I lived in Kenya for 6 months during college – part of my junior year abroad. I had never been so far from everything I know. I remember my first night out on a homestay in an agricultural district. More stars than I had ever seen in a single night sky. I remember the first morning I woke up there: the culture, the language, the building style of the housing compounds, starting my day bathing from a small tub of hot water each morning, the smell of morning cooking fires – it was all so incredibly different from the world as I had known it. Those six months were extraordinarily challenging – being so alone, so far from home, and so deeply immersed in another country the way that short travelling trips could never emulate. Even though I shot over 40 years of film in my time there, I rarely (never?) go back to look at those photographs. I think I prefer to remember my time there through the not always entirely “reliable”, but emotionally resonant lens of memory. And these days, I’m so awake in my current life, I don’t get lost in remembering Kenya very often. When Jambo Cafe opened in Santa Fe a few years ago, I knew I had the rare opportunity to remember Kenya again. Our memories are so deeply rooted and provoked by all the senses – not just the look of a distant landscape, or the sound of a foreign tongue, but the smell of those morning fires, the taste of Ugali for every evening meal.

Ugali s a staple of Kenyan cooking. It’s a maize cornmeal cooked into dough like consistency, generally eaten by rounding a ball up in one hand and using it to absorb and spoon up stews of vegetables and greens. I’ve tried making it a few times here in the states and was never able to reproduce the right smell, consistency or taste.

At Jambo Cafe, chef/owner Ahmed Obo makes far more elaborate and original specialties than Ugali. But the experience of tasting it again was a potent little piece of time and space travel, for which I’m humbly grateful. Chef Obo beams with the friendly warmth and ease of being that I remember from Kenya. I was totally surprised to see a Kenyan restaurant open in Santa Fe, and thrilled to see it doing so well. If you haven’t been to Kenya, go to Jambo Cafe, and you can experience just a small taste of it for yourself.