Food in Uganda

One year ago I found myself in rural Southern Uganda. It was a Tearfund trip, and we were working with local partner, the KDWSP, a water sanitation project, and each day revealed more and more evidence of how the almost cliched charity appeals for donating money to African projects were actually really changing lives.

Humbling it was, but even more so was the fact that wherever we went we were received with warmth and delight into the homes of community workers, village elders and pastors. Not only did they receive us, but they fed us too with the best of their produce - and at every home you were presented with an almost identical menu - beans, gnut sauce, rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes and goat or chicken.

This food cost them, too. It was always evident, from the workers in the fields through to those who clearly didn’t have enough, the value and worth ‘of our daily bread’ was something to be prized - a jarring notion to those of us who take an abundance of available food for granted. Let’s be honest, it was not my favourite cuisine on the planet. But then eating when you travel isn’t always about pleasing your palette - this was food steeped in a morality of generosity that no amount of truffle or foie gras could ever come close to.