A tourist gets to like Ugandan food

Feb 15, 2008

A tourist friend of mine, travelling up country in Uganda, dropped into a small town restaurant at lunch time and ordered chicken and chips. The waitress took his order and disappeared into the back, presumably to place his order with the chef. After five minutes she returned to deal with a new cust

By Gusto Rowzer

A tourist friend of mine, travelling up country in Uganda, dropped into a small town restaurant at lunch time and ordered chicken and chips. The waitress took his order and disappeared into the back, presumably to place his order with the chef. After five minutes she returned to deal with a new customer.

He ordered beans, matooke and chips. After two minutes, the waitress reappeared with the food for the new customer.

“Excuse me!,” my friend called out. “Is my lunch ready by any chance?

‘It’s coming’ the girl said. She retreated again into the back, while the new customer chomped happily through his meal.

After another 10 minutes reading the newspaper, my friend, who was quite famished, got up and called into the back, ‘Is anyone there?’

It seemed not. Silence reigned in the back. Not even the sound of chips sizzling in hot oil. No other sounds normally redolent of a busy kitchen. In the dining room, only the sound of the new customer guzzling his food. Only the monotonous buzzing of attendant flies disturbed the tranquillity of this rural eating shed.

Again my friend shouted. ‘Is anyone there?’ The new customer had practically finished his meal, but he was not disposed to intervene. My friend was about to enter the back when the waitress reappeared.

“What has happened to my lunch I ordered half an hour ago?” he asked, quite mildly considering the delay, and the distant memory of breakfast in Kampala earlier that morning.

“Chef says, the chicken got finished,” the waitress said.

“But it’s on the menu!” my friend said.
“Chef says he went to get a chicken from Mukasa, but it ran away.”

“Ran away! Why didn’t he run after it?”
“Chef says he ran after it, but he’s got a bad leg.”

“Well, why didn’t Mukasa run after it?”
“Chef says Mukasa ran after the chicken but fell over the wheel barrow.”

My friend resisted sensations of exasperation. “So what is there to eat? Beans, matooke and chips?

“Chips got finished”

My friend glanced over at the new customer who was licking his lips with satisfaction. He was gazing at the waitress and my friend with an air of total indifference.

“So you gave the last portion of chips to the new customer who ordered after I did!”

This was obviously a statement of such incontrovertible truth that it prompted no response from the waitress. Its overtones of moral recrimination also escaped any visible recognition.

The waitress stood there, abject in the presence of an increasingly awkward customer. Finally my friend said: “OK bring me matooke and beans, please, and please be quick before they run away.”

His sarcasm was totally lost on the waitress. She disappeared into the back. The new customer put some money on the table and sauntered out, giving my friend a look of what he interpreted as withering contempt, unredeemed by a scintilla of commiseration.

After five minutes, the waitress returned. My friend restrained his overweening interest in whether she was bringing a plate with her, and if so, whether anything edible was on it. It was a pile of matooke and beans!

My friend stared at it in momentary disbelief. Could it be true? Then he fell to it with a knife and fork. And that is how he came to like matooke and beans.

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