Of the weird foods Ugandans are now eating

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By Kalungi Kabuye

I have written before about my long suffering knees, and how I was forced to walk the MTN Marathon 10km Run. Following that article I have received plenty of advice, much of it unsolicited, on how I can heal my knees.

More than half suggested that I eat boiled cow hoofs, also locally known as mulokony, or kigere. The agreed wisdom is that since the hoof is basically a joint, its meat would help heal human knees.

For the record I did try eating kigere once, but failed miserably, for several reasons. I might mention here that when I was growing up kigere was strictly dog food. And being a middle-something brother, it was my job to prepare it for the dogs every time we were on holiday.

Needless to say I hated it, and maybe subconsciously my mind rejects it because of that reason.
 

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But my knees still hurt, and I would take kigere if only someone can prove that it actually works. For all the 20-something years it has been a staple around Kampala, I have not seen any research into its health benefits. That research would have inevitably made it possible to isolate the effective ingredients, and some smart entrepreneur would have probably bottled a palatable form of kigere and made a lot of money.

In what looks like some kind of trend, Ugandans are busy discovering all kinds of foods that are supposed to give some miracle cures to all kinds of ills.

Another thing I hated as a kid was what the Baganda call ntula. I still cannot understand why people eat those things, no taste whatsoever. But then some Ugandan posts on Facebook how she made juice from ntula, and how it is the latest discovered health food. Urg! Not for me, no thank you.

Pumpkin leaves are also another supposedly health drink; and might we see Kenyans drinking their Sukuma wiiki?

Social media has given platform for anyone with even the wildest claims to have a voice. And as long as it sounds genuine, someone is going to spread the gospel. Take the recent craze about quail eggs and their supposedly almost magical health benefits. It took the whole region by storm; so much so that big money was invested in creating quail farms. Some real money was made as East Africans tried to get a quick cure to even imagined ills.

But as happens to most crazes, it soon died down. Thousands of farmers in western Kenya were left with millions of quail eggs nobody wanted to buy; and like their neighbours to the west, cried for the government to help them.

I did some extensive search on the Internet and could not find any credible scientific or medical report on the supposed magical benefits of quail eggs (below). All that existed were articles written by supposed doctors, who could instead been an Internet- savvy tea girl that sells you quail eggs for breakfast.
 

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As Ugandans get richer they are starting to suffer from lifestyle ailments previously unknown in our society; and which could have been traditionally treated by witchdoctors. Instead of looking at the more developed societies which have learnt how to deal with their causes, we are looking for miracle cures.

And typically Ugandan, we shall jump on the next band wagon that professes hitherto unknown benefits.

I am all for healthy eating of course, and I have cut down on my fast food intake. I am no longer the ‘junk king’ of New Vision. But I do enjoy my food, and nobody will convince me to take boiled offals for breakfast just because it seen as healthy food.


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