Klaroen in Kigali - Cooking Class at the Nyamirambo Women Center
The Nyamirambo Women's Center is the kind of place every city should have. It was founded in 2007 by eighteen women in one of Kigali's oldest neighborhoods. It offers free literacy, English, sewing, and computer classes, and runs walking tours and cooking classes that pay for the rest. The women here are the heart of the home — umutima wa murugo — and their cooperative carries that name. I had to see it for myself.
My guide who explained and translated everything.
The cooking class is 25,000 RWF, about $15. It started with a walk to the local shops. Aminatha, one of the founding members, led the way. She bargained easily and picked out produce that had come straight from the soil. We filled our bags with yams, cabbage, carrots, cassava, plantains, tomatoes, onions, garlic, ginger, peanut flour for the isombe, and dodo.
The cooking happened outside. Charcoal stoves at ground level, a long table with plastic basins in every color, everything organized. The first thing we did was wash. Three times, each vegetable. Then we started cutting.
The menu was beans, cabbage stewed with garlic and onions and tomatoes and carrots, yams in tomato sauce, a pumpkin stew, isombe, dodo, and rice. Isombe was new to me — cassava leaves cooked down with peanut flour until the sauce goes dark and thick. The dodo was something else. The leaves looked familiar. I was sure I had eaten them before, but I could not place where. It took months after the class before it landed. Dodo is klaroen. Same plant, same green — the one we grow up eating in Suriname. And we cook it almost the same way, with onions, tomatoes, garlic. I had flown to Kigali to find something I had been eating my whole life.
The class runs from nine until noon. Aminatha is the master of her kitchen. She moved between pots with the rhythm that only comes from having done this thousands of times. It looked like I was doing a lot, but of course she did all the hard work.
A French family joined us for the lunch. They had just come off the Mount Kigali hike, which you can combine with the class. Their children ate every vegetable on their plates and kept saying délicieuse. I have never seen kids enjoy greens like that.
The delicious meal from left to right: Sweet patatoes, cassava, beans, Irish patatoes, white rice, plantains in tomato sauce and cabbage with tomatoes and carrots.
I am grateful I got to do this. The first thing I will cook when I get home is klaroen. My brother is getting the cabbage.
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For info about the Nyamirambo Women Center and Cooking Class visit their website at http://www.nwc-umutima.org/ or you can contact them via WhatsApp at +250 782 111 860.
