Rainbows and Sun-Thunderstorms

The weather in Kampala is SO strange. Today I woke up to a bright, sunny, and blazingly hot Sunday. I walked down to the coffee shop for brunch and was soaked in sweat by the time I got there. Then I went to run some errands and when leaving realized that it was still sunny and hot, but also drizzling. I hopped on the back of a boda and was headed home and it started POURING down rain and thundering, all while still bright and sunny. So now I was soaked both from sweat and rain—which was a strange combination as sweat is sort of sticky and rain tends to be cool and refreshing. While I’ve experienced short “sun-showers” in the states, I’ve never seen anything like this—a full-on thunderstorm on a sunny day. The good news is that when I reached Naguru Hill, my half-sticky/half-refreshed self was rewarded with a lovely view of a full rainbow arching over the Eastern suburbs of Kampala.

Friday Night and Naguru’s Jumping

I LOVE my neighborhood, especially on Friday night. For whatever reason, Friday brings out the entire spectrum of humanity in Naguru. As I wind down the hill away from the high compound walls covered in an urban jungle of barbed wire and multicolored Frangipani, I enter a different Naguru—one that more closely resembles village life. Storefronts and kiosks blare loud African music in an effort to advertise their wares. Children play soccer as seriously as if they were in a World Cup final, pausing only to yell the obligatory “mzungu!” as I pass. Goats and long-horned cattle graze their way to wherever it is they spend the night. Gospel music and clapping pours out of church windows and the call to prayer echoes off the walls from a loudspeaker on the local mosque. A rhythmic click-click-click of a jump rope ricochets from inside the East Coast Boxing Club and the collective cheers and boos of young Ugandans celebrating the weekend and supporting their favorite team rises up from the Kampala Rugby Club at the base of the hill. Boda drivers look expectantly at me but go back to their patient waiting after a simple head nod indicating I intend to walk. Friday night in Naguru brings out the community and in a simple way, my evening stroll makes me feel like a little part of that community.

The Art of Tucking Myself In

As you may have seen in my apartment photos, I sleep under a mosquito net. I’m pretty sure this is more form than function as Kampala isn’t a particularly malarial zone. But I enjoy the net—partly for the ambiance, but also because I feel all snuggly and tucked in once I’m safely inside for the night.

However, getting tucked in for the night is not an easy process. It requires getting into the bed and then going around and tucking the net into the bedframe piece by piece. And inevitably I forget some integral part of my going-to-bed routine—brushing my teeth, locking my door, setting my alarm clock, pulling the curtains, turning the light off on one particularly memorable occasion—all of which require me to untuck, get out from under the net, do whatever task is required, and then retuck. This adds a solid five minutes to the process, and I’d say I do it about three times per night on average.

However, despite the constant annoyance of getting in and out of bed three times a night, I continue to go through the routine. That was up until last night when I noticed that my net that keeps me safe and secure from all the little Ugandan critters has two fairly massive holes, approximately the size of a quarter and a nickel respectively, rendering the net and my entire bedtime process completely useless. So basically if you add up the two weeks I’ve lived in this apartment and multiply that by an average of fifteen minutes a night—that’s um… well… HOURS of time that I’ll never get back for no mosquito protection whatsoever. Oh well, off to buy a new net…

My Caffeine Addiction Rears its Ugly Head

If I have one vice in my life, it’s Diet Dr. Pepper. I’m pretty sure it’s replaced my blood and is currently surging through my veins and keeping me alive. Or at least it was before I moved to Uganda… the land of no Diet Dr. Pepper. Anywhere.

Obviously I knew this before I came, and came anyway. So perhaps vice is too strong a word. But in the full knowledge that I was moving to a place thousands of miles away from the closest can of that sweet nectar of the gods, I decided that this would be a good time to try to cut down drastically on my soda intake. So while I enjoy an ice cold orange Fanta every once in awhile, I’ve pretty much stayed away from soda since I’ve been here.

One small problem with this plan… Apparently my years of DDP consumption have led to a teensy-weensy, itty-bitty, minor (ok, ALL CONSUMING) caffeine addiction. But hey, here I am in a country famous for its delicious organic coffee! This shouldn’t be a problem at all, right? Wrong.

While Uganda does produce some of the finest coffee in the world, Ugandans don’t drink it. Tea is everywhere, but coffee is pretty much strictly an export cash crop. And while one can find all sorts of fancy coffee drinks at Kampala’s fancy expat places (see above for the lovely spread at Cafe Pap), you can expect those to set you back $3-4 dollars a pop. So here are my options: a) invest in a coffee maker which are currently selling at about $50 at Game (the South African walmart) and make my own darn coffee; b) resign myself to the poor coffee imitation—Nescafe; c) just suck it up and pay for the coffee at the restaurants (student loans be damned!); or d) give up caffeine altogether and wean myself off the stuff slowly and painfully (if this option is taken I apologize now to anyone who has to be around me for the next few months).

Any advice is appreciated. I’ll keep you informed of my decision, though it might be obvious based on my state of mind over the next couple of months…

Pictures from Uganda... finally

I've uploaded a few pictures from my apartment, neighborhood, field visits, and birthday. Enjoy!

http://picasaweb.google.com/courtneywbabcock13/UgandaAugust2008

Pictures and Posting

Pictures are coming soon, I PROMISE. The problem is I don’t have internet at home or my office yet so my online time is limited to internet cafes with really slow connection speeds. And uploading pictures takes forever on a slow connection and I just don’t have time to sit around and twiddle my thumbs while the pictures load. But I should be getting internet at home and at work in the next week or so, so I promise I will provide pics soon!

Also, for those of you stalking…erm, reading… my blog regularly, you might have noticed that I’m posting a lot of posts at once. Again, due to my infrequent internet usage, I’m forced to write the blogs and then post them all at once when I’m at a café. I’ve put the dates that the posts were written in parenthesis after the title, so that should help sort out when things were written. Anyway, I apologize for the onslaught of posts all at once—I hope to even them out a little more once I have more regular internet access.

Learning How to Cook (8-20-08)

It has become painfully obvious to me that I’m going to have to learn to cook. My friend who lives in Kampala kept warning me about how expensive everything was but I didn’t believe her. Until I got here. Food is SUPER expensive*—particularly places catering to expats like myself. I’m guessing it has something to do with the fact that Uganda is a landlocked country with a less-than-reliable rail system so everything essentially has to come in via truck from Kenya. With fuel prices what they are (you think you pay a lot for gas—Ugandans pay almost 3,000 shillings a liter, or about $7.50 per gallon!), that translates to everything being uber pricey. And while local food is not too expensive and pretty tasty, it’s loaded with starches and lacking in vegetables, so it’s not something I can eat three times a day every day. So clearly eating out is going to have to be a luxury and not the norm.

Anyway, I’ve always thought of myself as someone who can get by when it comes to cooking. I mean, I’ve never fancied myself as Martha Stewart, but when push comes to shove, I can make a delicious meal. I just don’t choose to do it that often.

Yeah, well, that was in the states. Cooking here is a completely different matter. First off, it’s hard/expensive to get things that are canned or even slightly prepared. So that means all of those nights I “cooked” a veggie burger or “made” a pizza, I wasn’t cooking at all! I was taking various prepared ingredients and putting them together to make a meal. Here when I want to have pasta I can’t just cook the pasta and open up a can of Paul Newman sauce—I have to actually MAKE the sauce. Or spend $12 on Ragu. Um, no…

Additionally I have no oven. I have a gas stove, but no way to bake anything. I think I’m going to invest in a toaster oven so that I can have toast and do some baking-lite, but it’s not an oven. So this presents an additional challenge.

The good news is I have access to some of the cheapest, freshest, organic, and delicious veggies and fruits in the world. And I can get most any spice fresh from the market. I just have to learn to use them properly. So far I’ve made a delicious veggie omelet, some AMAZING guacamole (though without tortilla chips, the guac loses some of its excitement), and the aforementioned pasta sauce. And I’ve eaten TONS of passion fruit, pineapple, mangos, and watermelon, which require no preparation at all!

Anyway, I have confidence in my abilities. I actually look forward to this challenge and think it will be good for me to be forced to learn to cook. A little bit like learning to swim by getting thrown in the deep end of the pool… But, that being said, if anyone has any simple, delicious recipes that don’t require prepared ingredients or an oven, please pass them on!

* Please note that my standards of cost have gone down a bit, so it’s nothing like living in NYC, just way more expensive than other African countries I’ve lived/traveled in, so don’t let that scare you when planning your visit! Have I mentioned I want people to visit? :)