Pancakes

The board members are gathering for the monthly meeting.  Some of them are staying at my home, so I cooked extra pancakes for breakfast.  However, they were fasting.  I saved them for when they decided to break the fast.

Mid-afternoon they broke the fast; however, they were going to gather in Sambia.  I sent the leftover pancakes with the person hosting the tea to break the fast.  She gladly accepted them. 

After she had served the board members, she called Ramadan to join us.  He was going to decline until she said there were pancakes.  Ramadan said he had been missing pancakes because the Ray family is in the US.  The recipe to make them from scratch is simple.  It is common (locally) to eat something with the morning or afternoon tea, but making pancakes seems to be something left for those of us who grew up in another part of the world.

Economy

My friend Meta was offered a chance to purchase eight basins of cassava.  Cassava is a staple in the Kakwa diet.  It is a root that is dried in the sun and then ground into flour for cooking.  The price is stable right now because we have been in the dry season until now.  This means people have been able to harvest their cassava and dry it.  Later, when we are well into the wet season, when the ability to dry cassava has been difficult for some time, the price of cassava will go up.  Meta plans to buy his friend’s cassava now (so his friend has school fees for his children), and then sell it when cassava that has already been dried is fetching a higher price.

Chicken

Moses has noted a price discrepancy for buying live chickens, specifically cocks.  It is cheaper in D.R. Congo, and he goes there to visit family and to work two of his fields nearly every week.  Because the local culture makes a big deal out of New Year’s Day, and because splurging and buying meat for a meal on a big day is the norm, he bought chickens in D.R. Congo the week before Christmas.  He made arrangements with me to keep them in my yard while the price went up.  Unfortunately, this year others sold more of their birds, so the shortage that would drive the price up did not happen (to the extent that it did a year ago).  I do not know how he fared, yet.

Breakfast

I have a food arrangement with my friend Moses and his family.  I help them buy a full sack of cassava each month (100 Kg).  They use it like flour, but it taste different.  It is used to make keyo (pronounced ee-low), the dough / bread like substance that forms the base for most of the meals in this area.  I also cook breakfast for Moses and myself.  His family makes lunch and dinner which usually includes keyo.

Keyo (pronounced ee-low)

Most of the time I make pancakes for breakfast (not pictured) using a scratch recipe the other missionary in town found on the internet.  It gives me the best chance of observing the cultural tradition of hospitality of feeding whomever comes by when you are cooking.  That was the case today.  I normally cook for and feed four, today it became six, but I did not know this until long after the batter was made.  I was well into the cooking.  I made batter for four, but God is great and stretched it.  Instead of making 30 small pancakes, it made 39.  We all ate and were satisfied.

Lunch

Occasionally I need to travel across country for something in Kampala or Entebbe.  This time it is for a medical procedure, a colonoscopy since I am old enough to need that.  The other missionary in Koboko was also traveling to Kampala and offered me a ride.

We stopped at a tourist site on the way for lunch.  They do not have any attractions, nor guest houses.  They do sell souvenirs.  We were there for lunch.  A variety of European and American food at a reasonable price.  They seem to be popular despite not serving local cuisine.  The other missionary tells me he has been stopping here for lunch during his trips for years.  The food is good, and the atmosphere is friendly.  I much prefer stopping here for a sit-down meal to the 5-minute food stop at a store with a parking lot big enough to accommodate the buses that make the trip.

Marmalade

I helped mom make marmalade recently.  The oranges were large, especially when compared to what I can buy in Uganda.  They were also orange, which contributes to the color of the marmalade.  In Uganda oranges are green, even when ripe.  Only the fruit is orange, not the peel.  The marmalade uses both.

I am confident we could cut up the oranges manually; however, it was convenient and fast to use a Cuisinart.  The part that I do not think I could do in Uganda was heating the jars.  We washed them in a dishwasher.  I do cold water washing in Uganda.  It just would not work.  Also, I have not seen the pectin in the market in Uganda.

It was good to be helping mom with making jams / marmalade again.

Food

In Koboko, most people shop for food daily.  They may have a storeroom attached to their kitchen, but it is not weather tight, and most do not have power.  Some items can be purchased in quantity (grains) and stored but you have a risk of field critters getting into it.

The house I rent is built in the western style, with certain modifications for being in the tropics.  One of the modifications is a vent to the outside above every door and every window (so the hot air does not accumulate at the ceiling, it goes out).  For the most part, the house is weather resistant.  However, the environment prevents keeping some items, like bread for more than a couple of days.  It molds.  I do not know if it is the heat or the moisture since we have both during the wet season and heat during the dry season.  The problem is year-round.

Cross Border Market

There is another market area across the border in D.R. Congo.  I have not been there.  When I arrived my visa did not include travel to Congo.  Now that D.R. Congo has joined the East Africa Union, supposedly I could, but I really do not want to be the test case.

My friend, Moses, bought several cocks at the Congo market just before Christmas knowing that they were more expensive in Koboko.  He sold a few at Christmas, knowing people would want meat for the big day.  New Year’s Day is a bigger celebration, and the price goes up.  He was trying to make some money so he could provide for his family’s celebration.

Not everything is cheaper in the Congo, some items move in the opposite direction.

Christmas Dinner

There are several differences about Christmas dinner in Uganda when compared to my experience in the Puget Sound region of USA.

To begin with, we ate outside, under a tarp to protect us from the warm sun.  The temperature would reach 27 C (80 F), a sharp contrast to the freezing weather the Puget Sound region has received the last week.

The meat of choice for the midday dinner was goat, not ham or turkey.  There was also chicken and cooked intestine (poor person’s meat) available.  The main side dish was something I was more likely to find at a mid-July picnic, potato salad.  No Jell-O or cooked vegetables; however, there was some shredded cabbage with tomato slices on top (salad).

The dessert was mango (not apple) pie and banana bread.  Both gifts from Amanda so our hosts could sample some US items.