Friday, March 21, 2008

The Food


The Food

So the foods easily available around here are bananas, avocados, potatoes, beans, and tomatoes. You can buy those pretty much anywhere at anytime. Most of the people here just live off of beans and potatoes sometimes with peas or cabbage. There is also maize and sugar cane. People just walk around biting chunks off a long 5 foot long stick of sugar cane and chewing it and spitting it out. All over the road there is chewed up sugar cane. On market day, which is every Monday and Thursday, you can find other delicacies such as pineapples, mangos, passion fruits, and carrots.

The bakeries also make chapatti. It is flat fried dough. It is an Indian food, but is all over the place here. I pretty much live off chapatti. For breakfast I have chapatti with bananas and peanut butter. For lunch I have the same or chapatti with avocados. Also for lunch I stop off at the local shack and order a coca cola. For dinner I usually go to a restaurant but always order chapatti on the side. Other things the bakeries make are samosas which are fried dough stuffed with peas. It is also an Indian food but for some reason all over the place here. The bakeries also make what we call dough balls, which is a huge ball of fried dough sweetened with some honey.

There are like 5 different restaurant/lodges that we usually go out to for dinner. I pretty much get the same thing at each place. That is vegetable curry (another Indian dish) with chapatti and chips (fries) or rice on the side. Also, of course a coca-cola. Countryside is the restaurant/lodge closest to our house but their service is slow and their food is mediocre. Graceland is our favorite, it has the fastest service and good food, but it is the farthest away from our house. Heritage is another restaurant/lodge that the food is good but the service takes forever like an hour and a half. Tourist is mid distance away but its food and service are both mediocre. Traveller’s is the best food by far but it is very expensive. Most meals are between 4,000-6,000 shillings ($2.50-$4) but Traveller’s is 20,000 shillings. Sometimes for dinner the med students cook and we go over there instead of going to a restaurant. Me and Sara haven’t really cooked that much, one time we made pasta but that is about it. Other snacks we have been able to get our hands on are eggs, chocolate, margarine, crackers, and peanut butter. Sometimes we also go ver the med student’s house and they cook rice, vegetables, and potatoes for us. .

One of the cell phone companies here, Telecom, has signs everywhere. Their logo is a smiley face and the smile looks like a U. From far away the U blends in with the eyes and it looks like and O-U the symbol for kosher foods in America. So on every third building I think I see an O-U and get excited there is a kosher restaurant but then I realize oops I am in Africa.

Agriculture is the main source of income here. Tourism is another but most of the population is peasants who work in agriculture. The biggest crop is Irish potatoes. When you ask someone their job they say digging. That is all they do all day. Dig to plant or harvest or take care of the potatoes. Beans, maize, and bananas are other crops too. If you can’t dig you can’t make money. If a woman is a good digger she gets a large dowry. So we usually keep well fed all be it with tons of starch from chapatti and potatoes.

Rafi

3 comments:

173 said...

I guess when they told us that we read torah on Monday and Thursday because it was market day, they weren't making it up.

Rebecca said...

I had the exact same thought when i read this post.

TMLFanClub said...

Dude, there's a ton of Indian food there because there used to be a ton of Indians in Uganda before Idi Amin expelled them all. Uganda was a British colony, and the British were known from moving peoples from their various colonies around a bit...Indians were a prime group for that (good at the civil service/familiar with running bureaucracy or something).

I read your whole blog - What a wonderful account!