The People of Buganda, in Uganda, Speak Luganda
Yesterday was orientation; in many more ways than I could have ever imagined. Yes, it was my first formal training with ENVenture where I was introduced to the countless challenges that I will face throughout the course of my fellowship this summer — but perhaps more importantly yesterday marked the true beginning of my education in Ugandan food, culture, and life. The morning began with a round of goodbyes. I bid farewell to the mostly European and American friends I had met at the hostel in Kampala, and in doing so I put behind me the last major connection I had to the western world.
I grabbed my bags and jumped into my first Ugandan Uber, which for the 25-minute ride to ENVenture cost 4,250 UGX (Ugandan schillings). The USD to UGX exchange rate is about 1 to 3,750; so, the Uber cost me approximately $1.13. This doesn’t quite compare to the 10,000 UGX I paid the day prior which covered a 5-hour tour of Kampala and the surrounding towns on the back of a boda boda taxi. These motorcycle taxis flood the streets throughout all of Uganda and will zig and zag their way through heavy traffic to get you to your destination for as little as $0.25. However, rather than trying to juggle my bags on the back of a motorcycle (many people gracefully manage much heavier loads than mine), I splurged for the convenience of loading my luggage into a car.
After a morning of introductions and getting set up at ENVenture, Smith Tukahirwa, the fellowship coordinator, offered to treat me to some Ugandan food for lunch. A few hours later, I had tried nearly every item on the “local foods” menu of a nearby restaurant, and I struggled mightily just to stand up after the meal. We started with an order of chapati, a fried Ugandan bread (in my mind it was birthed from a marriage between naan and tortillas), accompanied by three typical sauces found across the country: cow pea sauce, g-nut sauce, and bean sauce. These sauces are like soup — imagine the bean sauce, for example, as very similar to chili. All three were delicious. Our main course was a mixed plate made up of several very common side dishes: posho, matoke, and kalo; which was also served with rice, yams, cassava, pumpkin and greens. Are you starting to understand why I could barely move after this?
Ground white corn is the base for Posho, used to form a dough-like substance that is molded into a half inch thick patty and then steamed. In its final form, Posho is very dense and dry; it is typically eaten with a sauce or stew broth. Matoke is made with mashed boiled bananas — there are many varieties of bananas grown in Uganda — my host family grows maybe a dozen different types. The ones used for Matoke resemble plantains, giving it more of a savory rather than sweet taste. Kalo, perhaps the most interesting of the three dishes I tried for lunch, is made with ground millet, which was only familiar to me from my days working in the grain commodity industry. The millet mixture is steamed to form Kalo — a very chewy food that has a thick gelatin texture. While tasty, the carbohydrate-rich meal filled me up incredibly fast, making it difficult to drink the beer Smith insisted I order to wash it down. I must admit, the Ugandan-brewed Nile Special is rather tasty.
Following the smorgasbord, we returned to ENVenture’s offices where Godfrey — the founder of the NGO I will be working with this summer — was waiting for us. After months of videos calls, I recognized him immediately, and was excited to shake his hand for the first time. Then came the time to embark on our 130-kilometer journey westward towards Masaka where I will be living for the next few months. On the nearly three-hour drive to Masaka, Godfrey and I talked about everything from our project to our families. Fun fact: Godfrey has four brothers and two sisters, each who have a different last name than Godfrey (who’s surname is Zaake). As you can imagine I was quite confused as I sat in his parent’s living room, looking up at their 35-year anniversary photo. I was entirely oblivious that in Uganda, as per the tradition of the Buganda tribe, parents assigned their children with both first and last names. It was thought in Buganda, which was the largest native tribe to occupy modern day Uganda, that many children born of the same last name was not good for the balance of power throughout a village. And so, most Ugandan brothers and sisters do not share surnames.
The Kingdom of Buganda, which covers all of present day Central Uganda as well as parts of Rwanda, planted the seedlings for much of what has blossomed into modern Ugandan culture, including Luganda which is the most common language spoken throughout the country. Simanyi Luganda… which means “I don’t understand any Luganda.” While English is taught in schools beginning in 1st grade, at home all Ugandans speak in their native tongues. So, while most Ugandans, especially the younger ones, speak English, hardly any of them use it to interact with one another. In all, there were over 50 different tribes — each with unique languages, cuisines, and customs — that evolved into an intricate network of 113 different districts that exist today within Uganda.
This summer, I will be working in a district called Lwengo, a mostly rural region made up of six sub-counties and around 55 different villages. Given that each village in Lwengo has about 200 households on average, and the average family has around 7 people, “rural region” does not mean sparsely populated. Although nearly all residents in Lwengo are farmers, each family only cultivates a few acres. Unlike the farmers in the United States who live seclusively on massive plots of land, farmers in Uganda can gently toss a rock and land it on their neighbors’ roof. Admittedly, I did not realize this when Godfrey mentioned that there had been a change in plans. He informed me that I would now be living with another family rather than staying at his parents’ house. I was a bit anxious when he first shared this news, however, I quickly realized upon arriving to Godfrey’s village that I could see my new home from his front doorstep.
By the time we arrived to meet my host family, darkness had overtaken the village. After introducing her family, my host mother, Kristen, showed me to my room, a small lodging detached from the main house. Kristen ordered her niece to prepare some water for me to bathe before bed, an offer I couldn’t respectfully decline — not that I really wanted to. I grabbed my soap and towel and was escorted to the outhouse adjacent to my lodge. Upon showing me the toilet, Kristen, chuckling slightly, asked me if I was afraid of the rectangle hole in the ground covered by a wooden plank. I laughed of her question and prepared for my first ever bucket shower, a task I completed clumsily given my lack of experience and the fact that I couldn’t see anything.
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