From Picky Eater to Carb Junkie

I have had a couple of people ask me about the food in Uganda and what I eat so here is a description. For breakfast, someone brings Tea and a snack to our office around ten. Usually the snack is something like fried dough, chapatti, or roasted groundnuts. At one in the afternoon our lunch is brought to us. It consists of rice, beans, groundnut sauce, what I think is boiled kale, and either posho or matoke. Posho is kind of like grits only so thick that it is almost in cake form. It has no flavor and I usually smother in g-nut sauce. Matoke is a staple here. It is like a banana only it is not sweet and doesn’t really have any flavor. It is mashed together and steamed in its leaves. It is extremely dense and I dip it in g-nut sauce in order to eat it. For dinner we usually have a meal that we make at home consisting of a rice dish or a pasta dish. Yes! I am in a carb coma almost every day!

I do not eat meat here. Not even seafood. If you saw the butcher shops you would understand. The meat is hung up in front of the shop in the open air in the heat. Flies land all over it and the smell is horrendous. The other day we were walking by a butcher shop and there was this almost gelatinous pile of skin lying on the ground. It took me a minute but then I realized it was the skin of a freshly butchered goat.....it made me sick to my stomach.

We used to eat out quite a bit until this week when we had a bad experience. We decided to take a break from the TASO lunch and we went to an Indian restaurant called Dawat (there is a large proportion of Indian immigrants here because Uganda was once used as a trading hub). A previous fellow recommended the restaurant to us. We walked over and found it was in an alleyway. We walked up the stairs, which reminded me of the rickety wooden and rope bridge that Indiana Jones has to walk across in the Temple of Doom. The boards creaked and moved under our feet. They were cracked and I feared I was going to fall through. When we got into the restaurant, I was pleasantly surprised. It seemed rather clean and nice. We ordered our meals and chatted while we waited. When our food came, the server sat the tray down on our table and a white roach ran off it toward Ryna. She jumped out of the way and it made its way to the floor. The server smiled and laughed like it was no big deal. She sat our food and baskets of Nan down and left. We began to eat the Nan and about 20 seconds later a baby roach came crawling out of Stephanie’s basket. My Nan quickly dropped from my mouth onto my plate. I searched through my basket and found the tail end of an adult roach in the bottom. Needless to say, I was not eating any more. The girls continued to eat cautiously. After they were done, we paid and all but ran out of the building. We will never eat there again!

We will definitely go out to a restaurant again but not before checking with others about its reputation and cleanliness. I know there are often roaches in restaurants and that is okay as long as they are not running through my food! For now, we go to the market and buy fresh produce. It is kind of like a farmers market. Everyone is lined up at stalls with their tomatoes, matoke, eggplant, watermelons, pumpkin, oranges, pineapple, passion fruit, beans and rice. You have to bargain for prices but they are usually pretty fair with their first offer. For other things, we go to the supermarket. However, what they call a supermarket reminds me more of a 7-eleven and the selection is only a little better.

I have settled into my house quite nicely. The spiders no longer bother me and I have made friends with the many geckos and skinks. My roomate handles the spiders and I catch the lizards and take them outside. The other day I was trying to catch a gecko when it ran into the pocket of my book bag. I scooped him up and, after a few pictures, released him into the back yard. I also have a few bats that live above my bed in the ceiling. They cannot get into my room and I believe they come and go through a hole in the attic. I don't mind their squeaking and occasional thudding on the ceiling and I figure they eat the bugs and mosquitoes that linger near my window. Last night they were very quiet and I couldn't sleep. I was worried something had happened to them, but this morning when I turned my light on they let me know they didnt want to be woken up by squeaking and pitching a fit.
It is strange being one of the few "mzungus" in town. People are constantly staring at us. On our way home, we pass by the children leaving from school. They stare at us as if we have a third eye on our forehead. If we say hi to them, they usually smile and laugh. We have made friends with our night guard Tom's kids. He has a set of 5-year-old twins, Edwin and Sharon, and a 7-year-old boy named Isaac. They have a soccer ball from the last fellows and can't wait for us to invite them in to play. Every day they sit out by the gate and wait for us. We told them that they could come over on Friday after school to play. On Wednesday, we were inside reading when we heard kids yelling and banging on the gate. It was the kids yelling "mzungus let us in" and "dephanie open up". I assume that was their attempt at Stephanie's name. Tom talked to them and explained that they could come over on Friday. I am sure we will have our hands full with a bunch of kids under the age of ten, but it will be nice to play around and have some fun.
We had a brief meeting today with Peter, the Social Support Officer from TASO. He needs to clone himself because he does a little of everything including supporting the orphaned and vulnerable children by getting funding to pay their school fees and helping us with our various questions and needs. He gave us the schedules of the different departments so that we could plan to go on outreaches. We will be attending outreaches for the PMTCT program with the medical staff and with the counseling staff on different occasions. In an outreach the doctors, counselors and other staff go to neighboring towns to visit clients that are too far away to travel to the center for treatment. In some towns, they use local clinics and in other towns, they set up under the shade of a tree and treat clients or go visit the families in their homes. I am very excited to go with them. TASO is an amazing organization and I am enthusiastic to see them in action. They have limited resources yet they have made a huge difference in Uganda and in the health of its people. I am eager to learn all that I can from them.