Things about Uganda. Part 1.

Food:

A decent cup of tea. What I wouldn't do for one. Here tea not only has an odd flavor to it, it is served to you with hot milk only. I mean you are handed a cup, a tea bag, sugar and a thermos of hot unpasturised milk. No water. I don’t recommend it. Sometimes you get a pot of chai spices as well. Suprisingly this makes it more bearable...

The national diet consist mostly of a glob of carbs made from green bananas (Matoke), millet (Kale) or maize (Posho). Then with a bowl of some sauce on the side. Goat is the most common meat, followed by beef and chicken. If you are by a lake then fish is common (usually eyes and all). Other sauces are made from ground nuts (peanuts), or beans (our main diet).  Some places you could get vegetables like sweet potato, pumpkin, yams (the most disgusting vegetable on the planet I reckon) and normal potatoes (They call them Irish potatoes here which is quaint). Oh and a vegetable they call eggplant but which looks like a small green tomato and has this awful bitter aftertaste.

The pineapple and actually all the fruit here is the sweetest and tastiest I have ever had in my entire life. Fruit is mainly: Pineapple, mango, pawpaw, jack fruit, tomato and tiny yellow bananas.

We found we could buy Cadbury's chocolate at some places, but its taste is a little different to chocolate at home. It is made in a Cadbury factory in Kenya and has some change in the recipe that means it doesn't melt - quite remarkable really!

Coffee = Nescafe. So I have been coffee free (with one or two exceptions in Kampala at a real café) for 2 months. It's true folks. The addict is free! Not that I will continue my abstinence of that heavenly substance the moment I get back home…

Beer is offered either warm or cold (if the place has a fridge) and often given to you with a straw! Beer also comes in 500ml glass bottles so 2 is generally enough for me. There are about 6 or more Ugandan beers. Club being my favorite and Eagle being Tim's.

All soda (why the American term stuck here and not the British I do not know) comes in glass bottles which have to be returned to the person you bought it from so they can return them to the company for washing and re-using (same goes for the beer). The one bit of recycling that happens in the entire country and it is done by Pepsi and Coke. Crazy.

Cooking takes place almost always outdoors on little coal burners that fill the countryside and evening air with charcoal smoke.

The one bit of street food we have taken a shining to is the Rolex. A chipati with a freshly made vegetable omlete rolled inside it in a heavenly greasy combo. At least it's fresh!

We were shocked to see whole cow and goat hanging from meat hooks in the sun. When a piece of meat is bought the desired part is pointed to and the butcher hacks at it with what must be a blunt machete, until the piece of flesh comes off the animal. Meanwhile flies and dust from the road loiter on the "prime cuts". The smell is horrendous, and I turn my head when we are passing them.

Most foods are heavily flavored with either salt (to an unbearable amount at times), sugar (the bread is sweet - so wrong) or oil (the chipatis are grease-tastic!)

I don't think we have had food poisoning on our journey, but we have had some travellers tummy. Tim has had alcohol poisoning though. ha!