Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Welcome to the new home of Reckoning with Wanderlust [www.reckoningwithwanderlust.blogspot.com]

Please explore the new site, there are more updates to come as soon as I get back to the land of fast internet. For now here's another post!

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People often ask me what I eat when I’m away. To be honest it depends upon what is available. When I am in the city I usually eat a mix of local and other foods, but when I am in areas outside the main city, and particularly if I am with a research team, I eat whatever they eat.
As a side, note, I called Arua rural in an earlier post, and I just want to be rephrase a bit. Arua is a densely populated urban area, with over 400,000 in the urban area, and over 800,000 in the district (also called Arua). If you look at a population density map of Uganda (because I know you all love demographics like I do) you’ll see that the most densely populated areas are around Kampala and Entebbe, and then there’s a bit of very dense population at the intersection of Uganda, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. That’s where I am, wave!
So back to important things like eating: I’m in a training now so there’s lots of more eating than normal, just think about when you attend a conference and they’re feeding you all the time. So here’s what I’ve had, basically the last two days, and I what it looks like I’ll be having daily for the next 9 days or so.

Breakfast: 8:30 am
-          A bit of omelet (less than 1 egg) , yolks here aren’t very yellow, so in my mind I’m eating egg whites.
-          White bread with Blue Band (fake margarine that doesn’t melt at room temperature) and very sugary jelly from a tin
Or
-           Chapati – similar to the Indian Chapati, it’s very popular in Uganda and is sort of like and dense, savory, chewy pancake.
-          Tea or coffee (Nescafe)

Tea Break 11 am
-          Boiled eggs and peanuts
Or
-          Chapati with a bit of omelet and white bread with Blue Band and jelly
-          Tea or coffee

Lunch – 1 pm
-          Goat or beef or chicken
-          Posho (cornmeal mash I think?), calo (millet and sorgum mash) matoke (steamed and mashed plantains), white rice. All of the ‘mash’ is sticky and thick and needs to be cut with a knife to be served, kind of like the polenta you get in a tube, but stickier.
-          Greens – chopped with onions and oil
-          Soda (maybe)
-          Bananas or watermelon for dessert
Tea Break – 3:30 pm
-          Peanuts
Or
-          White bread with Blue Band and Jelly
-          Tea or coffee

Dinner – this is on my own, and can be eaten with other team members at the hotel or outside, but it’s a bit of a walk. Let me give you tonight’s scenario:
Me (8:00 pm): Hello, do you have anything for eating?
Staff: What are you liking to eat?
Me: What do you have to eat? (This is crucial, the likelihood they have more than 2 or 3 things is low, so listing what you want is a futile exercise)
Staff: We have snacks. Some goat meat? Some chicken?
Me: Okay, how about chicken. Do you have some chapatti?
Staff: It is possible.
Me: Okay, one chapatti please. I’ll be up on the deck.
Staff: [Raises eyebrows, looks confused]
Me: Up there, [Pointing to an outdoor deck with a large screen on it. I watch ‘Whip It’ with the girl from Juno, shown via projector which is attached to a television sitting on the floor. The channel is later changed to a dubbed soap opera, and then to the news.]
15 minutes later
Waitress: You will take some chicken? Steeooo?
Me: Pardon? Chicken? Yes chicken, and chapatti?
Waitress: You will take steeoo?
Me: (No idea what she’s saying) Okay, yes yes with chicken
Researcher who joins me: You want the chicken in stew?
Me: Ah yes, okay, chicken stew
15 minutes later
Waitress: You still want chicken?
Me: Yes please, with chapatti
Waitress: Okay I will bring in 5 minutes
The food comes, she asks if she should bring water to wash so I can eat with my hands, or if I will use ‘that’ (fork and knife). I go with the fork and knife to avoid her making the extra trip with water.
The researcher eats a chapatti and tea for dinner.
I’ve got a chapatti and a bowl with a quarter chicken in it, skin, cartilage and other unidentifiables included. The chicken is in an oily broth, which I dip my chapatti in, as I fight, with what must have been a small chicken, to get anything to eat off of it. Also, I’m doing this in the dark, so I pull items off the bones and pop them in my mouth, fingers crossed I get more than fat and cartilage, which I try to spit out onto my fork subtlety.  I eventually give up on the chicken and just go with the chapatti dipped in soup. Not exactly what I’d eat for dinner at home, but when the options are goat or chicken with chapatti or chips (French fries, ahem freedom fries) , you’ve got a pretty good chance it’s going to tasty, if not totally healthy.

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