So this month we our staying at a guest house owned by the North Kegezi Diocese that we are working with in Rukungiri. The place we are staying at has a kitchen with oven and refrigerator(which is not common in many places in Uganda), so we are taking advantage of that by cooking many meals together as a team.
We have had to be creative when making much of the food, the local markets here don't have quite the same selection as your local Kroger. Yet it has made the process of preparing and cooking meals very entertaining at times.
Last week we met a guy named Jake from Macon, Georgia, who has just started with the Peace Corps and will be living in the guest house we are staying at for the next two years. I'm sure he wasn't expecting to be welcomed to his new home by seven Americans, but we ended up visiting for quite awhile.
That night some of the team decided to make French toast, homemade syrup, and hash browns for dinner, and we decided to ask if Jake wanted to stay for dinner. Though the homemade syrup solidified into a vanilla flavored rock candy substance, the meal turned out to be very good and a nice change from rice, beans, and cabbage. I was glad to have been able to have the chance to hear about what Jake is going to be doing here in Rukungiri for the next two years, he is a civil engineer and will be working with the Diocese on many of the water projects that they have started in Rukungiri.
The next night we were asked to make a meal for the Bishop and about 10 pastors from the North Kegezi Diocese. For that meal we decided to make spaghetti and garlic bread, and the Bishops wife cooked up some matoke(cooked bananas which have a similar consistency to potatoes) greens, and also some slices of Avocado. The time with the team at the Bishop's home was a great opportunity for us to get to know many of the pastors we have ended up working with so far this month in an informal setting.
So far we have shared many meals in various peoples homes here in Rukungiri as well as when we were in Kenya, and it has been a reminder of how simply cooking and sharing a meal together is something that many back home we seemed to have gotten away from, instead we find ourselves grabbing something on the go only eating out of necessity, and forgetting how this simple act of sitting down to a meal can bring family, friends, and even strangers together.
