratch’ is taken seriously here. We really have it easy.
To cook Tom used a portable stove fueled by charcoal. This isn’t what the farmers usually use for cooking. And charcoal isn’t readily available and needs to be either bought or prepared. The farmers traditionally cook on a wood-burning stove made of three large stones on which the pots are placed.
Part of the training included a program to build Jikos. These are mud and cement structures built into the floor of the kitchen. Their design makes them much more efficient in burning wood. Another addition that makes them even more efficient (by quite a lot) is an iron liner that provides structure and isolation.
Just before leaving Kisumu we were visiting one of the farmers who was deliberating out loud about whether she should spend the $3 on the liner and make a huge dent in her wood spending and cooking time or not. She wasn’t sure she could afford that.
The next day as I was flying via Dubai I was walking through the miles of duty-free shelves holding $120 tiny bottles of perfume and I was remembering her dilemma and was thinking of that amazing disparity. The lifesaving vs. the utterly useless.
Next. A morning at the lake. It sounds like a pastoral setting. Turns out a bit different than I imagined
In the meantime… if you want to learn a bit more about SANGO-Kenya. you can check it out here: https://sango-kenya.org/
…and you can see more of my photos here: https://www.rozinphotos.com/
