UGANDA I

For 17 days we traveled the high roads and low roads of Uganda.  We spent a couple days in Entebbe, which is a nice city, but not one of Uganda's largest.  Mostly we were on the back roads.  We saw the "real" Uganda.  We saw how people lived and worked.  85% of the country's population live in the rural areas.  Uganda's largest export crop is coffee.  It is mostly picked by hand on small farms and plots, dried out in the sun on plastic tarps, bundled into large plastic bags and bicycled  to a weigh station. I will never drink another cup of Ugandan coffee without thinking  about this.  We drove past MILES and MILES of tea plantaions, where the machines clip off the top leaves of this ever producing plant.  But, the best tea comes from Bwindi , where it is hand picked.  Congolese  come across the boarder to have a "better life" and end up doing this hard work, along with many Ugandans.  Only the top 2or 3 leaves and the bud are handpicked.  They put it in huge tea baskets and wait for the tea truckers to come and weigh it and pay them.  

The best Pineapple I have ever eaten is picked RIPE in Uganda and served many ways.  I had it  3 times a day a day sometimes. Bananas are a staple! Everything is bananas. We had Banana wine, banana beer, banana gin, bananas fixed everyway.  Tomatoes are another huge crop and served in and with everything. Fish is good, especially tilapia and Nile perch.  We ate both alot.  The beef is from the African cow, and lean.  Nothing is grain fed in Uganda, or procrssed.  People do not eat much desserts or snack food.  I never once saw a fast food resturant.  Their idea of fast food is vendors  with home cooked food offering it in the windows of cars and vans as the traffic slows.  In fact, I never saw an overweight Ugandan.  In some of the rural areas a big push is on to educate peole to use goat milk for kids.  It would help the fight against malnutrition, but people only use goats for meat, and it is hard to change their culture.  I ate goat one day, but didn't love it.

Tea fieldsas far as the eye can see....