Food Blog

Last night Seth and I finished watching "Julie & Julia" - which was fabulous - and I looked online for roast duck recipes. The number of food blogs available made me think, unfortunately not for the first time, "Hey, I could write a food blog! I eat; I cook; I take pictures; it would be cool!"

Then I had the realistic thought: "Who gives a fuck what I eat? I already ask people to read about my life and now I want them to know about my diet, as well? Oh, how vain I can be."

There is also the sad fact that I rarely cook in Uganda so my posts would read something like, "I bought a pineapple and ate it for dinner." Fascinating.

However, if you are curious please rest assured that I am not losing any weight, so I am eating in food in some combination of delicious; bad for you; and copious quantities.

And fruit. I also eat fruit.

Now you know. And know I have to run to the kitchen because I hear the sounds of my chicken stock boiling over.

It smells delicious.

It's Beginning to Feel A Lot like Christmas

Last year the holiday was an extrememly odd time for me: first Christmas without both parents; first away from family; first in a Muslim country. The lack of ubiquitous seasonal decorations and music coupled with my continuing grief left me, for the first time, not caring at all about the holiday despite it also being the first Christmas with Seth. We did have our little tree, which I took great care and tenderness to decorate, but neither it nor gifts could diminsh my apathetic attitude. I wondered if it would continue from then on, making me yet another person who dislikes Christmas because of the conflicting and troubling emotions it brings.

Fortunately, that hasn't happened. "It never gets easier, just different"; so true. Besides, what sort of lasting tribute would it be the my mother, the human embodiment of Christmas spirit, if I were to hate the holiday season because of her absence? Or my father, who, despite always grumbling about the excessive decorations in the house, smiled whenever he looked at the lit tree and played Christmas music all day long.

And so this year my spirit has returned, remembering and mourning those who are gone but grateful and happy for my life as it is now. Seth, being the wonderful man he is, bought a larger tree for the apartment and helped decorate it, even gathering an old sheet to act as the skirt. Plus, we are hosting a Christmas Eve dinner; how festive is that?


To those in the States, and elsewhere, I wish you a very Merry Christmas.


And offer some holiday lights, courtesy of the Kuwait oil fields.

Attack of the Fifty-Foot Grasshopper! Or, How To Deal with Bugs

Or at least 50 million. Two nights I woke up at one point in the night having to pee (considering the 3 liters of water I drink per day, a fairly common occurrence.) I heard a loud, penetrating hum and, remembering the short circuit in our building earlier in the day, thought something was up with the electricity again. Oh, was I wrong.

The walls outside my room were covered with these little fellows, grasshoppers climbing and flying around. I ran the gauntlet to what I imagined was the relative safety of the toilet, only to find more on the door and even a couple waving at me from the toilet. A terrifying experience for one half-asleep. I re-tucked my net extra tight.

In the morning, while appreciating my mosquito net for keeping out spiders and now grasshoppers, I realized this meant fried grasshoppers would now be available; sure enough, people were out early in the morning, harvesting the bugs from buildings; trees; grass; and the sky was full of birds - crows and sparrows, mainly - gluttonously flying around.

How to fry grasshoppers? It's amazing in it's simplicity:

1. Collect
When the sound of grasshoppers' (let's call them Jiminys) wings rubbing together makes someone think there is a major electrical malfunction, this only takes a few minutes.

2. Clean

As in, remove legs and wings, even as you watch the Jiminys reach for your fingers with their remaining legs - or stumps - and turn their heads left and right, trying to bite you with their pincers. It would be sad, but only if you mistook their behavior for actual intelligence and not the simply life-saving instinct it truly is. Remember: they're just bugs.

It is still creepy, though.

3. Fry

Just dry pan-fry.

Jiminys are so greasy they cook in their own fat; 100% protein my ass.


4. Eat


See? Eating already. Maybe we should consider this for the next locust swarm. We still have 14 years or so to come up with some recipes, right?

Another post, another failure at a catchy title

What's that in the picture? A cake? A strawberry cake? Who the hell cares about a stupid strawberry cake, you may be wondering? I do. That's right, because that cake was baked in a charcoal oven, like this one.


How many cakes have you baked in a charcoal oven? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Seth arrives in Kigali next week, which means the week after that I leave for a month-long vacation. I suppose some would say that 4 (actually 5) weeks off from work is a bit much considering I have been at the job for three months - well, no, I don't know many people who would complain like that but I know they exist. This school term has been exhausting and educative, leaving me with many ideas to use when crafting workshop plans for next year. I have also made some personal revelations:

1) I will never get used to African time. In fact, it takes a lot of deep breathing for me to even be patient with African time. However, I do enjoy it when I use it as my excuse, though locals never do. How come I am supposed to accept their being late but they don't accept mine?

2) I can't stomach black instant coffee. When I first came I was drinking my coffee - the fine, dust-like powder it is - almost straight, with an occasional spoon of purloined sugar from the kitchen, simply because I didn't want to spend money on my own sugar. I know - how cheap can you be? At this point I drink my coffee with sugar, Nido and cocoa powder and if one is missing I suffer pitiably. Yes, life in central African is that hard.

3) I know more about teaching than I realized. I had guessed for some time that, having been in school for so long something had to have rubbed off on me, and it seems it did. More than pedagogical knowledge, however, I also enjoy teaching. This doesn't mean that I never wish I could smack a couple of those punk-ass P5 students across the face, just that I should consider the education field more seriously in the future.

4) Aubergines (to distinguish them form the nasty, bitter green eggplants also found here) have become a favorite of mine; I used to fling these bulbs os nastiness to the floor in disgust. Seriously, who thought that such a spongy, ugly little thing could be tasty? Not me - until now; I've eaten the things 5 times in the past two weeks.

5) This has occurred to me before but has recently become a stark realization: the desperate need for evaluative research into education programs here in Africa. How much of an impact has Smiles had on the live of children here - other than swimming skills, which are easily observed? How many years will a viable program need to be in place before it has any effect, if it has any effect? Is this the right way to go about spreading education? Those typical questions of, "What's the point?" smacking me straight in the face. It's relevant, though: Smiles has been working with Bufuka Primary School since 2004, which means the majority of P7 students had experienced Smiles workshops for 5 years - yet half of them can't understand English. What was achieved?

6) It is hard being away from Seth. Yes, we both knew it would be difficult but had no idea - no fucking idea - just how hard it would be. I hadn't realized the essentiality of that man in my life but it's there, deep and strong. Serendipity struck strong that day in the airport.

7) Finally - I hate foam mattresses. But charcoal ovens? Bring it.

Do you sporcle? 50% geography, 50% spelling, 100% fun!

Because you should. One of my current volunteers, Mike, introduced me to this awesomeness a couple of weeks ago. You, too, can waste time yet exercise your mind with such amazing quizzes as "Name All Island Nations" or "Variants of the Name 'John' Around the World." Of course there are more, such thought-provoking, some ridiculously stupid, others which leave in the terrifying grips of "Damn it, I can feel the answer!" - like me, above. Like when you spend 5 minutes trying to remember the names of the two crotchety old men from the Muppets, only to remember them and then have that knowledge melt away with sleep. Oh, but wait, then it pops in again.



Why go out when you can spend several hours on quizzes? And don't think this is just a one-person deal. There have been 4 of use crowded around a computer at a time, trying to remember everything mentioned in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire". Can you imagine, Foxy by Nature, how awesome game nights would be with dueling groups going at quizzes?

Oh, and there are plenty of sports-related quizzes for those of you so inclined, like the Pittsburgher already mentioned.

Try it out. Try it with a friend. Why waste time of Facebook quizzes that tell you if you are, really, a potato, when you can try and guess, in four minutes, all the countries in the world that are spelled with alternating consonants and vowels (like Canada)?

That's what I thought. www.sporcle.com

Did you know people in other parts of the world don't eat peanut butter & jelly sandwiches?

It's true - many have never even considered putting the two together. Can you believe it? I couldn't when confronted with this astounding truth. I mean, I know PB&J is pretty standard American fare but come on: never imagined the two together? To never have heard of such deliciousness? I mean, England and Australia, even. Amazing.

So I went from two posts in one week to no posts for over a month - score! Now we have broadband where I am living and live is sweet. The job is going well though has become insanely busy: I didn't have a day off for over two weeks and after a mini-break to Kampala for a haircut and pedicure, probably won't have any until sometime late November. Fair enough, though - I will be away for a month in December so might as well work now. What would I do otherwise, anyway? Well, I could travel to a few nearby locations, but I find it's best to just stay busy. No idle hands here.

I am pretty sure I got worms from the fish (or something) I ate over the independence weekend (October 10-11). At least, for several days afterward I had constant runny poop and it felt like someone was stabbing me in the gut every 30 minutes or so. Plus, I took a de-worming tablet and that made the stabbing feeling go away, so it seems like it killed something. Nevertheless, the squishy stomach feeling has yet to go.

I am not taking malaria medication but, since it is often freezing here (well, like 50s or 60s) and I have been bitten all of zero times in Kabale or Bunyonyi, I haven't been worried about it. The quick, humid and fucking hot trip to Kampala and the equator reminded me that sometimes I should worry; more to the point, the 20 or so bites along my ankles, legs and even up to ass and crotch area have reminded me. Hmmm. Here's hoping!

I thought of Thanksgiving the other day; damn, I love that holiday. And again I will in UG for it. The day of T-giving is also the nursery school graduation, but afterwards I will cook a dinner at the lake. Buy a chicken (or two), slaughter it, drink some potentially bad wine; fuck it, Seth will be here so it will be fun. My sister and I have agreed to photo document our Thanksgivings so that will be fun to compare.

Did this post sound like a teenager's journal entry? Obviously I just trying to let my 5 faithful readers know that, yes, I still think at time; unfortunately the depth of my thoughts vary.

By the way, Ankole cows have fucking huge horns. No, Seth, I don't care that the Texas longhorm has the longest recorded horns - these horns are still f-ing big. This is why I don't near the 3 cows that Smiles owns.


That PB&J thing really gets me, though. I ate three in row just to calm myself down/

A Brief yet Wonderful Visit

From the love of my life, though he didn't wear his Chacos all the time so he did not experience the red feet of Uganda. It was good, had fun, took off too much time from work (which has crashed back into my reality as of this morning) plus Seth bought me a number of things including a large jar of mayo. Yes!
It does excite me. I try to stick to my budget of no-more-than 7,000 shillings/day on food and since that jar o' mayo cost 7750 it is obviously outside my budget. Plus, I also have peanut butter AND jam AND instant soup packets AND a small bottle of gin. Who's livin' the high life now?
Happily his private hire got him to Kabale fast. He landed in Kigali 12pm and I was thinking maybe 4 or 5 hours later he'd show up, but no: he arrived in less than 3. Which meant brief waiting-period for me.



Of course, coming from the barren desert of Kuwait we hit a bar his first night in country.


The following days were spent immersing him in the culture as much as possible. Unfortunately for Seth this included a visit to a local bar to enjoy (?) some local waragi. I think his stomach (and mine) might still be burning.

On a slightly random note: apparently I have a very "American smile," at least according to Sharon, my Israeli volunteer. Meh?