So how is the food?

A lot of people have been asking me questions about the food in Kenya, so I'll start to answer them by telling a story. I've come to find out that Duncan's eating strategy is generally to invite himself to a friend's house, or simply show up there, around dinner time. Usually, this results in an invitation to stay for dinner...perfect! I've been tagging along with this, but on Saturday we got an actual invitation to go to dinner at Cornel's house.

Cornel just returned to Kenya with Duncan from a 3-week trip to the United States, and every time I saw him in the states he went on and on about how he missed traditional Kenyan food. For the first 17 years of his life, he ate the exact same meal twice a day, with the exception of a celebratory dinner on Christmas day. I showed up to his home on Saturday expecting to be served ugali and fish, and that's exactly what happened! I'll start at the beginning, though, so you can get an idea of what dinner at a Kenyan home is like. Without fail, you enter a house to a TV tuned to a Kenyan station, usually one showing Kenyan music videos or some kind of news program, usually in Swahili. In most cases, the husband and kids will welcome you into the home and the wife will call out a "Karibu!" from the kitchen, where she is generally at work cooking with at least one other woman, a neighbor or relative. After between 30 minutes to an hour of socializing while the wife cooks, food is brought into the main room in plates and bowls of various sizes. The wife comes around with a pitcher of water, a basin, and a towel, so that everyone can wash their hands (otherwise known as eating utensils). At Cornel's house, the staple of meals is ugali, a thick, very dense substance made from something like corn meal mixed extensively with water. It is the consistency of really thick, moist cornbread, and is served in a giant mound on a plate. Each person cuts off a section of ugali, rolls it into a ball with their hand, and eats it along with anything else that is available. Cornel's wife Irene cooked fish for us as well, so she brought out a bowl with two whole fish in it, cut into chunks and immersed in a kind of soup or broth. There were also bowls of typical Kenyan "greens" (something like spinach), stew with bits of beef in it, and a mixture of peas and carrots. This is a typical assortment of food, except that some people will serve rice instead of ugali. If there is no rice involved, you are expected to fill your bowl with a combination of all these things and eat it with your hands, sopping up the stew with ugali. It ends up being quite messy but also very satisfying! After dinner you are always served "chai," Kenyan tea made with equal parts milk and water, boiled together with a minimal amount of loose tea. Kenyans put 2 or 3 spoonfulls of sugar in each cup, and they drink chai every morning and at any kind of business meeting, so I have quickly developed a taste for it!

Apart from eating dinner at other people's houses, I will sometimes have lunch at the house, which usually consists of a PB&J or some rice and stew that Jane, a lady who works at the house, might make. On other days, I will go into Limuru with Duncan or one of the other guys and get some combination of stew, vegetables, potatoes, chapati (like tortillas), and chai. Most times I will also get a samosa or two, as they are definitely my favorite Kenyan food so far. A lunch like this will usually cost the equivalent of between 1 and 2 dollars. For breakfast, Duncan and I usually cook some scrambled eggs and eat them with toast and, of course, chai.

Luckily, I've found more food variety than I was initially expecting. In Nairobi there are all kinds of restaurants. Last friday I drove in with some friends to eat at a place called Diamond Plaza, where about 25 Indian restaurants make up a kind of food court. The moment you walk in, you are mobbed by crowds of waiters pushing menus in your face and screaming, but the food is amazing and it's all part of the experience! There is also a large facility close by called Brackenhurst. It's the headquarters of the International Mission Board, a Baptist organization, and it has a small cafe that serves good coffee and oddly excellent Mexican food!

In short, the food has been nothing to complain about. I have plenty to eat, and I've yet to find anything I simply can't take...praise God for that!