🇰🇪 Nairobi: Feeding Kenya's poor l Featured Documentaries

nairobi is my city well perhaps not exactly i was born here and so were my parents but i've spent most of my life living overseas i've been here now for less than a year but the city has really grown on me one of the most interesting things about nairobi is its diversity there are more than 42 different ethnic communities living here from all over kenya and with them they all bring unique dishes traditional foods and flavors with all african cities the divide between rich and poor is extreme and nairobi is certainly no exception the well-off may complain about rocketing prices on the menus of their favorite nairobi restaurants but the global food crisis has far more serious implications for the poor judith mango's customers may not have much money but at least they have jobs she prepares pack lunches at her home and then delivers them to office workers in the city so here in kenya when we mean traditional food most of the times we goes uh with the tribe so like this food it's originated from kikuyu people like me i'm a kissing lady so this is not our traditional food but many of my customers their kikuyu so i must make them what they like we had moved away from traditional foods because we had thought of them as a poor man's food so i'm trying to glamorize it tell people because of their relatively low cost judice's customers may have little alternative but to eat traditional food but kenya's best known tv chef susan kamau extols their virtues for other reasons traditional foods are much more nutritious so we've arrived at this amazing market where you can get so many varieties of fruit and vegetables yes this is rebecca here she's got a wonderful stall with a lot of different the herbs and vegetables this is kunde and it comes in a bunch like this she's told us it's five shillings a bunch and then there's something like this which is very beautiful this is very look at the difference here this is akunde small little leaves this is what we call kahurura which is a pumpkin leaf are you succeeding do you think in your effort to get people to come back to these very organic very natural fruits and vegetables i think so i think we are succeeding because especially now we have these people getting sick from eating the wrong things susan explained to me that the so-called rich man's diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure are starting to appear in a sector of kenyan society that can afford to eat at the fast food joint springing up around town but susan there are factors addressing the availability of some of these traditional foods that you're trying to encourage people to eat yes yes this stall here handles lots of different beans i was talking to the lady who who man this store and she says a tin like this which is a common being here is 170 shillings that's like a day's pay for many people so you might find people who will buy that tin take it home and cook it and eat it for the next five days because you can't afford to buy one every day we've just had host election violence just earlier on this year people have been displaced so there hasn't been farming there hasn't been planting the rainy season has just passed and so you will find a lot of these for example which we do grow locally have been imported for example this this type of bean has been imported from tanzania and these are beans that traditionally would be grown here in kenya yes exactly so bringing it in from outside makes it more expensive and you know it means that the person would be growing it at home isn't doing it which is a shame you will find that in the central area techniques of cooking it's quite boring maybe we do a lot of boiling and a lot of mashing in the western area you get a lot of the vegetables like we looked at but at the coastal area because of the influence from the arabs for example who brought in oil to us who brought in spices you will find things like garlic a lot of onions we've got red and white this is turmeric and that's ginger and this of course it's a coconut and i think in the course they use this for almost everything they cook and i think we're going to take a step outside and we'll visit this restaurant where they do a lot of coastal cooking so that should be fun so most of the people eating street food aren't going to markets like the one we've been to where are they getting their meals well they'll they will go to these people who set up shop on the side of the road they just put up their stones and buy the charcoal burn it and cook and we're going to oh here there's one just there something just similar to that just been telling me how she cooks for the people who move around here whether they're gardeners from the residential or the matato drivers maybe who want to stop for lunch susan can she actually show us some of the dishes and so instead of mixing the beans and the maize she separates in the bag is that because she's only got one part no i want to save everything yes so she's economizing by cooking several things in it and then also the wood and the wood yeah because she has to buy the wood so susan this is a typically coastal restaurant and just looking at this menu was like biryani pilau seems very indian we have actually known kenya had a lot of influence from the indian cuisine things like biryani things like chapati if you ask the guy on the street he'll think it's actually kenyan because he's grown up with it but there's an indian things that we we copied and we cannonized we want to order something is there anything you can suggest that is really nice would you like the biryani chicken why don't we try both now you mentioned some of the snacks being typically coastal yeah what should we try from that menu there's two types here there's for the coloring these are the leafy greens that over there are the beans in coconut so that's what we saw in the market right and in here there's a very nice homemade chili paste what sort of money are people looking at spending on food like this well i just had some rice fish and some vegetables that's 250 shillings which is about four dollars that's expensive for most most kenyan people um but you know just to show the difference you know we've got such a big range in nairobi from where we were at milliseconds where you're just paying 25 shillings to this 250 to carnival where it's 100 times more as the name suggests a visit to this world famous restaurant is all about eating meat it gained its reputation in a time before the phrase endangered species crept into our vocabularies back then you could admire the savannah's many majestic species of wildlife of an afternoon and then come here and eat them for dinner do not let this man pass you by as he carries with him the ingredients for mixing a delicious cocktail dawa is the swahili word for medicine i will say no more many kenyans i spoke to reckoned if the majority of the population could afford to eat meat all the time then that's what they do the maasai tribe is no exception 20 kilometers outside nairobi there's another unique restaurant called ole polis they specialize in kenya's most famous dish nyamachama is all about getting out of town running away from traffic coming to mass island for good meat and a feast for you guys our clandelle is a mix of professionals come to le polos because that's where you can get the best out of nama now let's talk about nyamachonga that's really why people come here that's where they go what exactly is it what is nyamachoma well meat meat meat etc it is done by people who have traditionally been doing it generation after generation so it comes out tasty and the goats are sourced within this local area we eat the natural trees zero plastics as you may have guessed yamatrama is really a kenyan style barbecue the simcoe tells me that his meat doesn't get fresher as he has a government vet a slaughterhouse and a butchery on the premises how important how vital how central is meat is a culture kenyans have gone mad i don't even think we produce enough meat to satisfy the demand of this country so you don't envision you don't see kenyans becoming vegetarians for example not in the near future foreign many suppliers of fresh produce to nairobi operate outside the formal sector over 75 percent of milk for instance is supplied by people like rachel and not big dairy companies apart from the produce of her own cow she distributes for other small farmers moving around 350 liters per day into the city rachel uses various forms of transport to get her milk to the city starting with vice licking it from her farm to the national road two connecting taxi rides then take it to 30 odd kilometers into town once rachel arrives she's met by rajab abdul her nubian cart puller they will then distribute the milk first by cart then by wheelbarrow through the winding streets of kibera one of africa's largest slums kibera was established in 1918 as a soldier settlement five kilometers from nairobi city centre plots were allotted to the nubian soldiers who were from sudan as a reward for service in britain's various wars since then it's been allowed to grow informally kibera is now a town of one million people with its own vibrant internal economy one of the most visible sectors of this is food supply whether through the ubiquitous street vendors or the more established hotels in these days of skyrocketing prices those who sell to the poor know best the thin line between profit and loss futura is of nubian descent her family has lived in kibera since its inception in 1992 she started up her first hotel in kibera don't be confused hotel is the kenyan word for cheap eating house people don't actually rent rooms here she now has a few branches around the slum all supplied from this kitchen 20 liters cooking oil i was buying at 11 20. now cooking oil i'm buying at 2 thousand four hundred that is double price and over now if you want to sell things so that you get profit you have to sell it at twenty shillings online and those people cannot manage to get even twenty shillings a day because as things goes high salaries are low what's up last year after the announcement of the presidential everything went as strange so many people lose their life lose their properties lose their work lose their businesses and if you don't have any other business you don't have anybody to help you don't know where to get money you can't get money what do you do you bet malaquin is rachel's biggest customer he buys 100 liters from her every day like many small businesses in kibera his was directly affected by the violence that erupted in kenya following elections at the end of 2007. he now has to boil his milk supply to make it last longer as his shop was ransacked and his fridge irreparably damaged however he's philosophical about the post-election anger before elections we were together there was no any hatred among our communities then after elections people are demanding change people want the government that help people that it gives people freedom which represent all communities in the country kikus have ruled this country to independent it was tribal people wanted to change a government that represents all the tribes well we're now on our way to kenya's great rift valley the country's breadbasket and there's an interesting quote in today's newspaper for an internally displaced person here in kenya that says when hunger comes calling as indeed it is on the verge of doing it will not sort out its victims on tribal lines passing these camps set up for internally displaced persons is a stark reminder that not only is africa living the same nightmare as the rest of the planet in terms of the escalating food crisis but it also has to contend with age-old problems like tribalism and xenophobia that are now proving disastrous to food security thomas mungari and his wife rose are representative of the many displaced farmers that are fearful of returning to their land thomas is afraid of going back to his land because things haven't calmed down yet instead he's rented a small plot so he can try and grow some food for his family to while tribalism has cast its shadow over their lives their story still offers hope it's a story of how individuals can see past group rivalries and bridge divides and is it possible that love can conquer all well i can't imagine it's the answer to all of kenya's problems but a little more of it around here might not go amiss well tribal divisions here in kenya are still healing but there's a lot of positivity around this song is by a very popular artist called eric wagner and it's about a kikuyu boy that's one of the main ethnic tribes who falls in love with a girl from a different community a luau girl it's about his journey to her ancestral home in western kenya to persuade her parents of his undying love it's interesting being a young kenyan at this time or young african um i think a lot of young people have a good idea of what they think is wrong with the leadership in africa or the the issues that continue to plague our development or lack thereof and so as a musician sort of feel an obligation to address these issues and to put a lot of people's sentiments into lyrics and music the post-election crisis a lot of people say it has everything to do with tribalism i think tribalism was maybe a spark that that got the fire going but there are deeper issues we can't talk about peace if people's access to the necessities of life have been curtailed i mean they can't be peace without food there can be peace without without sustenance that's something that continues to elude the debate that the politicians are currently engaging in an attempt by myself to talk about issues of tribalism i'm from the kikuyu tribe and i went out with a girl from the lua tribe um and my my family members who i thought were quite sort of um progressive said said to me oh it's it's nice that you brought her but my aunties were like make sure she's not the woman that you marry you know and so i wrote this song about this guy who falls in love the girl from another tribe and learns the language so that he can go and tell her parents that his love is true the song is trying to communicate a message of love of togetherness of unity have been known not to eat fish for some reason it's like we don't you know and i thought i didn't eat fish until i went to kisumu there's a way that fish is made with it it's a whole fish and i mean we don't know what we're missing we get called the the potato people by by other tribes because we eat a lot of potatoes if there's one thing that i wish would do more of is is be more adventurous without eating i think down at the coast the law swahili their culinary culture is big and i think we need to learn from them wow because we just tend to boil stuff you

Channel: Al Jazeera English

Views: 646,236

Rating: 4.6905923 out of 5

Keywords: arts and culture, Nairobi, post-election violence, cultural diversity, kenya, Al Jazeera English, al Jazeera, jazeera, street food, food, Africa, culture, kenya street food, kenyan street food, kenya food, nairobi kenya, street food kenya, al jazeera documentary, nairobi street food, kenya nairobi, street, street food nairobi, kenyan food, al jazeera kenya, kenya food street, african street food, كينيا نيروبي, travel, indian cuisine (cuisine), streetfood

Id: 0nodjFDRUXQ

Length: 23min 1sec (1381 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2016