A taste of Uganda's 'street kitchen'

Despite flashes of the country's dark history, Ugandans have a culture thread of diversity not only through the manner of dress, language and various other features but also in her variety of dishes, writes Joe Ombuor

Travelling within Uganda is fun that goes beyond eating matoke or consuming Nile lager beer. What with the ubiquitous skewered meat that has become synonymous with the country war time British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill called ‘The Pearl of Africa’.

In the east around Jinja, mouth watering skewered chicken bombards travellers at every stop. Roasted matoke is ever available to accompany the delicacies down. Skewered meat and roasted matoke dog you northwards as chicken diminishes. Suddenly, pineapples dominate the scene as one enters Luweero, north of Kampala.

 Remember the Luweero triangle where HIV/Aids once reigned supreme? Victims’ graves are all over the place, but pineapples and not HIV/Aids is the area’s trademark today.

Gradually, roast matoke is replaced by roast cassava, but skewered meat remains all the way to Karuma Bridge over the Nile that marks entry into Acholi country.

From there, the skewers thin out, giving way to sesame, groundnuts, roast cassava and fried flying insects known as ng’wen that escort you all the way to Gulu, the administrative and commercial headquarters of Northern Uganda better known for atrocities committed by fugitive Joseph Kony and his terror gang.

Officer and a tout

But what left me truly staggered during a weeklong odyssey in Uganda was an episode depicting the relationship between that country’s matatu touts and the police.

I had travelled to the torrid shores of Lake Albert to have a glimpse of the much talked about oil finds. While cooling my heels close to the ferry-landing point at Wanseko Beach, about 100 kilometres from Masindi, a Nissan matatu pulled up and among the passengers who jumped out covered in dust were four uniformed police officers, one of them a woman. Nothing unusual about that!

What caught my curiosity were rude shouts by the matatu conductor to one of the police officers to pay up full fare or risk having his luggage detained. What at first looked like a banter to me turned serious when the driver started revving away, threatening to take off with the police officer’s luggage if he continued dithering over paying the full fare. The humbled officer had to borrow money from his colleagues to offset the deficit, upon which his luggage was released. I was miffed because back home, the police officers would have travelled free and probably shouted insults at the conductor and his driver in return.

My sojourn at the shoreline of the picturesque Lake Albert was to see for myself the much talked about Ugandan oil wells. All I could see was bush and clearings where rigs and the muffled drone from generators offered the only respite from the monotony of trees and dense undergrowth.

Out of bounds

The clearings were out of bounds to strangers and armed individuals were hawk-eyed against any breach. Indeed, the area was experiencing a fuel shortage as evidenced by long queues of motorists at petrol stations in Balisa, Bisu, Wanseko and other trading centres close to the lake.

The shores team with fish, both big and small. "We hear oil has been discovered in the surrounding bushes where Chinese nationals are camped with equipment, but we are yet to see it," said a resident on condition of anonymity.

The oil in the bush could change these jungles some day. But that prospect looks distant where people still live in makeshift structures and trading centres betray little or no signs of prosperity.

Economic fillip remains at best, obscure. The oil is still but a mirage. What makes life tick at the moment around Lake Albert is fish and fishing.

At Wanseko, finger-sized fish known locally as adel litter the beachfront as they dry in the sun, leaving a stubborn stench hanging on the air.

There are no traces of oil anywhere. The local Alur and Lugbara communities who speak a language stunningly akin to Dholuo lead a Spartan life with nothing to show for the new wealth.

Further north in Acholi land, peace is slowly returning after two decades of hostilities by Joseph Kony and his killer gangs that left thousands dead, maimed or traumatised. Millions were uprooted from their homes. And are finding it hard to get back their bearing.

Relics of war

Gulu, the regional headquarters located 330 kilometres north of the capital, Kampala, is slowly erasing the relics of the war. Gone are the amalgamated schools — huge open air learning centres that brought together students and teachers from various schools to elude attacks by the Lords Resistance Army.

Schools have started operating normally. Also gone are the nightly exodus by rural populations that, at the peak of the war, saw Gulu’s population swell many times overnight as people in outlying areas trooped to town to seek refuge. The once notorious amalgamated schools that saw students and teachers from various schools herded together like goats or sheep to receive an education with no quality to talk about have been phased out after security improved with the flight of Joseph Kony to the dense forests of Congo and the Central African Republic.

Gulu today is a bustling town with banks, schools, hotels, hospitals, churches and other amenities in operation. Among the banks offering financial services are Kenya’s Kenya Commercial Bank and Equity Bank. Others are Barclays, Standard Chartered, Stanbic, Postbank Uganda, Crane Bank, Bank of Africa, Centenary and DFCU Bank.

As I walked through the streets of Gulu that incidentally are well lit at night, it dawned on me that the town was host to East Africa’s first outbreak of Ebola, a deadly hemorrhagic fever transmitted through body fluids that killed over 150 people there a decade ago.

Lacor Hospital that was nearly crippled by the disease after the loss of its medical superintendent Dr Mathew Lokwiya and 12 nurses is vibrant once more.

HIV /Aids is rampant, thanks to the conflict and Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) soldiers at whom fingers are pointed for importing Ebola from the Democratic Republic of Congo.