Local Eating in Uganda and Zambia

Well friends, I’m back from my trip! What an adventure. I’ll have to post the pics later because all my photos are downloaded to my coworker’s laptop and I am taking a few days off of work to recover from jet lag.

I’ll be posting my culinary review over the next few days as time allows. This series will include: Kampala, Uganda; Kabwe and Soroti, Uganda; and Eating Nigerian and Filipino in Zambia.

Kampala, Uganda:

We arrived in Entebbe on Friday evening (Nov 6) and got to Beth and Davis’ house around midnight. Davis is our Eastern Africa Director and he and his wife Beth are originally from Kenya. Upon arrival they served us bananas and pineapple. Oh my word, it was almost as if I’d never had bananas or pineapple before! It is amazing how much sweeter and fragrant they are when they are locally grown and picked ripe. Even the texture was better – the pineapple didn’t have those hard little bits that cut your mouth, and the bananas were firm instead of mushy. And the even sweeter mini bananas? Pure heaven.

On Saturday we exchanged money and went to the local craft market for souvenirs and coffee. I was warned that although the coffee is good (and cheap – about $2.50 a pound), the best coffee is exported. This is the same thing I heard when I was in Honduras, which I think is really unfortunate. For dinner we went to a restaurant at a resort hotel overlooking Lake Victoria and ate freshly caught fish which was grilled whole and served with chips (that’s French fries to us Americans). While it was a bit disconcerting to have my dinner staring at me, the fish itself was flaky and incredibly tasty with just a drizzle of lemon juice.

On Sunday we attended services at an Anglican church and had pizza at a local mall afterward. The pizza was very good and tasted homemade, which is when I remembered that many of our long term volunteers and expats talk about how sweet everything tastes when they return to the States. I wonder if it’s because the U.S. puts HFCS in everything? This pizza was definitely not sweet, except for the pineapple, and definitely tomato-y and cheesy. Over tea that evening we talked about international food policies, and I talked about my blog and what I’m hoping to accomplish with it. That’s when Beth pulled out a tattered copy of More with Less that she had been given by a missionary friend. That sealed the deal, next I’m cooking through More with Less!

We said our goodbyes that evening as in the morning the three of us from U.S. and Canada would be continuing our journey to the partner evaluation in Kabwe, whereas Beth would be returning to their home in Kenya and Davis would be traveling to Tanzania to meet with our country consultant there. Beth and Davis warned against eating uncooked food, and preached the importance of washing hands (not just using hand sanitizer as, in their words, you kill the germs but eat the dirt), and advised us not to force ourselves to eat in the village but that it’s OK to have just a taste and tell them that you have already eaten, that as long as you show that you accept their food you don’t have to eat a large quantity. In fact when the visitors leave whatever is left will be eaten and surely not go to waste. Oh, and if we receive a live chicken as a gift we should graciously accept it and then when we go to another village, ask someone to take care of it for us.

As I went to sleep that night (with a satisfied tummy full of Kenyan tea and just a little more pineapple and banana), I relished the comfortable bed as I knew that we would soon be journeying to a part of Uganda that would not be as comfortable, a place with a brutal history of civil war and where we would spend countless hours evaluating one of our partners that is a small denomination making a difference in food security for communities struggling to reestablish themselves after spending 20 years in IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps.

Would I be able to handle the long hours and heat and emotional toll of hearing their stories? Would I have to eat goat when we visited the villages? What does goat taste like, anyway? I didn’t have long to ponder these questions, as sleep came quickly, the result of jet lag and late nights over tea.

A stock photo I happened to find of Davis in front of “Farming God’s Way” maize