The dynamite blasts hadn’t faded yet. The labourers crouched over boundless railway tracks, as the rhythms of chisels and hammers pistoned over steel baseplates. Dense mangrove swamps had obstructed the last sunset, but they were nearly at the end. The end of five years of relentless labour on foreign soil; the weight of ‘opening up’ East Africa —the Kenya-Uganda Railway.
Indian labourers had embraced death while building the railtracks—malaria and dysentery had killed hundreds, tsetse flies had wreaked havoc through the ‘sleeping sickness’, while harrowing heat, exhaustion, and cumbersome living conditions in tents had proved to be life-threatening.
And with these labourers came their culinary expertise, especially the Indian bread ‘Chapati’ that would soon enter East African cuisine in its own cross-continental fusion.
Indigenous African labourers balked at this colonial project with scorn and hostility, fearing intrusion on their land. In desperate need of a reliable workforce at subsidised costs, the British turned their heads overseas to importing indentured labour from India. Armed with hammers and pickaxes, cheap Indian labourers started arriving in steamships at the Mombasa port. After the railway construction, almost 6700 of these coolies decided to permanently put down roots in Kenya, and sprinted right into being traders, merchants and shopkeepers. These new settlers started integrating their languages, cultural traditions, and most importantly, chapatis, into the East African landscape.
A merchant from Kutch, Allidina Visram, had become the sole food supplier to the Indian workers on that line during the railway construction. After 1901, he pulled strings and expanded his gastronomic enterprises with dozens of newfound food stalls and trading posts across Kenya. And all those shops served one dish for sure — chapati.
He even employed African workers to run these food stalls, and often paid them in barter with ingredients like sugar, flour and cooking oil. And from then on, slowly and inevitably, chapati hit the interiors of East African households like an epidemic. And decades later, chapati is still a quintessential East African signature delicacy.
Chapati is a dry-cooked unleavened flat bread made from whole wheat flour, salt and water, arguably of Indian origin. Thin, flattened chapati dough is heated on a hot iron griddle (not fried), and then placed directly over an open flame where they puff up. But the Africans decided to give it a small twist.
“We mix wheat flour with water, and knead the dough until the texture feels moderately soft but thickened. Then we make small doughs out of the big one, and flatten them with the rolling pin”, Dyphnah from Kenya explains, adding charcoal to the meko (traditional cooking stove), ‘then we fry them in cooking oil, pre-heated on a flat cast iron pan. And your chapati is ready!’ Frying makes it different from the Indian Chapati.
The bread resembles ‘paratha’ yet the East African chapati is softer, much softer and more pliable than the crispiness of parathas, yet very close. In Kenya, they eat it with Sukuma Waki Stew or Githeri – a mix of boiled maize kernels and beans, savouring the natural sweetness of corn with beans’ creaminess.
In Tanzania chapati is paired with hot Chai (tea) for breakfast, and in Uganda, the chapati dish is called Rolex – an egg omelet with cooked vegetables wrapped in chapati, like a Chapati Roll. Lightly sauteed vegetables like sliced tomatoes, onions, cabbage, and green peppers fill the wrap, bringing a slightly sweet note to this soft, thin Ugandan-style chapati.
In the global networks of the silk and ocean routes, ancient and pre-colonial trade connections had been a mobile vehicle of cultural diaspora between the Mediterranean, Asia and the Indian Ocean, but only around 1901, right after the railway construction, suddenly Indian shops sprang up at every significant station with tantalising smells of Masala Chai, Samosa, Pakora, Pulao, and Biriyani all around.
Like all cross-cultural transformations, this ‘foreign’ Indian palate began to disintegrate into African flavours and regional resources, and created fusions. The East African ‘Samosa’ (or Sambusa in Swahili) became a straight win with a stuffing of green gram (mung beans) or minced meat inside the fried pastry. In India, the stuffing often has potatoes or vegetables.
The Indian ‘Pakora’ took the name of ‘Bhajia’ served with ukwaji, a tamarind dipping sauce meant to be savoury, sour and spicy hot.
‘Pulao’ became ‘Pilao’, drawing references from Persian influences. While the Indian ‘Pulao’ is cooked with whole spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and star anise, the East African ‘Pilau’ allows for much earthier and stronger spices like cumin, turmeric, and black pepper, making the dish more spice-infused and heavier on the stomach.
There are even uncanny similarities in base-cooking methods between the Indian and the East African ways. In Kenya, curry gravies are made by sautéing red onions and tomatoes in oil, similar to Indian dishes like Egg Curry, but without the heavy dose of spices. In East African cuisine, spices are minimalised or used in spares.
Alongside migration, through sea trade, spices like cumin, cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon, and cloves made headway from India and the Middle East. Before trade, the East African self-grown diet preferences had more of sorghum, fonio, lentils, barley millet, and staple crops like maize, cassava, bananas, and sweet potatoes. Rice later entered the marketplace, and never left.
Neither did the chapati, which may have been adopted from India, but became East African through trade, migration, and a bit of oil. And remained so.
