Uganda Ford

I’m slowly learning the unspoken rules about travel blogs….so here’s a post about food.

Matooke
Everyone in Uganda eats this since it’s considerably cheaper than rice. The dish consists of plantains (small, green, banana like fruits that grow in large bunches) that are mashed up and cooked. I’m not sure how they are cooked exactly, but the result is a sort of paste that can accompany pretty much anything else or can be eaten by itself.

Posho with Beans
This is the lunch that is given to the kids pretty much everyday at the Ashinaga Rainbow House. Posho is a corn base, ground up and cooked like matooke. It looks a lot like mashed potatoes, but doesn’t have much of a taste. At least it is filling and a good foundation for the beans that provide protein. Beans are a good and cheap source of nutrition here.

Rollex (not the watch)
Chipati is a type of bread that is comparable to a thick tortilla and was imported to Uganda from India (lots of imports from India and China here). In Uganda, a rollex is a combination of chipati (roll) and a layer of egg (eggs→ex). Street vendors have stands all over the main road and in some side streets that serve rollex, and it is definitely the lunch of choice for me, aside from the student lunch. Usually the rollex will serve as a wrap for chopped cabbage and tomatoes, but we have to take that out, as vegetables from the street aren’t always safe for mzungus to eat. But even without the veggies, the chipati and eggs (which have really delicious onions and other things cooked into them) is a relatively nutritious and EXTREMELY filling meal. By far my favorite.

G-nuts
They taste kind of like un-popped popcorn kernels. But saltier. Very tasty snack.

Luwombo
A meat, usually fish, wrapped in banana leaves. Pretty special, so it’s rare for it to be available, but it’s very good. We keep trying to order it for dinner at the hotel, but they’re always out because it is so popular for lunch!

Nile Special
Definitely the beer of choice after a long day of work. Or when you’re floating down the Nile :P. I’m not much of a beer person, but when the drink is frigidly cold to relieve the heat of the day, a few sips certainly can be refreshing.

Massive Avocados
Oh my God they are so large. They are larger than a mango. The guacamole, particularly in Kampala, is obviously sent from heaven. Not kidding.

The Fruit Juices
Passion fruit, mango, pineapple, the list goes on. They are very fresh and have to be stirred regularly, but they’re delicious.

African Coffee
First off, it’s super strong. American coffee isn’t always effective for waking me up, but this coffee or even a latte will bring me out of heat exhaustion in addition to rough sleep. I look forward to coffee with boiled milk and sugar every morning ☺.

– Malinda

Today we took a trip to ­Kampala­­­ with Ryan, Julianna, and Yuka to exchange money and buy the interns a cell phone. We ate at Good African Coffee, a nice little restaurant with milkshakes, burgers, and chicken Caesar salads. We stocked up on the American food, knowing posho and beans awaited us back at Ashinaga. We stopped by Banana Boat, a lovely boutique aimed at mzungus willing to spend quite a bit of cash on hand-made, Ugandan jewelry, bags, purses, etc. Although I was hesitant to buy anything at first, I noticed that a lot of the products are made by women and people with disabilities or AIDS that live in more rural areas and depend on Banana Boat to buy their goods and sell them at the store for them. We continued our shopping spree at an art market that set up quite a fun spectacle – Ugandans on the inside, and white mzungus milling around the edge of each boutique. I wonder how inflated those prices were! Malinda and I also made a deposit for our three-day safari coming up this weekend… a deposit, meaning we paid upfront in full. We’re seeing Murchison Falls, doing small hikes, a three-hour boat cruise, and sleeping in a tent – it should be pretty luxurious. (Better be, if we’re sacrificing spending time with the kids!) We enjoyed a bumpy ride back to Nansana, but couldn’t avoid feeling heavy from passing by so many slums – I was shocked by the immensity of those areas that seem to span from Kampala to Nansana.

Back in Nansana, Christine couldn’t help widening her eyes at some concerning sights on the bodabodas that zipped by us.  Thanks to her suggestion, we’re going to keep a running list of “Things that Should be Illegal” (coming soon).

That night we visited Ashinaga for a dinner prepared by all the Japanese interns – there are sixteen of them, so we had a blast trying to figure out everyone’s names. We had such a great time laughing and yelling over each other, and it was a really wonderful feeling to be surrounded by such intelligent and genuinely kind people.

This is my second trip to Ashinaga Rainbow House in Nansana, Uganda since April, and I’m so pleased to share this experience with two Ford Scholars from Vassar College, Sam(antha) Smith ‘14 and Malinda Reese ‘16.

Every morning, our walks from the Nexus Hotel to Ashinaga have been filled with waving and greeting many children and adults, being called “Mzungu,” constant honking from the taxis, and the various smells of people cooking and preparing food.  We’ve become quite nimble in avoiding the boda bodas (motorcycle taxis) and large trucks that hurtle by within inches of us.  Somehow, I’m getting used to the crazy traffic, but I still get bent out of shape when I see an adult on a boda boda with an infant or multiple children.  As far as I can tell, car seats do not exist, and small children sit on their parents’ laps while driving in cars or trucks on the pot-holed ridden roads.  And seat belts…well, those seem to be optional for most Ugandans. (Parents, take note: I’m happy to report that Sam, Malinda and I are using seatbelts in the Ashinaga van.)

I have really enjoyed seeing the multitude of townspeople who sell their wares along the street.  Huge, yummy avocados, tomatoes, potatoes, large branches of matooke (plantains), fish, chapatti, amazzi (“water”…beware if you say this incorrectly.  It elicits horrified looks and giggles from the Ugandans.)  Selling milk is also common, and one of my favorite signs is “Diary Milk.” The Luganda language is spelled phonetically, so we get some interesting pronunciations and spellings in English.  For example, there are many people who sell chapatti and “rolex.”  For quite a while, I was confused by this combination until I discovered that “rolex” is egg rolled in something like a tortilla…rolled eggs…Rolex.  You get the picture.

Used shoes and clothes are plentiful, and tailors and dressmakers hang their new glittering, colorful clothes at the front of the shops.  Most shops are made of wood and look like small shacks.   In some cases, people sell their wares in a spot at the side of the road.  There are more expensive shops that sell things like water, rice, flour, and basic medications.  Those stores tend to be in small complexes that have steel, secure doors.  Although the level of poverty is staggering to me, everyone is working and selling something, and begging seems to be non-existent here in Nansana.

– CH

We woke up the next day to wonderfully hot showers and a huge breakfast, which we will be eating every morning at the hotel. We walked for 25 minutes to the Ashinaga Rainbow House and met almost the entire staff, made up of Japanese and Ugandan employees as well as the college-bound students that grew up in the program that now lead the younger children. We also met two American interns: Ryan, an International Relations major from Princeton, and Julianna, an English major from our very own Vassar College! They only just arrived last night, which explains the blank stare they gave me when I yelled, “Hey look, more mzungus!” the minute they walked through the gates.

Yuka gave held an information meeting explaining the history of Ashinaga as well as the programs at Rainbow House. (Please refer to the “About” section for general information.) Although we knew most of this information from our research of the Ashinaga Foundation, it was wonderful to go through all of their programs and understand the immensity of their work. Meanwhile, the children singing and clapping in a nearby classroom attempted to drown out Yuka’s history lesson, and then Kei, his dogs, and a string of young boys entered, clanging baseball bats and trailing mud into what was our preliminary information meeting a minute ago.

When Yuka lived in Nasana in 2006, it was only a modest village. Now, its population is roughly 20,000, due to more and more people moving nearer to Kampala, forcing more people to move outside of the city to its surrounding sort of “suburbs” like Nansana. Yuka emphasized how valuable our electronics are and warned us of how often people steal. It is also wise to avoid large gatherings of people such as riots or even celebrations that get out of hand because tear gas is often used to break these up, and we would not want to get stuck in the middle of that! The most recent outbreak occurred in Kampala when one of the newspapers criticized the government, resulting in a forced shutdown. (There are only two newspapers in Uganda, one private, and one government-issued, known for its censorship.) Fortunately, the private newspaper was reinstated on Thursday. Another danger is the multitude of bodabodas (small motorcycles) that zip around the streets at frightening speeds (but think of that cool wind against your face when you go that fast – how refreshing!). Yuka says a doctor told her that 90 percent of his patients came from bodaboda accidents, which is enough to convince me not to ride one.

We went to lunch at Zamzam with a few of the college-bound students who showed us some different routes around Nansana (none of which I will remember tomorrow). We ate a traditional Ugandan dish: white rice, matooke (steamed plantain), a purple yam, an orange yam they call pumpkin, cassava (starchy rice meal), a few steamed leaves of something similar to kale, and beans – it was impossible for any of us to finish, not mention it was served steaming hot! I also had a delicious (and almost-chilled) drink called enanas, made of crushed pineapple, tealeaves, and ginger – delicious.

During lunch, Christine got a pronunciation lesson from Hilda with our new Luganda phrasebooks, Malinda participated in both Japanese and Ugandan prayers before eating, and I quizzed Joseph on the origin of each music video that come on TV. He explained to me that you could tell which country a song is from depending on the particular beat… I guess I’ll need to study some more before I can hear the rhythms myself! He also told me about the more popular genres of music in Uganda: R&B, Afrobeat, Dancehall, and hip-hop (which focuses more on political and social behaviors here, unlike the popular hip-hop at home). During my conversation with Joseph, he suddenly burst out laughing. Startled, I turned to see Christine and Hilda repeating the same Lugandan word over and over again, while Hilda and Joseph tried to restrain their giggles. Apparently, Christine was learning how to order water, but instead of saying “Mwuattu, njagala amazzi” she said “Mwuattu, njagala ammazzi” which means something entirely different… we’ll leave it up to your imagination to fill in the blank. We could barely hear the difference but apparently it was enough to set them into a fit of laughter. Other fun words we learned today are tunaalabagana (see you later) and museka (smile for the camera). We are on a slow learning curve, but we’ll get there!

On our walk back, we learned about religion, tradition, politics, sports, and the challenges of SATs and English. We will create separate posts with extensive information on all of these topics, so we’ll hold off on blogging about them right now. Tomorrow we are traveling to Kampala to run some errands with Ryan and Julianna, and hopefully we will go to a market to practice our bargaining skills. The Japanese students also invited us to dinner on Sunday, and Malinda and I are looking into going on a three-day safari to Murchison Falls next weekend, so we have a lot to look forward to.

– Sam

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