Kenya Travel and Diner With The Motikas

Finally—and praise be Kenya travel for this—I can eat with my hands, lick my fingers and do the the very “gross” things that led Anna to tattle on me in the third grade for “grossing out the girls” at the lunch table (That’s right Anna, I’m still not over it).

For once I can eat dinner without the shackling fear that my fork will miss my mouth and stab me in the eye (Trust me, I’m scatterbrained enough that this is my number one meal-related risk).

Since my Kenya travel began three days ago, one of my favorite parts of being here has been eating dinner with Cayus Motika’s family. As he refers to himself, Calvin Motika, my adopted brotha-brother from the otha’ colored mother—who rolled into my family a decade ago—is back to his home country till the end of the month and I’m along for the ride. He’s staying in Nairobi at his uncle’s house, where I’ve been graciously ushered into the Motika’s daily life.

Ugali: The Food You Will Not Be Able to Avoid Eating if you Travel to Kenya

The staple in Kenya is ugali, made from ground corn and water. “This is the stuff that fuels the Kenyan runners,” Cayus told me. The first night when his wife Winnie unveiled a plate of it, he said, “Here in Kenya if you go a few days without seeing that it means you are in big trouble and very hungry.”

If corn and water sounds like an utterly boring meal, cool your jets; there’s more. Ugali is served with a countless variety of greens, bean and meat mixes. It is flattened with the fingers and then used to pick up a delicious bite of one of the accompanying dishes.

Tonight our ugali was served with managu—black nightshade greens, Saku wiki—seasoned kale and matumbo—goat intestines with onions and peppers (seriously, it’s not bad [well, for the goats it’s the worst thing ever]). To drink we had maziwalala—sour fermented milk. The word for milk in Swahili maziwa and sleep is lala. So Maziwala literally means milk that has slept for a night. It’s wakes up pretty sour and chunky.

Swahili is full of awesome word combinations like this. Email, for example, is Barua Pepe, which means “flying letter.”

Tonight while we ate, everyone reminisced about the time when everyone was a Zimbabwe millionaire. Several years ago that country was hit with hyperinflation, causing people to need
to fill a bag with money to buy inexpensive things. Often instead of giving change, which would have been pointless given the currency circumstances, venders gave candy. Everyone was not only a millionaire at that time, but had pocket full of candy. If Donald Trump had been a young boy living in Zimbabwe at the time, he would have loved the crap out of that situation.