We all know we should eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. Carbohydrates should be limited and wholemeal where possible. Not in Uganda!
Meals consist of at least 2, often 3, forms of carbohydrate. Rice, pocho (wheat flour mush), Irish (that’s potato to you and me), chapatti. And huge piles of them too. Twice a day.
A small portion of carbs!
Vegetables, on the other hand, are rare. Matoke (mushed banana) is the national dish but technically a fruit not a vegetable. If the ubiquitous bowl of beans has half a tomato-sized aubergine in, this is considered a serving of vegetables. ‘Greens’ (some sort of local spinach) are served with some meals but by no means all. And the bowl contains the amount of greens I would normally put just on my plate, not share with 6 other people.
Fruit is abundant if rarely eaten. Mangos and jackfruit are in season right now. Mangos are eaten with the peel and regardless of whether they are ripe or not. Enormous jackfruit are cut into slices and the fruit picked out from the sticky pith.
Jackfruit
Beans are served with every meal so the pulses section is ticked. Dairy is taken in the form of African tea i.e. a mug of milk with a spoonful of tea stirred in. Oh, and 3 spoons of sugar.
Breakfast is the oddest meal of the day. I’ve stopped eating the wholemeal bread I made them buy me (I couldn’t be doing with the sweet white bread they all seem to love) as I know a huge plate of something is going to appear out of the kitchen. On a good day, It’s a dish of delicious watermelon and pineapple. But most days It’s some kind of carb. Ekikommando (chapatti and beans) is nice if a little heavy. Chips and tomato is the most common offering. Eight weeks in, chips for breakfast has begun to seem normal.
So much for being healthier in Africa. My healthy-eating no-white-carb, lots-of-fruit-and-veg diet is going well!
Life here is lived on the street. And businesses are small and numerous. Small ‘hotels’ line the roadside serving carbs, beans, and if you’re lucky, some greens. No rooms at these hotels though. In fact they are just one small room, usually a small shed, with a table and a couple of benches. Cooking is done outside on a charcoal fire. Lunch costs 30p. And I don’t even have a full portion size!
A Ugandan ‘hotel’
