Steve, I also enjoy baked beans occasionally, and use them as a cooking ingredient - they go well added to a beef stew. However (to drift back to the context of this thread) kidney, runner, broad & soy beans, and chick peas, are all available in this country, variously dried, canned or fresh.
Leeneia, what part of Africa does your friend come from? I gather beans are an important part of the diet in East Africa, if she's from there then she'd (I guess) be following the pattern of her own upbringing.