This blog is for Mickey, as I never pass a food stand without thinking of him!
Chapatti stands are ubiquitous in Uganda. At any point of human traffic, whether by foot or by bus, along dirt or cement, among building or trees – in any place of human congregation, chapatti stands spring like mushrooms.
I have never yet seen a woman chapatti vendor. Usually they are boys, between 13 and 25 years, and often a crowd of friends hangs around the stand, chatting and milling and haranguing passing muzungus to “Jangu, jangu, you first come – you come and you buy!” Most of the boys are school dropouts – or rather, force-outs, or fee-outs, as the case may be. Perhaps some of them hope to rejoin classes once they have raised a little money at the stand. Perhaps some of them work selling chapattis in the evening, and go to school during the day.
You don’t need much to sell chapattis – a wooden stand, a small, coal stove on legs waist-high and a thick, flat circle of metal to place above the coals, rather like the bottom of a cast iron frying pan. Ingredients are cheap; flour, water, salt, milk, oil for frying and occasionally onions. (This last is crushed and mixed into the dough when used, though often it is neglected because the chapattis go bad much faster with the inclusion.) Balls of white dough sit ready on the wooden stand, and when somebody comes to buy the boy rolls out a ball with a soda bottle or wooden roller, creating a perfect circle that he tosses onto the griddle for frying. The whole process takes about two minutes, and the end product is golden-brown and soaked in oil, hot and soft and perfectly salty. When it’s perfectly fried on both sides, the boy will fold your chapatti into quarters for you and push it into a small plastic bag – which you need because it’s too hot to hold with your fingers – or an old, paper flour bag if you buy a bunch of chapattis at once.
Alternate, more complex creations can be made with chapatti. A crate of eggs at the wooden stand means the vendor sells Rolexes, sort of like a chapatti and omelet rolled into one. For a Rolex, the boy will mix up eggs, cabbage and tomato in a bright plastic cup, pour the concoction onto the griddle, smooth it into a circle, then place an already-fried chapatti on top, spinning it a bit to be sure it all sticks together. Once the egg is cooked through he’ll drizzle more oil onto the chapatti and flip it to warm both sides, then roll the entire creation up like a crepe, placing it in the same, translucent plastic bag and cutting it into four for your eating convenience.
If a chapatti seller has an iron pot sitting on a coal stove behind him, most likely it is full of beans, and he sells Chikomandos. A Chikomando is simply a plastic bag with a big spoonful of beans and a chopped-up chapatti in it. The beans are cooked with onion and tomato, as all beans are cooked in Uganda, and while this second creation is probably healthier, I prefer a Rolex myself, and a plain chapatti to the both of them. While it is considered strange to walk and eat in Uganda – I was once told that if I continued to do so I would never get a husband – I am never able to wait to eat my chapatti, and I consider the experience of strolling down the streets here with a chapatti in my hands as one of the most important in my mental collection of Things I Love About Uganda.
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