Food for thought

Food in Uganda has been an interesting experience. The main crops are bananas, sweet potatoes, and potatoes, plus some corn, sorghum, a little bit of millet and a few others. Food varies by region (as one would expect). One staple is matoke, which is boiled green bananas, which then get mashed and wrapped in banana leaves and cooked a bit more. The result is a thick potato like thing--which tastes remarkably like a potato! At least the one we tried. Matoke is eaten with some sort of stew. Debby tried a tasty bean-based stew with the matoke.

The pineapple here is excellent! It's sweet, juicy, and has a lot of taste. We've also had lots of watermelon, but it hasn't been constantly as good. Most of the time it's just OK. We've also had lots of bananas (as a fruit). They have at least three different kind of bananas:regular (yellow bananas), green bananas (which is used to make matoke), and little bananas (larger than platanos dominicos in Mexico). There's also papaya, but we don't like it :). There are no citrus so we generally are served passion fruit juice and pineapple juice. The former is OK, a bit sour and without a lot of volume.

Uganda has two dry seasons and two rainy seasons. This is the end of the first dry season. The rain will start soon, and the second dry season will come in July, August, September. Now (the end of the dry season) is when bananas get harvested. While traveling we've seen lots of bananas being transported. Most farms are small plots, held by individuals, which used them for subsistence farming. They sometimes plant crops for sale, of which bananas seem to be a favorite. After harvesting the bananas, the farmer takes them (on a bicycle) to a collection spot where trucks come to pick them up.

Bicycles get used as general purpose "trucks". It's not unusual to see a bicycle loaded with bananas, plastic containers with water, coal, etc. The bikes look heavy (or solid) and are mostly (always?) fixed-gear. Which makes sense, as gearing has a much smaller lifespan. Though gears
would be useful as Uganda is a hilly country. Most often riders dismount when going uphill and then cruise downhill.

Anyway, back to food. There are lots of goats and some cows. The goats and the cattle are small, though the bulls have huge horns! Most people, however, subsist on what they farm. The south-western district (near Rwanda) is heavily over-populated, and every inch of soil is cultivated. It is a hilly region, which has led to erosion. It is only recently that terraced farming was introduced. If this is what Rwanda was like before the genocide, it's easy to see how it turned into a tinderbox.

Most of the farming seems to be done by women, sometimes with the help of children. Small boys seems to take care of goats, and older (teenage) boys take care of cattle. We don't know what most men do. Some help with farming or with cattle. But mostly it seems to be women and children.

Kampala has a large foreign population; Asians (i.e. Indians), Europeans (we think most work with NGO's), and Chinese, and other Africans (mostly Ethiopians and Sudanese). Indians have been here the longest (though Idi Amin kicked them out in 1973 not all chose to go) and so have most influenced the local food culture. Pretty much everywhere we go there are various Indian options on the menu, and chapatis and rotis are everywhere (though I doubt our Indian friends would recognize them as such). We went to two truly excellent Indian restaurants in Kampala. One was high-end and one was a simply chaat house. But we really liked both. Coincidentally, Indians also seem to dominate the economy. Most of the successful businesses are run by Indians.

At Bushara camp we were even served tasty Mexican food; we had flour tortillas (which are a lot like chapatis), guacamole, salsa. They were really tasty and pretty close to the original (this must be the Canadian influence). Ugandans seems to like the mixture, but have a preference for their local food (i.e. matoke).

We are routinely offered meat (beef, pork, chicken, goat), though Ugandans don't seem to eat much of eat. My feeling is their traditional diet is poor in proteins, which is being addressed by having more beans.

R

Gorilla visit

Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park, Uganda. Today we had the privileged opportunity to see mountain gorillas. There are only 720 wild mountains gorillas--half of them here, the rest in Congo and Rwanda--and only 24 people in Uganda get to see them every day. So it really is a privilege (and one has to pay for it!). But regardless of cost it was an amazing experience! We are both excited to learn more about primates as we go along our trip.

There are three gorilla families that area habituated to humans. The rangers take 8 tourists to see each family (for a total of 24). With each group there is one guide, porters (if you choose to hire them), and various trackers, who carry machetes and machine guns! The trackers set of first to try to locate the gorilla family. The tourist follow with the guide, and the porters take up the rear.

At first Debby and I were a bit concerned about the guides with machine guns. Though it turns out there are good reasons for them. First, there are elephants in the park, which are mostly peaceful, but can charge. The gorillas also can be dangerous, even though they are habituated to visitors. The leader, the silverback, will charge if he feels threatened. We were told not to run, to squat slowly, and to look down (i.e. avoid challenging the male). Makes sense though it might be hard to keep it up in practice (fortunately we didn't have to find out if we were so cool headed).

Each family is independent of the rest and consists of a dominant male (a silverback), some females, and the juveniles and babies. The silverback has silver (or white) hair in the lower back to indicate his status as the older male. He is the father of all the offspring and is the protector of the group. The rangers have named all the habituated gorillas and can easily recognize them. The gorillas seem to recognize the guides as well. We had a hard time telling them apart--other than the silver back which is easy to spot.

We got lucky because our group was only a 5 minute hike away from the ranger station. We literally walked 5 minutes and were face to face with the gorillas. At first they were hiding in the vegetation, kind of shy so it was hard to see them clearly. Soon they started to move and we had to follow through the rain forest--which is where the guys with machetes come in handy. It was hard keeping up with the gorillas, even though we had help. One of the other groups had a 2 hour hike through steep hills to get to the gorilla group they were visiting!

After leading us on a bit of a hike, our group settled in a more open area with several vines hanging down. The silverback moved close to the adolescents and the baby, resulting in all three starting to play. The baby kept trying to traverse the vine. Even though the baby is 18 months, it lacks strength and would periodically fall to the ground. But it would just get back on the vine, swinging upside down sometimes making happy faces.

Visitors are only allowed an hour with gorillas, so after watching the family interact for a bit we had to leave.

The villagers that live on the boundary of the park get 25% of the proceeds (supposedly, we don't know how much gets creamed off by the rangers) and have come to like the gorillas (they were hunted up until a few years ago). Now the gorillas know that as long as the rangers are with them they are immune and can go on a rampage. Apparently while the visits are going on they will go down to a village and tear up the banana trees. But the park fees more than makeup for the loss.

The area around Bwindi is heavily populated, and all the land is under cultivation. There park border was starkly evident as we drove in.

R

Debby adds:

The funniest moment was probably near the end of the gorilla hour when the silverback stood up and let out a really loud fart. We all giggled.

Visiting the gorillas also proved to be a social opportunity for us as
well. We took a hike to nearby falls in the afternoon with a nurse from Canada. I enjoyed comparing notes on how she had found Uganda so far. Then at dinner, we talked to a couple celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary. They were celebrating with a two month trip much like ours. They shared that they had decided when they first got married that they would visit all the far-flung places first, so they have been
to Nepal, Cambodia, Laos, but never Paris. It was fun to learn that they are from the Chicago area.

Highland paradise

Bushara Island Camp, Lake Bunyonyi (Uganda). We are sitting enjoying the moderate climate of Lake Bunyonyi in south-western Uganda, close to the border with Rwanda. We were both a bit socked when we first arrived at the camp, as it looked pretty basic (especially when compared to Nile Camp!). But it has been a great experience. The lake is high up in the mountains (6450 feet above sea level) and so enjoys a cool climate. Plus because there isn't much human activity on the island, it is very
quiet and peaceful. After a long canoe cruise in the morning, and a tasty lunch both Debby and I followed the local custom and took a refreshing siesta.

This is one of the bigger islands in the lake (out of a total of 29, with 9 inhabited). There is a trail all around the periphery (the eucalyptus trail) which is only 1.8kms. Which should give you an idea of the size of other islands. One, called Punishment Island (to which pregnant women where sent as punishment) is only about 10 meters across and has a single tree--which happened to be full of cormorants when we went by. The lake is home to millions of birds of hundreds of species. Debby had lots of fun sighting them throughout our tour. They even gave us a short (with about 100 entries) bird checklist with some of the species that life on the lake.

The largest island (Bwama) was home to a leper colony during the first half of the 20th century. A British doctor (Dr. Sharp) and his wife settled in on of the islands and built a hospital and developed the colony on Bwama. In it's heyday it held over 2000 patients! The colony was closed in 1962, and the island was converted to a school. Today it is owned by the came non-profit corporation that owns the camp we stayed
at. It rents the land to the neighboring community and uses the proceeds to help the local economy.

The camp where we stayed was developed in 1994 in cooperation with a Canadian organization (I think it's called ACTS or ATCS) in partnership with the local diocese. The camp is a non-profit organization that aims to benefit the local community through employment and some technology transfer. They have brought new farming techniques, education, and training (at least). The region of Lake Bunyonyi suffers from overpopulation, which had let to over-farming, soil erosion, decreased crop production, and reduced learning. In the past 10 - 15 years this
area has received various forms of aid and technology transfers to try and help the communities.

Dr. Sharp build several windmills on the islands, which were used to generate electricity, pump water, and so on. The windmills were kept operational after the colony closed, but eventually broke down and were abandoned. To this day water gets pumped by hand! I found it so surprising that a community would abandoned technology (windmills) and revert to a more labor intensive way. I really wanted to find out more about why this happened but nobody seemed to know much.

Interestingly, several of the islands had a modest amount of solar
panels (Bushara Camp had the most). It was installed by and outfit called Solar Energy for Africa (http://www.solarenergyforafrica.com).

Currently they plant corn and beans (not sure what type) together and then followed by sorghum. They have two dry seasons and two rainy seasons, so they can harvest twice in a year (for most crops). They also plant Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes. We were told the beans were introduced recently by an NGO to try and improve yields. I'll write a separate entry on Ugandan food and cuisine.

The camp also has medium-sized nursery. We got to learn about the various plants and trees, what they get used for, and they help the soil, and so on. One that stuck in my head was callindra (sp?), which helps fix nitrogen, and also is fed to cattle to increase milk production.

R

Boda-boda

Most Ugandans travel by foot or by bicycle. The latter is an incredibly useful tool as it is used to carry large loads of "stuff"; bananas, banana leaves, water, coal, etc. In more affluent areas they use boda-bodas, or motorcycles. And, of course, the wealthy and the mzungu travel in cars.

In the city we got along using special-hire taxis, which means some dude who owns a car takes you places at a pre-agreed upon price. They can also be hired by the hour or by day. But they are expensive. Because we are mzungu they always ask for 10,000 Ugs--about $6.00). We always had to bargain down the price. One time we took a metered taxi and that was even more expensive.

We have been living it up traveling by (Toyota) Land Cruiser, a largish 4x4 SUV. Both safaris have been on the same type of car, even though we used different companies. It's a fairly large and comfortable car, though we've spent so much time traveling we don't relish the idea of more travel. Most cars and motorcycles are imported used from Japan. The car we are in now still has a sticker of the Japanese Automobile Federation! A motorcycle is about 1,000,000 Ugs (or $600). Cars are more.

Some roads are sealed but a large number are dirt roads. And because of traffic and the rain they are not in very good condition. So we go bumping around in the back of the Land Cruiser. Still, it is a luxury compared to how most people travel. We feel bad for the people walking along the side of the road, as they get engulfed in the dust plume of the car.

Most Ugandans are careful and cautious drivers. Though, of course, there are exceptions. A couple of times our drivers have had to swerve of the road as an oncoming car or bus is in our lane. But mostly people drive slowly and carefully. Though the roads are quite chaotic, especially near a big town as people stop wherever they want.

In and around cities private minibuses (peseros) are everywhere. Basically they are mini-vans with 4 or 5 rows of seats packed to the brim. They have one driver and one guy who charges the fares and calls out the destination (seated by the large sliding door). Most of the reckless drivers we've seen are minibuses, so we've stayed away.

This is all what one expects from a poor developing country. My biggest surprise is how versatile the bicycle is. Seems like gearing would make life easier but reduce the lifespan of the bike and so most people go without. It has made me wonder whether it is possible to build an even more efficient and practical vehicle. And I've had a lot of hours to ponder the problem!

R

Debby adds:

On the way back from Murchinson Falls we saw a UN convoy taking Sudanese refugees back to Sudan. It is a little different here.