August Update

Hello friends and family!

I hope you all are enjoying your summers! It has been great to see many of your camping photos up on Facebook and we have enjoyed seeing all of the adventures you are having! Here is a recent one of us having lunch at the EMI office:

We are well here: school for me and the kids is starting up in a few weeks. I am nervous as I have a ton of planning remaining but the kids are SOOOOO excited! They have been asking to go to school almost every day, so I pulled out the calendar and we're counting down the days until school starts! We picked up their uniforms yesterday and they look so cute! The strangest part of the experience so far was receiving an e-mail from the PTA and realizing that I was getting it because I was part of the P not the T!

So, instead of a lengthy emotional update (to sum up, we're all doing very well) this will be a cultural piece about food here in Kampala!

First off, does anyone else see the face? It startled me while making dinner last night, then I felt guilty for mangling it for our sweet and sour pork dinner...

Firstly, I need to reassure you all that the local food we have had so far has been yummy! There is a big Indian influence in the cooking here, which is great because we love the variety of flavours! Rice and beans is a very typical dish here as well as posho and beans. Posho is an inexpensive starch that is boiled and pretty flavourless but works well with the bean sauces.

A few of our favorite local foods so far include:
- rice and beans
- chipati: a large and thin eggy pancake that can be eaten on it's own or like a flatbread with other sauces
 - Rolex: a chipati that is filled with scrambled eggs and tomatoes and onions and rolled up like a burrito
- Ugandan samosas: very similar to the Indian variety we had in Vancouver except that they just have ground beef and peas and greens in them.

Jay's friend and our local chipati and Rolex maker. The balls of dough are the chipati before they are cooked, and the finished chipati are next to the eggs. This stand is on the main road we live off of and that Jay walks on to work.

Despite all of the good things, there have been a few that were difficult to adjust to. One example of this is that the milk tastes really different here: I can't put my finger on it, but the first time I tried it, I thought that it had absorbed all of the smells from the fridge. The first time Nathaniel tried it, he called it "paint milk" and still only has it in his oatmeal or cereal...And because the milk has a tangy flavour, the cheese and other dairy products here also have a funny tinge to them. The GOOD news is, that we have adapted and I am now at a point where I can drink some of the milk plain!

New things for us:

- freezing everything to kill the bugs (flour, sugar, popcorn, oatmeal, rice, etc.) whether purchased from side of the road or from major grocery store and then having to sort through said food items to remove the dead bugs, small rocks, etc.

- the importance of sealing all food so that bugs don't get in...they will eat anything!!!

- lemons here are green and look like large limes, and limes here are also green but are quite small, like key limes

- bananas: we have never seen such variety in bananas before.  They have large bananas like back home, and red bananas which are HUGE and very sweet with a red peel. Most people, however, eat small bananas which are only a few inches long but which are SOO yummy and sweet. We eat about 4 or 5 bunches each week!


- Grocery Shopping: although there are larger supermarkets here in the city, they are not very close to our house and so our weekly shop has become much more complicated. We get most of our dry goods and dairy products from a local supermarket called The Embassy as they seem to have pretty low prices. Please keep in mind that this "super" market is maybe only slightly larger than your average 7-11, but they are able to stock most of what we need. They do not, however, have a meat department and so we head down the street to a delicatessen called Quality Meats where we are able to get things like chicken and ground beef. Once our dry goods,  dairy and meat have been purchased, all that remains is our produce. Produce can be purchased at the supermarkets, but the freshest stuff (and the most inexpensive) is at the local markets. Rather than brave the markets and foreigner mark-up, I send a list with my house help and she takes care of it all for me. I am pretty blessed. Overall, I enjoy our new routine and I am getting spoiled by all of the lovely produce, however, I do still miss the FABULOUS shopping carts at Superstore back home;)









- when we first arrived here, one of our team mates, who has been here nearly 10 years, told us that "after a while, you'll be able to make anything!" as she passed us her homemade ginger ale. To be honest, I thought she was a little crazy, but I have found that I am beginning to teeter off the edge myself. After nearly 5 months here, I am discovering that there are some things that I do miss from home and that I am willing to invest the time into making. Here are two of my more recent endeavours:

Can you guess what this is for?

Yup!

Yummy, homemade potato and cheese perogies! SOOOOO HAPPY!!!!!

We had a chili night at our house and we decided that Fritos Corn Chips needed to accompany the meal. They were a lot of work but they tasted AWESOME!

So there you are! As you all enjoy popsicle and freezie season, I hope that you have enjoyed getting a little "taste" of the food culture here in our new world!


Much love to you all,


Jay, Becky and the Kids

Nathaniel practicing his drawing skills. They like me to draw stick people pictures of our family and friends.

Nathaniel's handiwork: Daddy. Note the hat, mustache and goatee. Also note, those are legs and not a neck...we still have a little work to do:)

Bethany on her new "Boda." It has 2 wheels at the bike so it works like a trike but looks like a motorcycle! They have so much fun bombing around the compound on it.