Standing frozen amidst pulsing limbs and guilty cackling this past Sunday, I found my eyes wandering to the adjacent dirt road and the young woman ambling peacefully down the hill. As she walked, tossing a coin first from right then to left and again to right hand, I listened to the scuff-scuff of her feet on the soft earth, and watched her smile as plumes of red dust wrapped around her ankles. Mpola mpola (slowly, slowly) she drifted away from the vibrant mirth of our Red Light-Green Light, her lean figure framed by the hazy skyline of Kampala City below.
Parting a tide of bodies, I walked over to join her. We exchanged a traditional Ugandan handshake over which we discovered we were but one year apart in age. Tall and lanky, about her hair she wore a blue bandana, and around her neck a silver slipper. She was headed for the local market, Victoria explained, having been delegated house cook for the Evening. “Suuuuuure” she managed through stifled laughter upon my request to join her — it was more a question than an answer — a reply I later realized was one laced with implicit flattery and incredulity, not merely a casual acceptance of my offer.
As we turned a corner, Victoria explained the rotation of household chores to me, but also divulged her own secret love for cooking. “Shall I teach you to cook?” she proffered, genuinely surprised when I conceded that I had cooked before, in fact many times. “But never African food,” I quickly added. “Ahhh,” she smiled, “then I’ll make you kaunga, for you this is posho.” Posho? I settled into stride beside her, puzzled.
We had barely delved into the varieties of sundries unique to Uganda when we found ourselves leaning into a roadside stand, examining a cluster of locally-grown tomatoes under the playful gaze of a Buganda woman and her young daughter.When the word muzungu (white person) emerged amidst their exchange, I chuckled and patted my chest in ownership. Oli otya (how are you?), I ventured. The woman brightened, launching into a stream of Luganda, to which I could only reply that I knew katono (a small amount). Nevertheless, through Victoria’s translation, she offered me her daughter as we turned back towards the distant laughter.
When we arrived, Victoria led me behind the compound, her arms swaying idly in time with her shifting hips. Her favorite courses? “Geography, Economics…History,” she explained, adding as an afterthought, “but not Maths.” She entered the concrete enclosure armed with cookery utensils, myself in tow. As we sliced vegetables, we talked about her experiences at school and at this communal home, her excitement at the prospect of attending university and the fast approaching holidays.
The room was warm, and as she added more coals to the grill, it took on a beautiful orange sheen, light refracting off the walls and into the pot of beans she was stirring. When the water had boiled, we poured a bag of maize flour into the pot, and I marveled as she stirred the rapidly-thickening kaunga with strong, delicate strokes. When it was my turn, I found myself thrashing through the mixture, nearly knocking the pot from its perch — a spectacle which quickly elicited hysterical laughter from the growing assembly of young girls. When the kaunga was finished (many Ugandans think the English translation is “posho,” which I can only think perhaps comes from polenta, as it is its closest resemblance), the vegetables sautéed and added to the pot of beans, Victoria began the highly complex plating process. Recruiting several girls, she began an assembly line of plates, along which she proudly distributed the beans and posho.
Sitting down to eat our food, the laughter and chatter which had characterized our day ceased, and as I listened, it dawned on me that it was only Leah and I that had been given forks. The girls watched us with wide grins, the twins Penlope an Penina leaning eagerly across the table and Victoria herself brimming with anticipation.
Looking back, I’m not sure which was more satisfying — the delicious beans and kaunga with their startling complexity of flavors, or the chorus of “Suuuuuuuure”s that erupted as we delighted over what we had been served.
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