Spice of Africa

Let me share a little bit of my life story with you, and how my journey as an African food and beverage entrepreneur began. I was born in Kenya, and while an infant, our family moved from the capital city of Nairobi, to a rural village called Gachie. Our home was built on land inherited from my paternal grandfather. I learned to cook by age 10, by being in the kitchen when food was being prepared for family celebrations, dinner events, and guests. In the 80’s, cooking and cleaning in my culture was considered women’s work, so even though I had two brothers, the work befell me. A tomboy at that age, I was not pleased to be saddled with the daily tasks of cooking the family meals, washing dishes, and cleaning the red concrete floors of our home, of which my father had no respect. Being a self-proclaimed farmer, he would walk in barefoot from the kitchen garden behind our house and leave large dirty foot prints trailing throughout the red stone floors I had just finished washing on my hands and knees.
Three things that have really shaped me to be the person that I am today; my Kenyan Culture, Farmers Markets, and being a Small Business Owner. My first farmers market was in my village. My family was a modest middle-class family, and I learned to fend for myself early; by taking the produce I helped grow in our kitchen garden to sell at my local farmers market in Gachie. I sold potatoes, collard greens, tomatoes, onions, cabbage and spinach. This was how I earned my pocket money. I also sold old newspapers to the shop owners who used them to wrap goods for customers.
Fast forward 20 years, and I moved to Portland, Oregon in 1993, got married, had a beautiful daughter, Makayla, now 15, and started a food business- Spice of Africa, in 2008. I first started marketing my company by teaching Community Education Cooking Classes at the local college; Portland Community College. Kenya has 52 diverse tribes, and I belong to the Agikikuyu tribe, for short- Kikuyu. I love that I get to share my Kenyan culture when I teach cooking classes. I teach from the perspective of what it takes a rural family to get food on the table. The classes are hands-on cooking, and are filled with an educational aspect of history, facts, music and laughter- sometimes there’s dancing too!
In 10 years, Spice of Africa has grown very organically, and evolved into our own private cooking classes, catering for individuals and organizations, local farmers markets, wholesale food distribution, and we are now starting our very own kitchen at the soon-to-be open Morrison Market in South East Portland. We plan to use our kitchen to develop and produce our very popular Lentil Soup, Kenyan Tomato Chutney and Spiced Iced-Tea in this expanded kitchen. At Spice of Africa we have a saying… a motto really- Spice a Dish with Love and it Pleases every Palette!
Eat well my friends.

Asante.
Wambui