Looking back into northern Uganda (2006 vs. 2009) — the food

By Erin Hunt

I’ve been a little busy lately but I’m getting back to writing about changes that I noticed in Gulu when I returned in 2009, with OA. To get back on track (and ease myself into it), I thought I’d talk about everyone’s favourite topic – food!

In Gulu Town there are a few ‘grocery’ stores which I can most relate to you as sort of like the average corner store but most of your fresh food you buy at the market or “owino.” Actually almost anything you want could be bought at the market but the centre (physically) of the market is the food area. There’s the meat section, the fish section (which I tend to avoid), the fruit and vegetable ladies (including a second section that is almost entirely bananas) and the dry goods ladies selling things like millet, soghrum, rice and beans etc etc.

Now when I first arrived in Uganda, the market was intimidation personified but once you sort of figure out how much stuff should cost and what the layout is, it’s fine. There was one restaurant that made western food but I preferred to cook for myself. Since I could rarely find ‘western’ food in Gulu back then, and I didn’t know how to cook local food, I made frequent trips to the market for rice, vegetables, and fruit (including delicious pineapple and passion fruit). I also frequented the one bakery that sold “salty” bread, which I prefer to the more popular sweet bread to combine with staples I’d bring up from Kampala like pasta sauce or once a box of Special K.

Fast forward to last spring (2009), the market layout remained pretty much the same, though the fish section had moved, but what I did notice is that there were a lot more food available in the market. It seemed like there were more variety in the types of food available in all sections of the market, which I thought might be a sign of increasing agriculture in the area as people return home. Costs had risen dramatically but that might be a topic for a later post.

The biggest food change I noticed, though, was the increase in restaurants in town. Where before I knew of only a couple places that made any non-local food, all of a sudden there were at least half a dozen of places that made western inspired food, or Asian food. Although we tended to stick to our local dinners of rice and beans, sometimes with boo in sim sim paste (greens in nut sauce), I couldn’t believe the options for those nights when that just wasn’t going to cut it. Still though nothing could beat going to the market buying a pineapple and just cutting right into it when you get home. (Ok I better stop writing this – all I can think about now is market fresh pineapple with some passion fruit juice!)

What do these changes tell me? That people are secure enough in the current peace to invest their money in new businesses and that farmers feel safe enough to expand and diversify their production. I’d say those are two good signs in the overall rebuilding of northern Uganda.