Ins and outs of daily life in Uganda

Well hello again!

So, it’s been a really long week, as weeks tend to be these days. I’ve had a few emotional ups and downs, I seem to have forgotten how exhausting and taxing adjustments can be! So, a lot of the adjusting that has to happen in a new country is simple stuff that has nothing to do with the people or the culture, but just pertains to daily life, the topic of this post as promised =)

To begin, I’m staying in a dorm room with 3 other people. The rooms are significantly smaller than American dorm rooms. There are 2 sets of bunk beds, 2 wardrobes (each with 2 shelves at the bottom), 4 cubes/shelves on the walls (2 on each side of the room) and 2 desks. Oddly, a partial wall divides the room, making it feel like 2 SUPER small rooms. Despite the tight, close quarters, I love my roommates  =) They are fellow USP (Uganda Studies Program)ers from various universities in the states and we are bonding quickly in this itty-bitty room!

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So, the red and green basins are leaning on the half wall, and the wardrobe for our side is at the foot of our bunk bed. Then, the other side of the room mirrors this one. I sleep on the bottom bunk =)

Beautiful roommies! Making me laugh, per usual =)

The rest of our floor is Ugandan students, some of whom have become good friends to us already =) There are other USP girls on other floors of our building, one guy in the men’s dorm rooming with Ugandans, and then about 25 students living with host families in the nearby town of Mukono. Next week, all of us on campus will be living with host families too, but only for 2 weeks instead of all semester. We have hall bathrooms in the dorms equipped with cold showers! These showers are welcome after a hot day, so I’ve quickly changed my morning shower habits into evening ones since it’s usually pretty chilly in the morning! Some girls have electric kettles in their rooms and they heat water and then carry it in a basin to the bathrooms and take warm splash baths… ingenious! We bought a kettle for our room, so maybe one of these days I’ll try it out. For now we’ll keep using our kettle for instant coffee!!

That brings me to food. The dining hall is close by on campus and it is like a huge pavilion filled with picnic-style tables. It’s so nice to eat out in the open =) and in the morning we’re usually joined by happy chirping birds, but I’ll get to them in another post!

Afternoon teatime with some friends =) (it's always teatime in Africa!) And, this is just a small portion of the huge hall, but you get the general idea.

As for meals, breakfast consists of bread and hot milk or hot tea, with an occasional hard-boiled egg (I think Tuesday is egg day). Lunches and dinners are usually rice or matoke or posha with beans or peas or g-nut sauce and some kind of cabbage or greens and either sweet or irish (regular) potatoes… aka, A LOT of food, especially starches! So, matoke is made from boiling a fruit that is like a banana but before it is ripened and then they’re mashed. The texture is similar to mashed potatoes but the flavor is a little more unique! Posha is made from corn meal and kind of looks like cornbread but the texture isn’t like bread at all and it doesn’t have much flavor. Rice, matoke and posha are the main staples in Uganda. O, and g-nut sauce is made from ground nuts (same as peanuts!) that are somehow cooked into a yummy sauce that’s really good with rice. There’s also occasionally some beef or pork with lunch or dinner, and sometimes there’s pineapple! I enjoy the food, but it gets monotonous sometimes and I feel a bit depleted of nutrients. I have ventured into town to buy more fruit and veggies which helps to supplement the meals a lot. Also, we’ve discovered rolex, a street food made from chopati (kinda like a flour tortilla) wrapped around an omelet, and it costs less than $1 and is super filling! So sometimes we opt out of dining hall meals =) I’m interested to see what kind of food we’ll get at host stays next week!

Mmmmm... fresh pineapple!

The last daily life thing to tell you all about is laundry =) So, there’s a fenced in area near our building where there are about a dozen clothes lines and 3 or 4 spigots. There, on a typical morning you find lots of people scrubbing away at their clothes and hanging them on the lines! Last week one of my Ugandan friends helped me learn the laundry process… you have to wash twice and then rinse twice (so it takes about 4 wash basins) It’s about a 2 hour event depending on the amount of clothes you wash. Drying takes a good part of the day, but the sun is pretty hot so its quicker than you might expect. It was definitely an experience and it makes me put off laundry even more than I would in America because it’s so time consuming. However, I do love being able to be outside for all of these activities, eating, laundry, etc. because we can hear all the noisy birds… and, wait for it… monkeys, while we scrub away our frustrations with the red dirt that stains our clothes!

Sorry it's dark, but this is the washing area... where I spent about 2+ hours yesterday, but now I have clean clothes!

That's all for now, but over the next few posts I’ll tell you about the other things that have been filling my time such as my classes I'm taking and my placement, because I’m sure you’re all wondering what on earth I do all day!

Thanks for reading and have a lovely weekend =) I’m meeting my host family in a few hours (I’m super nervous!) so sometime next week I’ll fill you in on home life!

Be blessed,

Ruth