Sukuma

In particular, she said, sukuma wiki, which in Swahili means “to stretch the week,” was a specialty she ate while she lived in East Africa for a while.

She keeps telling him to switch from fast food and meat to the old fashioned Kenya diet of beans, carrots and a vegetable called sukuma wiki that is similar to kale.

That might include nyama choma, which is grilled meat, and sukuma wiki, which is the Kenyan version of greens.

“I slept on a cot in her apartment. Instead of eating at fancy banquets with the president we were drinking tea and eating ugali and sukuma wiki. So there wasn’t a lot of luxury. Sometimes the lights would go out. “But you know, there was something more important than luxury on that first trip and that was a sense of being recognised, being seen.”

Among the finds for Warsame were collard greens, which he refers to by the Swahili word “sukuma.”