Sunday, June 26, 2016

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner-Black Uhuru

Today was a much needed rest day.  Many of our group headed into Kampala for the day but since some of us did that last weekend, we got to stay and rest for the morning.  It was a beautiful morning and we were able to catch up on sleep, reading, and email.

At mid-day I met up with the special ed immersion group to help them with some of their deliveries.  Over the past week they have been working with a number of children with disabilities in both Mukono and Lugazi.  They have worked tirelessly to create two walkers from scratch and also provided wheelchairs to two students and clothing and food and toys to other families.  I was able to go for several food and clothing deliveries and one of the walkers.  The walker we delivered today was for Jordan who is one year old and has yet to walk to talk.   Bethany and Lauren sized up the seat for the walker and then sewed it in just a few minutes.  It was so amazing to see Jordan begin to jump around and use his legs within just a few minutes of being in the walker!


It was a heart warming and sobering experience to visit these families.  Children with disabilities are often poorly taken care of because their families don’t have the means or knowledge.  Often the parents were so thankful and happy that we were able to help in some small way.  We delivered some clothing and food to Juliette who is HIV positive and currently has malaria.  We also delivered a dress to Daphne who was almost murdered as a child because one of the neighbors believed in child sacrifice.  She suffers the loss of her left hand and some severe scarring.



Meal preparation

This is a cooking banana
We had to rush back to UCU to pick up Michael and Aino as we had a dinner event.  We were hosted by Steven and Margaret Ssenyonjo for a traditional Ugandan meal and were able to learn about the process of preparing it.  Most Ugandans cook outside or in a room separate from the house because it generates so much heat.  Most people here use charcoal stoves for cooking food but sometimes they also use wood because it gets hotter.  I learned a lot about bananas today!  We've seen huge bunches of green bananas and also eaten a lot of yellow bananas; I assumed the green ones eventually turned yellow.  However, today I learned that the green are matoke or "cooking" bananas.  These are the ones they mash up and cook to make matoke, which is a starchy side dish served at most meals.  The yellow bananas come from a different tree and are called "eating" or sweet bananas.
matoke cooking on the charcoal stove


Ugandan food is pretty easy to eat gluten free.  There is often a base of matoke or rice or both.  Then there is some kind of other starch or vegetable-steamed pumpkin, cassava, sweet potatoes, chipati, etc.  There is often some kind of meat stew made with beef, chicken, or pork.  Finally there is almost always fruit-pineapple, watermelon, or mango are the most common but passion fruit, avocado, or papaya are frequently used as well.



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