Food

Papaya tree at the office

Everyday we collect “local” food – i.e. Ugandan, or “African” as they call it here sometimes – from a lady down the road, Mama Brenda, who cooks everything outdoors over charcoal, partly shaded by a thatched shack. I can never finish it, rarely need to eat again in the evenings and it costs under a euro. The chickens running around her garden will be in the pot in a few days' time, and the vegetable patch out the back is the source of most of the plantain, potatoes, greens, maize and onions. For no other reason, I like to support her initiative: she's running a successful business which she provides for her family. Moreso, the food fulfils the holy aspirations of western eco-foodies: locally produced, in season, organic, sustainable, and almost totally oil-free: everything is steamed or boiled, other than meats which are stewed.

But... sometimes I'd give anything for some brown soda bread with a bowl of tomato soup. Or a salad. Or anything else, in fact. Not even because I want them that much, but just because I'd like to choose something else. The same food five days a week, after two months, becomes monotonous. As choice goes, Mama Brenda has plenty to offer, but I will quietly (ssssh) that all African food more or less tastes the same.

You pick two or three of: matoke (steamed banana/plantain, Uganda's most ubiquitous staple), posho (a stiff, thick sort of porridge or dough which is more well known as ugali – a variation exists in almost every African country), potatoes, cassava or rice, with a potential chapatti to go on the side. There'll be a spoonful of steamed greens, and then you choose between beans, chicken, fish (tilapia – the local speciality from Lake Victoria. Large, thick, meaty white fish – very good grilled but a lot of bones to negotiate) or “meat”.

“Meat” is beef, but not in the sense we'd know it at home. Beef here is just a generic piece of cow – they don't butcher in different cuts the way we do. Slow beef stews aren't bad, it's usually chewy and tough. Also I've seen how the meat is bloodily delivered to market uncovered on the backs of trucks and even bodas, where it hangs amidst the sun and flies outside a butcher's shack all day before being sold. I'm not generally a fan.

I really do like tilapia – its a tender, beautifully translucent fish – but Mama Brenda usually cooks it in groundnut sauce (another ubiquitous local speciality) which I'm not too fond of.

Chicken is universally the most expensive option in Uganda. Mysteriously, chicken breasts do not exist here. Where do they go?! Do Africans really throw away the meatiest part of the chicken?? If you ask for chicken, you receive a drumstick or the wing-bone with meat attacked, both of which require lots of messy deconstruction and picking for very little return in fatty meat. The others in the office see chicken as a luxury – I'm the only one who ever takes it – so between all of that I don't have it very often.

Which leaves me with beans. Lots and lots of beans. Fresh local beans are stewed so they literally look like the dog's dinner, but they don't taste bad. With rice and a sweet potato or matoke, usually. And that's about it, five days a week.

Mama Brenda's menu sounds like a lot of choice, but now you can see why at times, I'd give away my right arm for a toasted special or slice of quiche. I can't help it - I'm getting so sick of eating 85% carbs every day. Meat and veg are very much side dishes here. Every day I ask for the steamed greens which are the only vegetables on offer, but Mama Brenda never gives more than a large teaspoon. It looks so little on top of a mound of starch that to me, it's almost laughable. People generally eat very little meat here – its too expensive for most people. A portion of chicken is a drumstick; a portion of meat perhaps two or three small, stir-fry-sized pieces. The star of the show here is the starch: a small mountain of carbs to fill your lunch box.

There are some things I'll genuinely miss when I'm gone: I've become particularly attached to a brand of flowery, fragrant Ugandan green tea, and the fruit here is honestly and truly out of this world. To give you an idea, the pineapples we get at home are half the size and sweetness of what's available here. Mangoes fall out of the trees, avocados grow in the bushes, and my latest habit is to slice open a passion fruit and tip the pulp into my cereal in the morning. Yum. Pity I don't like bananas – 30 different types grow in Uganda, and they're absolutely everywhere, included in every meal. My personal favourite is gonja – a type of green banana which needs to be cooked, which is roasted on little charcoal fires by the roadside. Served hot, gonja is savoury, sweet, morish, and costs about 15c.

Mangoes growing on our tree at the office

More often than not we talk about food while eating at work. Immaculate, our other intern, is always curious as to what I think of everything, being the token muzungu in the office. Today its pumpkin; Mama Brenda has started cooking it only recently and Sharon's been the first to try some. Do we have pumpkin in Ireland? Everyone is surprised to hear yes, but confused to hear that it's only available in autumn. Seasonal food has limited meaning on the equator – the weather changes so little that most of the staples down here grow all year round; they stagger the planting to have food available all year.

Anyway – in Kampala I have European food several times a week in the evenings or weekends, and I can buy almost anything I want in the good supermarkets in town. I complain but in fact I have lots of choice compared to muzungus living upcountry in the “the village”, and compared to Ugandans who can only afford to buy local food from the market. I do bring lunch from home at times, but we don't have a fridge, a microwave or even much cutlery (if the office is busy a few of us revert to teaspoons) so it's not always an easy option.

But god help me, I'm putting on weight. And people are happy to tell me so.

I was standing at the counter chatting to Sharon the other morning when Immaculate walked in.

“Tara, you are growing fat!” she exclaimed cheerfully.

“Ergh, thanks Immaculate. You look nice today”.

She shrugged off the compliment, oblivious to the sarcasm. “Yes, you are definitely getting fat”, she said happily, tilting her head to examine my figure.

At least I've been here long enough to know that this is not glee at my misfortune or a particular form of feminized politics. In the village, size is a sign of prosperity and the blessing of sufficient good food, but here in Kampala amongst people who are well off, we often chat about diets and weight and the same things women do back home.

“Well you know, Immaculate, I keep telling you about how I'm not used to the food down here. What else can you expect eating matoke every day,” I mutter.

She beamed with pride. “Ahh I told you you'd get to like matoke - you'll even miss it when you go home!”

I do like matoke, but it's highly doubtful that I won't be able to live without it. Immaculate's not the first person who has proudly suggested I'll miss good honest African food when I'm gone. I'm just too polite to tell them otherwise.

“You'll go back to Ireland and tell everyone how good our food is!” Immaculate added.

So the truth is that 'getting fat' is not itself the good thing – my putting on weight is a compliment to the food itself, rather than to me. Immaculate means matoke is “good” because it is effective – filling, nutritious, fattening. She's delighted that I'll go home and tell everyone that our flimsy European bread has nothing on their African staples. It couldn't make me put on weight like the matoke did, even if I tried! This, in fact, is patriotism and ethnic pride.

How simple life would be if this concept was the norm at home – if we congratulated ourselves on the fine density of our spuds and scoffed at outsiders with their light, easily-digestible alternatives. Uganda is so lush and fertile, so abundant with food even in poor areas, that I don't mean to disparage that which truly is a blessing – Uganda's ability to feed itself, unlike so many poor neighbours. Even in Kampala, food is visibly growing everywhere: on trees and in the ground, in gardens and on road sides, and in tiny triangles and corners of free land. It is indeed something to be grateful for, and proud of, and it's inevitable that this becomes embodied in the culture.

Maize which Joan is growing behind the office

Perhaps this leads to the spirit of generosity embodied in food. Sharon and I both feel the portions Mama Brenda gives us are too big; we eat too much and then up throwing away the rest. Its not that Sharon doesn't ask for smaller portions when she goes to collect lunch for everyone – the problem is that Mama won't give her less. As in, literally, won't allow her to take a smaller portion. We'd happily pay the same amount for less food, but the nyabo won't hear of it. Whether she thinks we need to eat more, or whether she's afraid that we'll be unhappy customers, we don't know. We just aren't allowed to have small ladies' lunches.

Similarly there was an outcry when Sharon and I recently got lunch from the Italian supermarket down the hill rather than from Mama Brenda. We collected lunch as usual for the others, but looking for a bit of variety ourselves we went across the road to the supermarket's lunch counter, where metal dishes of food are laid out in a glass display and optimistically called a “buffet”. For 5,000 shillings, as opposed to 3,000 shillings (about €1.50 rather than €1) we could have sweetly spiced pilau rice, multi-coloured vegetables cooked with tomatoes, peas (instead of beans), different types of potato, and a few other dishes which Mama Brenda never makes.

Back at the office, the others peered over their lunchboxes to look at our food and sniffed at it appreciatively. They begrudgingly looked impressed, until they asked how much it was. “5,000!” they exclaimed. “For so little!”

It wasn't at all little: it was a big box full of food, and it was more than enough. But we only had a choice of two dishes instead of three or four. So the others scoffed at it – none more loudly than one of the girls who usually makes a point of eating half of what Mama Brenda gives her, before throwing the rest away.

Is this patriotism, or stinginess, or loyalty to Mama Brenda? Or the just the fussiness of people who very rarely eat different types of food? (I know plenty of those down in Kerry, after all.)

Who knows. Either way, it's not going to help me fit back into my skinny jeans when I get home.