Baking a cake

Some things are complicated to accomplish in Uganda- baking turns out to be one of them. A few weeks ago, I bought some

cake at a local bakery for a birthday celebration. The cake I purchased looked

enticing. The pieces were put in a black plastic bag and I brought them home, taking care not to smash the cake. On setting down the bag at home, however, I realized that my care was unnecessary since the cake was likely about three weeks old and similar to balsa wood in consistency. Since I would never again buy anything from a bakery shameless enough to sell that cake, I started planning on finding my own means of p

roducing the next birthday cake. People here do not own ovens, however, and all cooking is done on either gas rings or charcoal. I experimented with a steamed pineapple upside down cake- not bad but a little rubbery in consistency. My initial plans for an outdoor oven were inspired by google and links sent by family and friends- I learned the appropriate internal dimensions, the right thickness of the walls, and the insistence that the door be exactly 63% of the internal height. Had I had a local Home Depot, I suspect that I would have followed this advice. However- this is not the case. I enlisted the groundskeeper, Geravase, to help me after scrounging in hardware stores failed to yield any materials I could use and after hearing that he knew how to build a kiln for bricks, which sounded pretty similar to an oven. Since neither of us seemed able to communicate our vision, though, we decided to just buy some bricks and work out the building process after. So on Saturday morning we walked to a side street where the hill had been dug out for clay and there were a number of kilns with piles of bricks. We bought the 60 bricks that Geravase estimated we would need ($3) but were then faced with the problem of how to get them back the 1 mile uphill road to the house. To avoid the expense of hiring a car ($4.50), he found a man with a wheelbarrow and we haggled over a price for transport ($3). Unfortunately, a) only 30 bricks would fit in the wheelbarrow at one time and b) the weight of even 30 of these bricks was great enough that the strong wheelbarrow owner couldn’t push it. Since Geravase stayed behind to guard our bricks, this left me to pull the wheelbarrow by a rope while he pushed it. We did eventually get all the bricks home with considerable sweat and strain. Once there, we were left with trying to figure out how to build the oven with the 60 bricks we had (a negotiated process since everyone had a different idea- by the way the 63% rule was tossed) as it was unthinkable to go back for more. The results are pictured. We tried it out on Sunday using charcoal and baking a chocolate cake (which baked in about 10 minutes with the bottom burned but was actually pretty good after I sawed off the bottom) and a shepherd’s pie. I am committed to becoming a master.

More animal adventures

I went to Queen Elisabeth National Park this week. And yes, there were more astounding animal encounters! Queen Elisabeth is

very large- 1978 sq km. The park is in Africa’s Rift Valley- site of a fissure in the earth’s crust thousands of miles long with sinking of land in between the plates. The park is a wide, flat valley surrounded by mountains. Within the park, there are two large deep lakes (one of which is shared with Democratic Republic of Congo), which are connected by the Kasinga Chanel. We reached the park about 8:30am as our plans for an arrival near dawn were thwarted by a. the driver oversleeping and b. one of the car tires requiring air which we were unable to locate despite stopping at 8 gas stations- we finally pulled off the road to a shop where a mechanic filled the tire with a bicycle pump (this worked fine until the tire developed a flat in the middle of the park). It is against the rules of the park to hike because of the carnivorous animals so we drove after picking up a guide, Eddie, in one of the nearby villages. Within the park there are abundant Ugandan Cob, a type of antelope that is the national animal. There are also lots of warthogs and water buffalo. Most of the water buffalos we saw were in small groups of 1 or 2 and the Eddie referred to them as the ‘losers’- having lost the male fight for supremacy and, therefore, off by themselves. We did see a herd of hundreds of water buffalo- unclear to us which was the grand winner in the herd. Despite the park having 3000 elephants, though, it was surprisingly hard to find them. Ditto for the 5 prides of tree-climbing lions. But…after some hours of looking and then stopping for lunch, Eddie heard that a lion had been spotted about a kilometer from the restaurant. So we got back in the car and looked some more. Despite the fact that Eddie was driving (and the rest of us staring out the windows), he spotted a lioness in a tree about 200 feet off the road. The assumption was that the rest of the family was sleeping below her. We then took a boat ride in the channel and saw hippos, water buffalo, iguanas, mongoose, crocodiles, and thousands of birds. And after rounding a bend we came on 3 elephants cooling in the shallow water and feeding- a truly thrilling experience. We later saw more by the side of the road and we stopped to look. One elephant looked mildly annoyed (flapping ears) but appeared to be retreating- until it turned towards us, trumpeted, and started charging the car! (This is why guides say to keep the car running.). RE: the photos: You may need to enlarge the tree picture to see the hidden animal. The elephant is annoyed with us. The other picture is of a fun, interactive display at the park headquarters.

Hot Springs

A few weeks ago, I visited hot springs about 2 hours from Mbarara with my fellow intern housemates. The trip there felt long- we had to locate a gas station that had gas first; it was raining hard on and off; and the road conditions are sometimes ‘a challenge’- first road construction that inexplicably consists of miles of speed bumps every 50 yards then many miles of dirt roads. There were no signs announcing the location of the springs until we reached the sign stating we’d arrived. On reaching the springs we entered another world. Steam rises from boiling water that emerges from between rocks. The water spreads out to a series of several pools and, in the other direction, joins a stream. There is only a slight hint of sulfur smell. The rocks we walked on were heated so that although it was cool and drizzling most of the time we were there, our feet were toasty. A little removed from the source of the heat, the water is warm but comfortable and about 40 Ugandans, mostly unclothed, were bathing. The waters are thought to have spiritual and physical healing powers. There were people on crutches, people praying, people bathing, and people drinking. At one point a women stood and began preaching, leading enthusiastic songs, clapping, and chanting of praise. The photos are of the springs and of Henry, Moses, Carol, and me.

Smelling Ruhiira

I’m taking a stab at the smells here in Ruhiira. I can’t say I ever tried to describe the smells in Brookline and Cambridge, but I know that the odors of my own house, my garden, my car, and Mt. Auburn Hospital are different than here. Although the rains are here, they are not enough yet to sustain any crop besides matoke so there is fear of famine in addition to the ongoing difficulty of getting water for cooking and washing. Yesterday it did rain to everyone’s great relief and the extraordinarily fresh smell of plowed earth and wet vegetation when the sun came out again, replacing the usually dry dusty smell of mid-afternoon, made me feel euphoric. I will not dwell on the pit latrines- I hated them at Girl Scout camp and haven’t gotten used to them since. ALL trash- including the ubiquitous plastic bags and water bottles- is burned here so there is the occasional waft of acrid smoke. Cattle and goats graze in town and along the road to the health center so there is that musty smell of animals. In the evening, skewers of goat meat are grilled and ‘rollex’ (an omelet between two chapatti) are fried near our compound. Over the weekend I picked out a beautiful rooster at the market and we slaughtered, plucked, butchered and cooked it (I was mostly an observer/learner) - all smells that many may be able to imagine (I will note that the taste of this free range local chicken was fabulous). There are smells to matoke and posho (a corn meal porridge) cooking but they are subtle. At night there is the paraffin smell of my candles. The most frequent smell that gets my attention is that of burning wood or locally made charcoal (wood put in high temperature kilns to carbonize it). People spend hours cooking here in the morning, mid-day and night. The cooking is either outside or in a small kitchen or part of the house that allows smoke to escape between the upper walls and roof. Sitting in a health center or walking down the road, the smell comes to me. I don’t know how to describe it- it is not harsh and I think of it as smelling ‘flat’, not like the woodsmoke from fireplaces or charcoal grill smells I’m used to. Despite the fact that I know that widespread use of charcoal and wood for fuel is not environmentally healthy (deforestation and CO2 production) I have started loving the smell. It always stops my thoughts to make me look around and enjoy the place I’m in at that moment. You will have to use your olfactory imagination with the photos: of the trash dump, goat, and bathing area on the other side of my wall, of Sam- a Ugandan intern housemate- with our chicken, and of an indoor kitchen.