Jamming With Kampi Kitchen

Written by Jessica Jensen from Kampi Kitchen

Photography by Sanaa Mughal

Kampi Kitchen lives by our Company Principles: It’s Fresh! It’s Local! It’s Homemade! We are based outside Nakuru, in fact, at Kampi Ya Moto. People often ask where our factory is and are sometimes surprised when we tell them everything is cooked in our home kitchen. Inspired by my Norwegian Mother-in-law, who came to Kenya when she was 13 years old, and who had lived through a war and a recession, I learned to use the things in my kitchen cupboard and launched into making preservative and pickles. I started out as a stay-at-home mum and housewife in Kitale, but needed a bit of my own pocket money, so made batches of marmalade for sale to friends and family and the local club.

Things mushroomed quite a bit when we moved to Nakuru from Kitale and I was asked to supply marmalades, jams and pickles to a roadside vegetable shop using many of my Mother-in-law’s recipes, which we have modified and changed over the years to suit the ingredients we have available. Our first cook was not able to read, but she had a great talent for cooking and remembering, and passed her skills onto her sister who succeeded her in the kitchen. We are now a team of four: myself, shopping, purchasing, planning and general management, and three ladies constantly slicing, dicing, stirring and testing to get it ‘just right’ and who put their passion and joy into every batch. We have worked together for many years and are linked through close family connections. Their health and welfare, and that of their families is a huge part of the opportunity for economic empowerment that Kampi Kitchen brings.

Our products are made from locally grown fruit and vegetables and we strongly support this home market. It is very heartening and gives me great pleasure when neighbouring farmers ring and offer us some of their produce for sale: lemons, oranges, tomatoes, gooseberries, tree tomatoes etc. I have an interesting contact list on my mobile phone: Muthai Tomato, David Gooseberry, Ngugi Strawberry, Susan Matunda, Daniel Fruity to mention a few. I wonder what name they give to me in their phone book – Mama Mboga or Mama Mango perhaps?

Sourcing our ingredients has taken me on some adventures over the years, through ‘downtown’ Nakuru looking for mustard seeds and spices in the Indian spice shops, fruit and vegetables in the markets and roadside wheelbarrows, and picking from friends gardens.

One of Kampi Kitchen’s goals is to be able to offer practical advice to the producers, working towards more organic farming techniques in order to create a healthier and better yield and I think the farmers are becoming more aware of the dangers of using chemicals on their produce, and the health hazard that this is becoming to their family’s wellbeing.

All our products are free of preservatives and additives, even sterilizing our jars the old fashion way, not using chemicals. We also use seasonal fruit and vegetables, which means our product list can vary throughout the year.

It has been exciting launching our new product – Dried Fruit, a line which seems so popular we can hardly keep up with the demand. Now with Christmas coming up, we are in top gear preparing for all the Christmas Craft Fairs, where we sell our full range of jams, marmalades, pickles, relishes, mustard and harissa.