Sunday, October 4th 2009

Sunday, October 4^th 2009

 

Woke up and went to shower.  The shower head fell off the shower handle so I ended up “showering” on my knees, splashing cold water onto my body.  Yay!

I took a look at the town in the light of the day.  It has a lot of Indian architecture.  James told me it used to be a big Indian trading post.  By the way – there is a huge stereotype against Indians in Uganda (sorry Anand). It is a stereotype that’s been passed down many generations.  At one point during Idi Amin’s rule Indians were murdered or forced out of the country…there is still a lot of residual dislike for them.

Afterwards we walked to a small restaurant and I ate mondazzi (fried dough) and hot tea from a HUGE metal container on the counter.  Both were readily available and it still took the waitress 10 minutes to serve me.  Service isn’t really up to Zagat levels here in Uganda.  You get used to it – like so many other things you learn to laugh.

We walked to Mbale SS and I started snapping some pics. Mbale is beautiful, flat plains that stretch as far as the eye see and then transform into HUGE monolithic mountains and plateaus jutting high into the sky. 

After a while one of the workers came over and said the cooks wanted me to take their picture (posted).  We bonded immediately and I spent a lot of my day with the cooks – learning how they prepared food, cooked food all with MASSIVE tools and cooking pots.   I watched the girls peeling plantains (for matoke) and “irish” (potatoes) outside a hut.  I went into the smokey hut and watched as men poured huge duffel-sized bags of rice in a pot large enough to fit a human, cut warm meat in the sun and stirred a pot of beans the size of a half an oil drum.

The lunch people requested that I serve beans (since I “helped” with food preparation) so I served beans to all the kids.  They thought it was pretty funny.  After serving everyone I made a plate for myself.

“Where are the utensils?”

One of the cooks looked at me like I was insane.  “We eat with our hands.”

Oh.

I ate with my hands for the first time – it’s harder than it looks.  The strategy is to grab food with your index, middle and ring finger and then shove it in your mouth with your thumb.  More food ended up on the floor than actually in my mouth – lol.

I grew frustrated with the whole bit and walked back to the hut and handed one of the workers my plate.

“Can I have the rest of your food?”  One of the girls asked me.

“Why?  There is plenty food left?”

“I know.”  She smiled.  “I want to finish yours.”

Hmm – not sure what all that was about.

The rest of the retreat was pretty uneventful except that I had to dance the Macarena, the chicken dance and the electric slide in front of the kids.  Pretty funny stuff.

(By the way – I use the term “kids” too loosely…most of our students are between 18 – 20.)

We missed the last bus to Kampala so we jumped in another – sigh – matatu.   No sooner had we pulled onto the road when, HOOONNKKKK!!! A huge truck almost slammed into us.  Wow – close call.  Emily, who was sitting in the back right corner where the impact would have been was ghost white.  Sitting is a very strategic thing in a matatu.  There are 5 rows.  You don’t want to be in the first or last and you want to be on the left side because in Uganda matatu’s drive on the left and therefore pass on the right (which is the oncoming traffic lane).  There is a lot of strategy involved with many aspects of life in Africa.

Every hour or so the matatu would pull over and people would rush the matatu and try and sell us stuff.  Emily bought fire-roasted corn and it was incredible delicious.  I bough fire roasted plantains and, again, delicious.  We also bought oranges (which are the size, shape and color of limes in America…but the inside is bright orange.  Weird.).

When we got into Kampala Emily, Angelica, Maggie and I went to Café Roma for some real food.