Welcome to 25 for 25 my project to watch and eat my way around the world in 2025 with 25 movies from 25 countries matched with 25 country themed dinners. Today’s entry is Kenya but you can see the full Masterlist to watch and cook along with me.
Country: Kenya
Movie: Rafiki [Friend]
Director: Wanuri Kahiu
Year: 2018
The Elevator Pitch: Kena is a young woman living in Nairobi whose father John owns a small store and is running for the a local election. Her father’s political rival, Mr.Okemi, has a beautiful daughter, Ziki, who intrigues Kena. Their star crossed friendship slowly drifts to something more despite homosexuality being illegal in Kenya.
How Was the Movie?: Neither us particularly cared for this movie. It’s extremely obvious that it is based off a short story because while the events of the story make sense and it’s shot very interestingly, neither of the characters has any particular interiority to them. They felt like wooden pieces being moved around on a board instead of actual characters.
It was practically impossible for me not to compare this to And Then We Dancedwhich was by far a a better movie in every dimension. Danced made me feel so much aching and interest for the main character especially. This fell well short of that. While there is plenty to like about it for being ground breaking and there’s a few moments of true interest, it never really says very much and I don’t even particularly understand why these characters like each other which feels…like it should be important to the movie. The editing is especially rough and several time we thought the file was broken :/
I still think the film is important but because it cannot even be shown in Kenya I think this will mostly be remembered as a “first gay film” and not the most important one. I don’t feel like I could glean that much about Kenyan religion or culture because the movie just isn’t long enough to make any point other than that those forces exist and neither character seems interested in articulating them either that the film just sort of ends and you’re left going “yep that’s a film.” Maybe I came in expecting too much but the hyper simplistic story and characters really made me feel like the film needed at least another 30 minutes.
What was for Dinner?:
I decided to make a Kenyan Style Chicken Stew for dinner. There are red chilies in there, I promise. It was pretty standard fare with a slightly different spice mix than I normally would use but it’s hard to go wrong with a delicious chicken stew. Normally Kenyan meals would be served with ugali but I made the hard call not to spend 11 euros on a tiny bag of white maize to make it because I already know I’m not a huge fan of ugali (that entire family of textures isn’t my favorite, I don’t like mochi or fufu or even polenta cakes – it’s that smooth and bouncy texture I don’t like). Plus I’ve had ugali a couple dozen times so I’m forgiving myself.
For dessert I made something I had never heard or seen before, Mkate wa Sinia which is a kind of spiced coconut and rice flour cake. The directions are for an open flame so when I put this in the oven I was extremely sure it would not become a cake. It was a full on liquid with little bits in it but to my surprise, this actually turned into a kind of soft cake-like thing. I think this would have been helped by a jam or cream but it wasn’t unpleasant. It’s spiced with cardamom and cinnamon so you could barely taste the coconut. The texture is a little chewy like a fudgey brownie or a soft lemon bar. I made two tiny cakes and it took us 4 days to eat 4 “slices” so it wasn’t exactly the best thing we’d ever eaten but it was alright.
That’s it for Kenya, see you next in Georgia!