On New Year’s Eve, as people around the world celebrated with a kiss or a glass of champagne, some partygoers in Nairobi celebrated a different way: with 12 grapes, one for each month of the year, as the clock ticked down to midnight. This Mexican tradition, which dates back to the Spanish colonial period and is said to bring good luck, arrived in Nairobi on the crest of a cultural wave that is taking over Kenya’s trendiest corners. Mexican culture is everywhere: on restaurant menus, in dance clubs, on television.

Although the number of actual Mexicans in Nairobi is small — about 200 people, according to embassy estimates — and they don’t have a defined neighborhood, their influence on the city’s cultural life is hard to miss (and that’s not even including Lupita Nyong’o, the daughter of Kenyans who was born in Mexico City). Nairobians can drink tequila and dance to Mexican-Kenyan fusion music at Blend Lounge on a Saturday night, then worship with Mexican Catholic priests at Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish the next morning. Decent Mexican food is notoriously hard to find throughout Africa, but in Nairobi, hungry travelers don’t even have to leave the airport: at Java House, East Africa’s answer to Starbucks, they can feast on quesadillas, guacamole, and even huevos rancheros.

The first Mexicans came to Kenya in the late 40s, as Catholic missionaries. Here’s how their influence spread.