When I first wrote a travel journal I was 9 traveling in Israel with my family. Upon the journal’s inaugural reading, after we returned home, it became evident that I had meticulously documented every single meal we ate, for better or for worse. I have always loved food. I’ve been experimenting in the kitchen since I was nine years old. In thinking about what to document in this blog, I purposely left out food because I didn’t want a repeat of my first few journals. I also thought there wouldn’t be much to say to this end, the food would probably be redundant and bland, I thought. Besides being a pick pocket victim, food was my second biggest fear when we were embarking on this trip. In fact, I was so concerned that I imported five packets of powdered cheese from the mac & cheese box and three cans of tuna (they do have tuna here, it’s not Chicken of the Sea though). Nicole and I have both come to realize Ugandans are not the foodie sort. Spicy food, heavily salty food, especially sweet food, and just plain ole’ variety are all not offered on the Ugandan a la carte menu, but they do love to eat and everyone eats well. The land is green and fertile. The Ugandan takes pride in her land and will always remind you that they never use fertilizer.
I’ve already noted the avacodo in Moa that was rich and smooth like butter, but here are a few other things that keep us full at the end of the day. So… what are we eating?
Glad you asked! I was finally invited out for dinner last night. I am back Up Country for a conference with the Magistrates/judicial people (Monday) and the Police (Tuesday) this week. After finishing with the magistrates, my executive director invited me and a few others to her brother’s house in the village of Lira—note that the village is not in the main “town area.” After some incredibly, Kampala-esque bumpy roads (jokes about sea life and tourists confusing potholes with lakes were made), we arrived at a small home with a welcoming campfire/bonfire/what-what outside. The typical plastic lawn chairs were set up nearby and we had a seat to await our tea.
Tea is a big deal here. I’m not sure if it is a British thing or if it was around before the colonization of the area. Either way, the Ugandan takes tea at all times in the day in all forms and colors: black, sweet, with hot-hot milk, with loose tea leaves, in tea bags, etc. I have grown to love the hot milk in my tea, it goes down so easy, and you can sip on it all day long.
After tea it was time for an early Thanksgiving, of sorts. The food came out like it was a battalion about to hold ground against the oncoming rebel forces. Cassava, maize, peas (in about three different forms, the best with ground nuts, aka peanuts—they do come from the ground), rice, greens in a mashed oily fashion, beef, sweet potatoes, millet. The last one is a purple-brown dough-like food that is best served by scrapping it onto the plate since it very sticky, it made me think of a mullet so I explained to my dining counterparts what a mullet is without mentioning a Bruins fan. As for the millet, I won’t miss it.
Not only was I a hit with my now-trusty-headlamp, but tending the fire really excited my company. Just like the bonfires we are used to, Ugandan elders will teach and tell stories, nightly, to the children while sitting around their fires.
I took 3.4 servings of food and I’m still trying to digest it all. Needless to say I made the hosts very happy with my eating efforts. It was a typical Ugandan meal which means we washed our hands then ate with our hands. I joked about the fact that my mother would yell at me if she saw me eating like that. And we all had a good laugh, sorry mom.
Home Cookin’
In the house we have managed to cook up a few good meals. We have bought 15 tomatoes for about $2 and made a fresh tomato sauce. The pasta here isn’t that great though, it gets very startchy and slimy, but it is just fine with our tomato sauce. We also made a chicken soup that lasted for many tasty meals. Chapati is a staple starch here. As you may remember, we made it with our Mama in Moa, but here in our Kampala Kitchen we pimp’d out the chapatti with the aid of Harriet and Presca. We threw in some onion and carrot and then, like an omelet threw in sauce, cheese, and veggies to make a chapatti folded pizza, or a calzone, or a big pizza taco (soft, of course). We also found some vanilla extract and baking soda and are regularly making chocolate chip cookies that are most amazing. The chips are chopped up milk chocolate bars.
A real Chapati Pah-ti
Office Delights
The local food occurs at our respective works. My work orders from the same place every day. The option is fresh fish, dry fish, beef, or chicken. Sometimes I opt for the beans. It comes with some combination of matoke, rice, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, bitter greens, or posho (a sticky corn/rice sort of thing). Most everyone orders the fresh fish, it’s the safest bet. Each portion is either the head third, the middle thick part, or the end part, all bones in. I have perfected the method of taking the skin off with utensils, and deboning with minimal damage to the roof of my mouth from stray bones. My colleagues, however, will sometimes eat with their fingers and I never really end up seeing how the fish is eaten, except that it has disappeared into their respective bellies the moment I turn away. The beef is … stringy and sort of tough, but I will get it occasionally. It is served in two small chunks with the bone in. I only ordered the chicken once and it was a meager thin thigh-leg and quite tough. Free range, of course. I think it is probably fine, but I’m a bit skeptical on this one.
Nicole has similar choices for lunch, with the enhancement of pees and chapatti. There is a man from a local food establishment who comes around to take orders. After the meal, the same man comes back around to retrieve his Tupperware and collect his money. When she’s out in the field, when food is even an option, she will sometimes get the chicken on a stick. More on that further down.
Out on the Town
When the working day is done, we are consistently finding some decent to solid food going out. After my Yom Kippur fast, we visited an Italian restaurant called Mediteraneo that gets most of their dairy from Nairobi.
Nicole’s Note: Cheese is very rare and it became a huge craving after two and half weeks of traveling through East Africa. Fortunately, some of the supermarkets carry cheese albeit sometimes it looks as though it has melted and solidified more than three times over. We often opine why there are not more cheese and milk factories here, there are cows everywhere. I think the reason is that all the cows we see are owned by people and not collected to produce in the factory setting.
Sorry for the interruption, where was I? Ahh, yes, Meditaraneo. They had a fantastic chocolate moose that we have already reprised. We also found a Korean BBQ place that has insanely huge portions. We ordered a dumpling and kimchi something-or-other that fed us dinner and lunch the next day. The added bonus of Korean BBQ in Kampala is that the place has karaoke (albeit the program buttons are in Korean) that we will visit for someone’s birthday real soon. Let’s just hope we figure out the search functionality and don’t end up with Korea’s top 40 blaring at us wordlessly all night.
The Indian food is renown here, South Indian, to be exact. The complementary sauces which accompany snacks to start the meal are different than what we are used to in the States, but delicious nonetheless. We have yet to patronize all the Indian restaurants, but we intend to, and crown the king. A small joint, the type you would typically encounter on a side street in Manhattan, called Masala Chaat House is the frontrunner. They have an impressive collection of bootlegged Bollywood movies for sale on a shelf that lines one side of the place.
Another favorite is Lebanese Tuesdays with the other volunteers. Found in the third floor food court of the great muzungu mall in downtown Kampala, Garden City, lies the best hummus in town. Upon finding a table in the food court we are immediately surrounded by representatives from each of the six cuisine options, two of which are Chinese. Our group always settles on the Lebeneze and it never disappoints. The best part about eating in a mall like this, is that if they don’t have what you ordered, they run down to the grocery store and buy it, then sell it to you with a surcharge.
Did I forget to mention the crocodile? An Australian place called The Lawns serves up healthy portions of game meat, which is stupendous. I wouldn’t recommend the vegetarian options there.
Is this thing reading like Timeout Kampala, yet?
It Grows from the Ground
On the local side, ground nuts, aka peanuts, are a big deal here. They are plentiful and cheap. After boiling them with some salt water they open with a simple pinch of the shell and make for a great snack with beer or can be transformed into huge quantities of peanut butter. Peanuts > beer, a perfect segue. There are about five main brands of beer, all are basically pilsner in nature except for one which does a version of a stout which is actually pretty good. Guinness in the bottle is common almost anywhere, so Nicole is happy, but it doesn’t taste like Guinness.
Walking home from work, I pass by women who sit by charcoal grills with what to American eyes looks like corn. It even smells similar to corn. The other day I bought some ears still in their husks and brought it home. Lois, the landlady, was thrilled we bought maize. I thought it was just a different name for corn, until I peeled the husk and saw it was too white to be corn.
Up country is apparently where it’s at for purchasing food. The Ugandans lucky enough to frequently travel up there will come home with all sorts of fresh, cheap food: ground nuts, cassava, oranges, tangerines, bananas, milk, sim sim oil, bags of onions, what-what (“what-what is basically the Ugandan yada yada, or et cetera). There are no service areas with McDonald’s, Starbucks, Subarro, and Aunt Annie’s pretzels. Instead, there are certain corners or towns that the road bisects where people in blue vests rush a car as it pulls over. They have for sale beef on a stick, grilled maize, grilled cassava, oranges, passion fruits, Fanta, and water. These merchants will continue to run up to the car the longer it stays idle despite the fact that four of every item is already represented at the site.
Another form of African Commerce
Of course, I miss my deli sandwiches, pickles, olives, and Mexican food (though we did find Mexican cuisine, the tortilla chips were baked pita chips). Plus, the food situation is not as exciting as some of the other things we have been up to. Wait just a moment, I do have a story (for those who persevered this far in the post). I recently was able to make an awkward moment in Ugandan foodie history. On the first trip I took up country, I was told to organize a packed lunch for 20 people. Given the particulars of the early departure and the fact that the food would be in the car for a few hours before eating, I ordered sandwiches from a Western-style café, a muzungus hangout, if you will. Chicken with mayo, tuna with mayo, ham and cheese, and vegetable were the types I ordered. Much later in the day, after our community meeting was finished, we found a place to comfortably eat our lunch. As the lunch procurer, I handed out the orders. Some participants looked at me funny when I presented them with their options. I was too hungry myself to notice how people enjoyed their meal. But now I wonder what they expected to have for lunch that would have survived in the car all day? Certainly not fish.
The next day I brought up the lunch situation to one of the participants, Noah, and asked how he enjoyed the other day’s sandwiches. He said he really liked it and wanted to know how to make one at home, he had the chicken. I told him he was asking the right guy. I gave him a good lesson on sandwich art and he was very excited to try it at home. He also said that some of the other participants were not that thrilled about the options. How could someone not like a sandwich? Especially since it was near 4pm when we finally ate our lunch.
A special message to the parents: fear not of our shriveling up and disappearance due to lack of food while in Africa. With all the potatoes, rice, maize, cassava, fruits, vegetables, and all other local sustenance, we are on pace to come home “fatter” than when we left, and from a Ugandan there is no higher compliment.
