From Mexico with love and voila! maize becomes tortilla or burrito

A couple’s value-addition project is giving an exotic twist to maize.

We grew up knowing that maize could be eaten as ugali, porridge, full meal (githeri, muthokoi, nyoyo) and on the cob in boiled or roasted form. Period.

But two entrepreneurs, Elizabeth Jebiwot and husband Daniel Bischof, have introduced a novel way of expanding the horizons of the grain’s use in Kenya. Using Mexican food production techniques and recipes, they now offer consumers, under the Bdelo brand, a wider variety of healthy and tasty snacks and foods.

Dishes like tacos, burritos, enchiladas, nachos and chalupas, once the stuff of fiction novels, can now be found closer home.

Bdelo crisps are similar to our traditional snack, obtained from the crust after cooking ugali. The Kikuyu refer it to as mukuro, the Kalenjin moriot, the Luo odeyo and the Luhya amalondo.

Operating in a medium-size factory in Ngong town, Jebiwot explains that although starting up has not been easy, they are optimistic.

The value-addition project was borne out of a visit by Jebiwot to the USA in the early 1990s as a member of the International Youth Cultural Exchange Programme, then run by Mrs Tabitha Seii.

Among the events they took part in was a monthly potluck dinner where participants from different countries brought and shared cultural food. Jebiwot was fascinated by South American meals whose basic component, she noted, was maize.

“It inspired me. I thought we could do more with our abundance of maize and make our meals more exciting,” she recalls. “It was something like a calling.”

Jebiwot left Kenya after graduating from Kenyatta University in 1990. Even after settling in Switzerland (her husband’s homeland) and starting a family, she didn’t forget about her idea.

“I wanted to take my father’s dedication of growing maize to the next level. Every time we returned to Kenya and saw imported snacks like maize crisps in the supermarket, it renewed my push. It didn’t sound right that Kenyan farmers lacked markets because they lacked the advantage of value addition,” she recalls.

Jebiwot had studied management, focusing on international relations — in which she has a Master’s. She hoped to work with development organisations.

In Switzerland, she ended up working with General Motors Europe. She and her husband still dreamt of starting a value-addition factory.

In 2010, as fate would have it, she was commissioned to head one of their functions for the Africa and Middle East organisation based in Cape Town, a job she took up while her husband established and ran the factory.

It took four months to set up the factory. They brought technicians from Mexico to train staff. But it was going to be a long while; it took nine months — thanks to her husband’s Swiss perfection and persistence, and her brother Luka’s patience and trust — before they struck the required consistency for the tortilla dough.

The preparation methods recommended by the Mexicans had to be tweaked time and again before they could get the ratios right for Kenyans maize.

Nixtamalisation.

The wait, however, paid off. In 2012, their products were ready for sale. “To date, the factory is the first of its kind in the region, there are about two known others on the continent,” says Jebiwot.

The key process is nixtamalisation. When maize was first introduced into farming systems other than those used by traditional native Americans, it was generally welcomed with enthusiasm for its productivity. However, a widespread problem of malnutrition soon arose wherever maize was the staple food.

This was a mystery, since these type of malnutrition was not normally seen among the indigenous Americans, for whom maize was the principal staple food.

It was eventually discovered that the indigenous Americans had learned to soak maize in alkali-water — brewed out of ashes and lime (calcium oxide) since at least 1200-1500 BC.

This liberates the Vitamin B-niacin [80], the lack of which was the underlying cause of the condition known as pellagra. This alkali process is known by its Nahuatl (Aztec)-derived name: nixtamalisation.

Besides the lack of niacin, pellagra was also characterised by protein deficiency, owing to the inherent lack of two key amino acids in pre-modern maize, lysine and tryptophan.

Nixtamalisation was also found to increase the availability of lysine and tryptophan to some extent. More importantly, the indigenous Americans had learnt to balance their maize consumption with beans and other protein sources such as amaranth and chia, as well as meat and fish.

Preparation aside, marketing and distribution are the other hurdle.

“With a new product in the market, challenges are inevitable. Entry into the supermarket has been particularly difficult,” says Mr Bischof.

Except for Zuchinni and Chandarana Supermarkets, and several small mini markets that have been exceptionally supportive, it has been like pulling teeth with most of the big supermarkets.

“We are still trying to get into some supermarkets even after two years,” says Jebiwot. “You can spend hours in their offices just to be told to come some other day. They often promise to call back but they don’t. Comparably, foreign products seem to find their way onto their shelves more easily,” she adds.

The couple has spent about Sh45 million on equipment and running costs so far, but they are not fazed.

“The response from the market has been small but it is steadily growing. We have more and more people asking for our product, not just expatriates. We haven’t had profits but once we break even in marketing, things will get better.”

13 workers

The factory employs 13 workers, six on a temporary basis, and they are looking to shift to a larger space in Kiserian in the next few months. Among the things Jebiwot is most proud of is their attempts to empower local farmers (they get their maize from Karatina and Marakwet), who they pay a price slightly above the market rate.

“Bdelo is coined from the family name Bischof and Delo —Developing Local Opportunities,” explains Bischof. The couple established a non-profit organisation, Delo Foundation, to support education and community projects. The driving principle in the business is developing people and resources in a fair, ethical and ecologically sustainable manner.

From making tortillas alone, they now make and sell crisps and pre-cooked muthokoi. Jebiwot is excited about the muthokoi, whose health and taste potential when made into mukimo, she says, could be sold in restaurants in New York and Tokyo, among other global cities.

“The versatility of muthokoi is unmatched. One can make it as a salad, a full meal, a starter, dessert or snack.”

One of the regular snacks in her own family is what they have christened chocomo – a chocolate bar melted over muthokoi with a little milk. Bdelo is currently consolidating recipes to be offered later in the year, on how to serve food with Kenyan taste and twist.

Bdelo Limited products are stocked in Zucchini, Karen Provision Store, Nakumatt and Chandarana supermarkets.