Not long ago, I had a 25-year-old Kenyan housemate. After he completed his Master’s degree in IT at University of Cincinnati, I got to be his American “mom” while he got some work experience on a student visa. My young friend proved a great role model in healthy eating. Shunning the standard American diet of processed and fast foods, my housemate took time daily to prepare beautiful meals from whole, fresh ingredients.
The tug between traditional and modernized ways of living in Kenya has led to changes in diet. In Kenya, Hannington told me, most young people gravitate toward the city for a modern lifestyle and better paying jobs. Expensive meat is considered a status symbol. Those who eat the traditional foods - beans and vegetables - are judged as being backwards or poor. In his home village in Kenya, his parents run a mom-and-pop business. (It is the same village that was home to Barack Obama’s father.) They are neither backwards nor poor. While Hannington’s family embraces technology and modernization, they stay healthy by eating local, chemical-free food. His family has chickens, a cow for milk, and his mother tends various orchards and gardens. I was jealous to hear of the family’s 1000 tree papaya orchard!
Hannington is the third of six children, and the third to achieve a graduate degree. He held to healthy eating while here in the US. His meals always looked colorful and balanced - whole foods, freshly prepared. Organic wherever possible. His staple protein was a pot of dry beans prepared from scratch, soaked overnight and then seasoned well. Starch was a central part of the diet: yams, or cassava, or a thick cornmeal porridge called ugali, baked plantains, or a staple frybread called chapatis. Occasionally he’d dip out a bowl of the dried minnow sized fish from a mesh bag his mother sent and would soak them overnight and then dry-fry a pan of the traditional omena. He told me that many Kenyans dislike the strong fishy flavor, but for him, it was the taste of home, as his father had been a fisherman before going into business.
A staple of Hannington’s diet was fresh greens, and he cooked up a big pot every week. It was a mix of anything in season: kale, collards, spinach, sweet potato leaves, beet greens, nightshade (a familiar green from home.) Hannington did not miss a day of cooked greens. Being used to the fresh fruits and veggies grown by his own family, my friend was thrilled when I introduced him to the weeds growing in my own yard. He happily incorporated stinging nettle, lambs’ quarter, amaranth into his greens pots. He carried large harvests of nettles to his sister and brother who lived in Indiana, and even brought home some seeds to grow in Kenya. He said it made him happy to eat something growing right outside the back door.
Now Hannington is back home, working for the moment in the family business. His dream is to open a smoothie shop and sell healthful fresh juices and smoothies in a Kenyan college town. And I treasure my Kenyan-flavored locavore perspective. Thanks Hannington!
Karen Arnett, local Mt. Healthy gardener and weed eater
