Dr. Ruby Dunlap’s Uganda Fulbright Blog
Had it been a philosophical chicken, it certainly would have appreciated Thomas Hobbes and his cynical view of things. From the moment it emerged from its shell, wet and tottering, until it was finally dispatched by someone to be eaten by me and mine, it had lived to eat brutishly and avoid being eaten nastily.

It had been marginally successful in its first ambition and finally unsuccessful in its last. Now, to add insult to injury, I was critically gazing at its scrawny, blue-tinged carcass and wondering why I had paid 12,000 Ugandan shillings for it, roughly about 6 USD.
Chicken, I had been told, is more expensive than beef in Uganda. My experience has validated that. A plump fryer-sized chicken in a Kampala grocery store costs about 16,000 shillings or 8 USD. A pound-sized package of minced (ground) lean beef costs about 1.50 USD. The chicken in my kitchen had been purchased, sight unseen, from someone Karen had said raised really extra good chickens. This must have been one of their bad-chicken days.

I was also wondering what I could do with the resources at hand to disguise the liver bouquet which we’ve noticed in the Ugandan meats we’ve eaten so far. It must be something they eat or maybe that’s the way meat is supposed to taste and U.S. chicken and beef have been artificially conditioned to taste otherwise. Maybe the problem is with our taste buds and not with the meat. In a maneuver Hobbes might have appreciated, I placed the chicken in the crockpot Karen had loaned me and covered it with pepper and just a touch of curry.

It slowly simmered for over 24 hours and then I added rice and vegetables. When I tasted it just before serving, the flavor was decidedly liver. I put oil in a frying pan, dumped the deboned chicken, rice and vegetable mixture in it and added some generous shakes of a tall, dark bottle labeled “Double Dragon Chinese Style Sesame Oil” previous residents had left on a kitchen shelf. Stir-frying it with this potent product of Thailand made all the difference; my men folk declared it delicious and ate hefty helpings, always satisfying to a cook. (See photo of my little kitchen.)
These are interim days before I start teaching on September 11, a week from this Friday, days of either discovering or making a somewhat normal rhythm of basic living to serve as backdrop for the teaching Fulbright and UCU both expect me to do. Dad and I are establishing of pattern of heading to the university track around 6:30 AM and spending about 40 minutes or so doing laps, Dad walking and I mostly jogging. Jemimah jogs, too.

Ugandan women, especially older Ugandan women, do not jog. Jemimah jogs 10 or 11 laps, Monday through Friday, as spunkily counter-cultural as they come. With the creeping onset of desk-jobs and automobile transportation has come a parallel creeping onset of obesity. All of us desk-job holders know the phenomenon well and Ugandans are discovering it, too. Jemimah is putting up a valiant fight with her jogging and diet control.

I have found that adjusting my jogging rhythm to hers results in an opportunity to enjoy her sharp and witty commentary on just about anything. When she shared with me the strain of trying to find a reliable caregiver for her husband, made totally dependent by a stroke, the universal dilemma was obvious. She was fortunate to find Aziz (“i” is pronounced “ee” in Uganda), a serious young man who has devoted himself to the care of Jemimah’s husband. Aziz jogs with Jemimah every morning, adjusting his tall stride to hers. (See photo of Jemima and me by the track.)
“You will need house help,” they told me and one of them sent hers, a young Muslim woman named Amina. Amina came to meet me last week while Karen was still here and we agreed that she would come and do house work today, Wednesday, September 2. Amina arrived at the precise stroke of 9 as promised. She washed bedding by hand, hanging it to dry, and then meticulously ironing each piece, sheets and pillow cases. She re-made the beds with crisply folded precision. I will put my head on a pillow case tonight dried in the Ugandan sun and wind and ironed by the hand of Amina. There is hardly any luxury to surpass this.

Amina scrubbed the house from wall to wall. I had checked with her other employer who said she was utterly reliable to do shopping, cleaning or cooking provided one gave her the recipes. I made a short shopping list and gave her the cash to purchase eggs, tomatoes, and dish washing detergent from the Mukono market before she comes back to do more laundry on Friday. Amina is Muslim and will leave around 11:00 for prayers at the mosque before returning to do more ironing for us. Since this is Ramadan, I gave her the cake I’d baked yesterday and a bottle of fruit chutney for her family feast after sundown. Dad smilingly said, “Allah-u-akbar!” when she arrived making a huge smile on her face and when she left, “Alhamdullilah!” evoking another one.

For all that labor, Amina gets paid 50 cents an hour with stern warnings from the UCU staff not to pay house help more than this because it would disrupt the pay rates all over the campus. “If you want to pay your house help any extra,” we were advised, “wait for Christmas and then pay them a Christmas bonus.” Amina, moreover, does not want to be paid on a daily basis but monthly with the payday varied so that she is not immediately mobbed by family and friends intent on relieving her of most of her cash.
Amina, before leaving, prostrated herself before me onto her knees. My egalitarian soul wrenched painfully in protest but I sternly restrained my urge to rush to her, pick her up and give her a big hug. I will have to find other ways of being kind to her. The university Ugandan women do no such bowing although a few of them have made small curtseys.
The courtesy of this society is hard for us “hey” Americans to believe; I am routinely called “madame” and the men are “sir” which might feel exaggerated to us but for the Ugandans is simple respect. But courtesy can also be a gold mine of social wealth in a land which has 64 different ethnic groups, all of them with differing cultures and many unable to understand each other’s languages. And Ugandan courtesy blends cool, crisp, nearly anachronistic British expressions with African music of voice. I am the richer for it.