Hunting Down and Burying the Thanksgiving Turkey

When we were invited to join our friends for a traditional Thanksgiving meal we were really excited. We had immensely enjoyed Thanksgiving with them last year, and this year was no different in that regard. What was different is that last year, their church had raised a few turkeys so it was not a problem to get the main course, whereas this year, there was no clear way to find the meat.

Loren, our host and friend, and I began the hunt. We made phone calls. We searched the web. We talked to friends. We queried others in Uganda on Facebook. We even wandered through the neighborhood chasing down birds when we heard the classic "gobble gobble" call of the elusive beasts - literally! What we discovered was that the birds we heard were already sold. The local shop sold frozen ones for 33,000 shillings a kilo. At that rate, a 22 pound bird would be $131, and we had over twenty people to feed.

Finally, we ended up buying a live female from the market in a town near ours, negotiating the price down to $30 for bird that definitely didn't tip the 10 pound point. The turkey was joined by 2 of Loren's chickens who were refusing to lay eggs, and Loren's husband and sons "dispatched" them.

The kids and I had been studying the original Thanksgiving celebration from early American history this term, so our hunt for a live bird felt a bit more authentic. Just to add more flavor (literally and figuratively) to the birds, our friends buried them. No, not permanently, but over hot coals, surrounded by hot bricks, and wrapped in banana leaves and foil a few feet under the ground for several hours! The guys dug them up as the guests eagerly watched, sniffing the air appreciatively.

I found it ironic that in order to keep the meat tidy and clean, the entire underground poultry package was wrapped in chicken wire!

Everyone recognized that all that effort was worth it the minute the final layer of banana leaves was opened, and we saw the glory and smelled the roasted aroma of what was to be the main attraction of a delicious feast.

Our hard-earned birds were joined by local white sweet potatoes, stuffing with herbs from Loren's garden, butternut squash from her garden, mashed "Irish" - what white potatoes are called in Uganda, gravy, crescent rolls, cranberry sauce from a can (a nice find here), pumpkin pie, and ice cream - ALL of it homemade except for the cranberry sauce. And when I say "homemade" I mean everything from cooking an actual pumpkin to mixing cream, sugar, vanilla, and milk for amazing ice cream!

Loren and I had a few scares with the electricity popping on and off throughout the day, but we managed to get the whole happy affair on the table and served. When the electricity went out again for the night right before dessert was served, we sat back and relaxed, enjoying the candlelight and company, extremely thankful for the good Lord's provision of tasty local food, the energy to make it all, and the blessing of sharing it with good friends who are our on-the-field family.

That being said, I think we might have a simple Christmas dinner. I'm thinking...sandwiches?

To Kampala and Back

After nine years in East Africa, I still am able to look about and recognize how different life is here. The differences were very apparent to me yesterday when we drove to Kampala to get immunizations for Cooper and to do some shopping. Kampala is about 20 miles away from Entebbe, and it usually takes more than an hour in the car to get there.

The government knocked down several buildings and walls which were "encroaching" on the road, so we observed people working on the rubble several times as they tried to rebuild their businesses and homes.

The traffic is unbelievable when compared to the rules of the road in America. Motorcycle taxis zip in front of us and around us weaving in and out of traffic, occasionally even going in the wrong direction. A two-lane road becomes three lanes at a driver's whim. A bus and a van had an accident and were choking up the round about (and hey - that's a difference - we have round abouts!). It's hard to describe how people drive here but here's an example of one thing we saw.

The speeding driver of an SUV passed us in oncoming traffic, and three times he intentionally swerved and pushed oncoming public-service vans off onto the shoulder, where they could have easily hit pedestrians or motorcycles. In that stretch of road, we passed two sets of traffic officers and a police vehicle, and no one did anything. It was very much like that driver was playing chicken; in other words, it was horrifying.

As we left the clinic where Cooper got 4 shots, 2 Bandaids, and 2 pieces of candy, we were approached by men on each side of the car trying to sell their live turkeys from shopping baskets. Not exactly the frozen food aisle in November!

The billboards are sometimes boring, but often amusing. My favorite one, which sells chicken meat, says, "For the love of nice chicks with fat thighs!" and has a photo of a lady biting into a piece of chicken. I honestly can't tell if they're trying to make a pun or not.

Kampala is divided here and there into shopping districts which focus on one type of item. There is a road for fabrics, a section for hardware, a produce/meat market area, and the one we drove through was for office and paper products. It boggled my mind to think of having to get out of the car (if you could find parking!) to buy things like a stapler, a ream of paper, and pens - dozens and dozens of little shops, one on top of the other, crawling with customers. And how do you choose where to shop? You choose the place where you have the best relationship with the clerks or owner!

As always, we like to watch what will go by on the back of a boda boda (the motorcycle taxis). Yesterday we saw a man with a great big Nile Perch. There was a lady with her traditional gomesi, the fancy shiny dress with shoulders that come out of a Star Trek episode. A whole family on a boda. Two ladies with a blanketed baby sandwiched between them and the driver. Piles of mattresses. Piles of cooking bananas. Piles of pineapples on the back and front of the boda. Wood sticking horizontally out into traffic. Stacks and stacks of egg trays - how do they do it without cracking them on each pothole and speed bump? It's great entertainment!

The titles of stores are always amusing. During one stretch of road for about 1 or 2 kilometers, I wrote the name of every shop with a spiritually derived name: Hosanna Investments, Noah's Ark Takeaway, Mother Mary Supermarket, Holy Family Complex, Ebenezer Carpentry, and The Divine Grocery Store. How's that for shopping incentive?

Brightly colored dresses are hung outside clothing shops on very un-American hangars. These hangars hold the dresses by the shoulders but continue on down and span out into a huge semi-circle to insinuate nice round hips!

As we arrive into Entebbe, we pass by a small bay of Lake Victoria called Sesse. For the past several months it has been flooded from all the rain we got earlier in the year - the dirt walkway had disappeared, and the bottoms of the palm trees were submerged. The little beach is back now, and it's open season for laundry at the beach. People wash their clothes and then lay them out on the grass to dry - not what you see in America when you're at the lake or beach!

Although the traffic is always truly dangerous and incomprehensible, I'm grateful that I was able to notice some of the fun parts of African roadside life yesterday in an attempt to convey the wonder of it all to you.

Making Chicken Enchiladas in Uganda

1. Buy fresh ingredients in the market.
2. Buy a frozen chicken, being grateful it's not a live one.
3. Make tortillas from scratch.
4. Boil chicken, remove meat from bones. Feed skin and bones to frenzied dogs. Freeze the broth.
5. Boil beans, drain and mix with onions, garlic, and tomatoes.
6. Chop onions, garlic, tomatoes, and green peppers for sauce.
7. Figure out conversions from "can of soup" to powdered soup mix plus water.
8. Figure out conversions from "can of Rotel tomatoes" to chopped fresh tomatoes.
9. Discard cookbook's ideas about rolling the tortillas, dipping them in sauce, and filling them with chicken.
10. Grease the pan, layer the ingredients, insert it into the oven.
11. Make guacamole from avocados from the garden.
12. Make salsa from scratch.
13. Pretend the plain yogurt is sour cream.
14. Comfort distraught daughter who swallows her loose tooth along with the guacamole.
15. Enjoy all 20 minutes of a dinner which literally took days to completely prepare.
16. Wash dishes, pots, and pans.
and finally,
17. Thank the good Lord for a great house helper who makes this possible so I can teach my kids at home, keep up with my toddler, and still be reasonably sane by dinnertime.

Reflections on a Tropical Christmas

Pros and Cons of a Tropical Christmas:

Pros:
-No over-marketing leading to greed and disappointment
-No fussing with mittens, gloves, socks, hats when we go outside
-No crusty brown yard, but beautiful green garden full of flowers and birds instead
-No pressure to decorate perfectly
-We get to enjoy our poinsettias as bushes in the ground instead of potted plants that die
-No traffic at the mall; no mall!
-Experiencing Christmas in a culture that's more similar to Biblical times than modern times

Cons:
-No crisp weather
-No hot chocolate in front of a toasty fire
-No Christmas parties on the calendar
-No holiday music in every store
-No chimney for Santa; we'll (supposedly) leave a key for him on our porch.
-No carolers at the door or Christmas hymns in church
-No drives through the neighborhood enjoying the lights on the houses
-No big extended family surrounding us through the holidays

As I contemplate this coming Christmas, I find myself experiencing both anticipation and regret. I'm regretful that I'm not with our large family in the States, but I enjoy the quieter Christmas that we have here in Uganda.

Last year we were on furlough and in the middle of a move, so we did not decorate our small apartment at all, other than taping a few of the kids' school projects to the wall. All of our own decorations were in Africa anyway. It was a bit dismal, but the joy of being near our extended families more than made up for the Spartan decor.

This year will be our first Christmas in a new home and a new country. We will need to figure out where to put our small fake tree, where to hang the stockings with no fireplace, how to bring Santa in with no chimney, and how to spend our time while our office is closed. Will we travel or just have a warm weather hibernation?

Regardless of where we are, with whom we celebrate, and how the weather feels, we are more easily reminded of the meaning of Christmas when the broo-ha-ha of American holiday marketing is stripped away. It's easier to focus on the birth of our Lord when we are surrounded by farmers, warmth, animals being herded, bright stars at night, and thatched huts which are surely similar to the surroundings Mary and Joseph experienced in their lifetime. When we see the poverty nearby, we are so grateful for and humbled by our comfortable home, our plates full of food, the electricity and running water we enjoy, and most especially the Gift that was so graciously given to all of us regardless of our nationality or wealth.

Hills on Holiday, Part 2

As promised, here are some of the animals we encountered during our October vacation. We feel fortunate to live in a place where we can see these animals in the wild with no cages or bars.
We took a boat trip down the Kazinga Channel between Lake Edward and Lake George. We had the boat to ourselves remarkably and were delighted to see so many animals coming to the water for a drink and bath. The elephants were serene and plenetiful.

Waterbuck

Buffalo in the river. Some are red colored because they are mixed with a forest race of buffalo.

Uganda is well known among bird watchers, and the river trip gave us a great opportunity to see many of them together. I was photographing the birds when these hippos popped up to say hello.

The mother hippos did not like having us around. Two even charged our boat.

Banded mongooses make their home at the Mweya Lodge where we visited for the boat ride and lunch. One that we saw even had a collar.

We saw several warthogs with their tails high as they ran across the dirt track. We also saw a few like this big fella taking respite from the heat in mud pools.

The Queen Elizabeth National Park is famous for its tree climbing lions. We had just made the decision to drive across to a further part of the park in order to see them when we noticed two lionesses heading for a candelabra tree. This tree has a trunk resembling a normal tree, but the branches are more like a cactus. They perched in the tree for about ten minutes looking for prey but spotted nothing and returned to the male and another female. It was very exciting to get to see them in the tree.

Bands of baboons are often near the roads in game parks. QENP was no exception.

I have no idea what kind of Kenyan spider this is, but it's body alone was perhaps 3 inches long, and it had a hairy gold and white back. There were three of them outside our cottage.

In Kenya we had daily Blue and Vervet monkeys outside our cottage. This Blue monkey got a little closer than we expected.

All in all it was a great trip of enjoying the creatures the Lord created, including the two-legged variety in our own family!

The Cobra

This Forest Cobra has been lurking for a long time, but only at night. Yesterday Richard, our guard/gardener, and I were clearing out some dead leaves and branches where Tiger (our cat) had followed it a few nights ago.

Tiger spotted him today and growled which alerted Richard, who is afraid of snakes. He called me, and I came up with Cooper followed by Tessa and Jack. The snake was mixed in with the vines above our wall. I called Dusty at the office to get his opinion on how to handle it when I realized that I would be the one to kill it since Richard is afraid. He advised me to get his motorcycle helmet in case it was a spitting cobra, and a long piece of rebar. I grabbed a long piece of wood on the way. Dusty then called back to say he was on his way.

By the time I got back to the wall, a small crowd of passersby had gathered from the street at our wall. I figured I would poke it with the wood and someone could kill it with the rebar. Richard had gone inside to get a kerosene sprayer. When I approached the snake (with Tessa, Jack, and Cooper behind me with some lady) with my helmet and wood, people realized I was serious, and Richard started spraying it. The kerosene made it writhe and move fast as it's apparently poisonous to snakeskin. People began yelling and running. In the middle of the commotion Dusty drove up, and a man grabbed the wood and started whaling on it, beating it out of the vine and onto the ground, where he killed it.

So I can't claim the kill, but I'm taking credit for the initiative at least - everyone else was simply gawking and unwilling to approach it or make a plan. We brought it inside the gate after thanking the crowd, measured it at 6'4", took some photos, and gave Tiger a treat.

Even Cooper got a hold of it. The guards are happy to see it dead, and Dusty and Jack skinned it for me. I want a belt!! We'll see. I doubt anyone around here knows how to tan a snakeskin; neither do we. Do you?

Our book says it is the "largest and most impressive cobra in Africa." So this one is not a big Forest Cobra, but it was big enough to do some serious damage! I wouldn't ordinarily kill a snake, but knowing that this snake had the potential to kill, and knowing our small kids play games all over our garden was enough to send this one to meet his maker.

African adventures still continue after eight years!

Hills on Holiday

We've become accustomed to some of the British-influenced wording we hear so often in East Africa. One of these phrases is "on holiday" which doesn't necessarily mean a holiday in the American sense; it means a vacation. Here are some photos of our family from our recent much-needed holiday to Western Uganda and the Indian Ocean. From the enthusiasm on their faces you can tell that it had been a long time since we had last been on a road trip.

The only photo of all 5 of us, taken on the ridge overlooking Queen Elizabeth National Park in Uganda. It was low tourist season, so we couldn't find others to take shots and resorted to the self timer. Otherwise it was pretty nice to have so few others around.

A water slide made of tile with right angles. Awful for the left hip, but awesome for Daddy-fun!

Western Uganda is covered with old volcanoes, so we enjoyed quite a few views and walks around the residual crater lakes.

The only caves in Uganda have a small waterfall which made us thankful for our raincoats. We were in for more than we bargained - it was a wet, tricky trek in the name of ecotourism - see next photo.

This is taken at the bottom of a steep muddy incline as I watched Dusty crawling under roots and vines and pulling Cooper up with him after removing the baby backpack. It became clear early on that ecotourism here means doing as little as possible to alter nature even if it means broken ankles and claustrophic vines. In other words, Adventure!

On to the second half of the trip. There were 10 dogs on the cottage compound where we stayed in Kenya. Although that is too many dogs for Dusty and me, it was a perfect source of entertainment for the kids.

It was lovely to have only 2 options for things to do every day in Kenya. Pool or beach. Marvelously brainless, and fun! Jack discovered flipping into the water while Tessa discovered flipping underwater. Cooper discovered that leather shoes don't go in water.

Cooper discovered the joy of eating fresh mango without utensils - a great sport when followed by a dip in the ocean.

The red snapper we bought which lasted us for three meals - unbelievably tasty in a coconut curry made from coconuts on the trees outside our cottage.

The next post will have photos of scenery and some of the animals we saw minus the dogs and fish! Stay tuned.