When I travel, I try to cook with mammas in their kitchens. I do not claim to have any cooking skills. However, I am always willing to learn and through their cooking, I learn so much about their culture and traditions.
I stayed at the Beri Hotel in Arua City, Uganda, for longer than I anticipated. It was not an ideal situation, but I made it work. I felt pretty isolated. I traveled almost daily to Bidibidi Refugee Resettlement. My main struggle was my limited vegetarian options and severe insomnia. Arua City is a rural area that is meat-heavy, where every animal part is eaten. Good on them for not wasting anything!
While the staff were great, I had no mammas to cook with. So, I got desperate and befriended the chef at the hotel. I asked Chef Robert to teach me how to make vegetable curry. It was more of a watching Chef Robert cook the vegetable curry (perhaps the rumors of my lousy cooking traveled through the transatlantic wires?). A couple of days after the cooking class, two of the hotel staff gave me a big hug and insisted that I stay in Uganda forever. While I appreciate the love, I think my family would say otherwise.
Several days passed, and it was the 4th of July. So, for the Fourth of July, I requested to make four pizzas with Chef Robert and invited Dr. Nhial’s team and some of the hotel staff to celebrate with me. I wore a beautiful hair net while cutting up vegetables, grating cheese, and stirring the marinara sauce in the hotel kitchen. Later, Isaac, the study coordinator, and an avid meat eater, commented that the veggie pizza was better than the chicken pizza.
I am grateful for the opportunity to share laughs (mainly at me) and hope that despite the negative political rhetoric in the US and beyond, we have our humanity to share. When we do research in the field, we need also to remember how many other lives we touch and how much they impact our lives. Here is a picture of me (which is a rarity) standing with some extraordinary people.