Custard and Beans

Due to a communications error this evening there was no food at dinner time. Our host home thought we’d be cooking, we thought they’d be cooking and we’d be making pudding (something that’s nearly impossible to communicate because the concept of pudding doesn’t exist for most people in East Africa). Our host brother said that he was happy to go to bed without eating because he was used to it (which is surprising but maybe he had a tough childhood) but that he was worried about us. Frankly, so was I. Not least because the whole family might be about to go to bed hungry because of our miscommunications and that’s more than anyone’s conscience should have to bear.

I set about bringing together everything we had to hand and we put on a ‘supper of snacks’. (You have to be specific about things such as this here as even hearty foods like samosas or chapattis count as snacks). We prepared everything in the dark because someone has removed the light bulb from the kitchen (I don’t know where it’s gone but I’d question whether its destination could possibly be more critical) and eventually served hopelessly unripe avocado, Ugandan porridge, Heinz baked beans, cake, custard and 2 cups of English-style tea. The highlight of the meal were the beans, custard and cake. We struggled to persuade our hosts to separate out the sweet from savoury. It’s hard to justify the intrinsic truth that one should finish their baked beans before adding custard to the plate – that’s just the way it is. It was commented that custard is the sort of food that would make a Ugandan want to visit London, which is by way of the highest compliment around – our English food is not always much appreciated here and we’ve had a few unsuccessful introductions to it. The tea is a good example – I had put milk in it but no sugar and it was deemed undrinkable by our host mum. I considered this to be just as well because when I made the tea I had thought it was to be mine.