The Njahi Wars: Behind Kenya's Controversial Black Bean | Hacker News Reader

The Njahi Wars: Behind Kenya's Controversial Black Bean

seriouseats.com

34 pointsThevet17 comments

Now I want some. Maybe this was a really, really subtle and clever way to get an extremely white (not especially woke) dude in Austin, Texas, USA to go buy some njahi beans, but if so, I'm just gonna say it worked, and I want to buy some (but have no idea where in this town I would find it).

One things that surprised me in the article is that the author uses the word dhania for cilantro.

dhania is what cilantro is called in Hindi and maybe in other Indian languages. Is that what is called in other languages/countries also, if so am curious which ones..

The British brought a lot of people from India into their colonies in Africa and elsewhere : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indians_in_Kenya#Kenya_Colony and it's not implausible that this would be an origin for the term.

Prior to the brits, there was trade along the East African coast; past the Middle East, all the way to India. The main language along the coast became a fusion of Arabic, Indian and Bantu languages. Swahili adopts Arabic arithmetic & language structures e.g 15 is said as ten and five, 7 is Saba. A minister is wazir etc.

Many Old Bantu words such as mti for tree are in Swahili. similarly sounding words are used in languages from west Africa to South Africa (muti, miti).

From India, we have Pilau, chapati, dhania...

http://www.rahmahmuslimhomeschool.co.uk/index/wp-content/upl...

http://www.languagesgulper.com/eng/Bantu.html

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Swahili_terms_deri...

There are lots of Hindi and Arabic words in Swahili! I'm more familiar with the Arabic ones, but a few from Hindi off the top of my head are: pesa (money), embe (mango), and of course chapati. :)

If we weren't all properly primed (Florida Effect) by all the hyper sensualized media pollution, this would be nice read.

As kids, my parents fed us black beans with sugar sprinkled on it for breakfast. They called it "bush cereal". Stuff was great!

I'm a bit interested in trying this bean now. Since getting an instant pot and discovering rancho gordo I've learned that different varieties of dry beans completely change a meal.

Interesting read. I like rice and beans, but I go absolutely crazy with the seasoning. In that sense, the bean being bland may be no trouble for me!

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