Akatare Days

We have officially been in Uganda for over a month. In the grand scheme of things a month is not a long time, but so much has happened this month. I don’t mean so much in terms of, like, things actually happening. Honestly, I spend a significant amount of time here just sitting and waiting. Rachel wrote about waiting last week so I’m not going to do that all over again, instead I just want to write a little about what life is like for us here. This week I’ll focus on shopping, maybe next week on our living situation, transportation, or relationships.

The best thing about being in a different culture is that, at least at first, literally everything is new and exciting.

The equivalent of a trip to Safeway is a trip to the fruit/veggie market (akatare in Lukiga). I have never had such an exciting trip to Safeway or Save-on-Foods as every trip to the market is here. Kabale is a pretty small town- we’re talking one main street and a few side streets- but it happens to be the center for all the villages in a two hours radius so it can get pretty busy. The veggie/fruit market is pretty huge and, unfortunately, surrounded by butcher shops. There’s nothing quite like smelling fresh(ish) meat while you’re on your way to purchase veggies.

At the market we can purchase tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, beans, dodo (like bitter spinach), pumpkins, onions, garlic, ground nuts, watermelons, mangoes, apples, green oranges, pili-pili (hot peppers) and passion fruit (my personal fav). You never quite know what you’ll find at the akatare but these are the basics. It’s a vegetarian’s dream and if you love farmer’s markets or you’re a fan of ‘buying local’ you can be pretty sure that everything you can find was grown nearby.

 For those of you who have trouble making decisions this is probably not the place for you because there are 30+ people selling the same things. Good luck deciding which tomato is the perfect tomato. Not only that, most items are sold by the kilo so you better choose carefully because a kilo of green beans happens to be quite a few green beans. Rach and I have started making shopping lists just to avoid the fresh off the boat look of not realizing that a whole kilo of peppers is waaay too many peppers for just the two of us until they're packaged and we're trying to fit them into our bags. (Not that that has ever happened ;).

Photo: Just found this artwork at a market in Kampala. We are here for the weekend to get Rach drugs (it's a pretty unfortunate story) and I figured I might as well do a little shopping while we're here.... and eat some mexican food and take a hot shower. City life yo. Gotta love it.