Porridge and Posho



Helping Mukaka (Grandmother) cut the spinach for the kids lunch



I'm done work for the week now. I have taught some kids how to skip, play my version of Simon says called 'Jessy says', served breakfasts and lunches to the children, helped to prepare meals and done lots of manual labour around the project. I have some great blisters to remind me of my work this week. I have also been the object of facination and wonder to a lot of the kids. I am the first mzungu (white person) that most of them have ever seen. Reactions have ranged from fear to trying to rub away my freckles. My iPhone was one of the most outworldly gadgets that any of the project employees had ever seen and my knife drew equal amounts of admiration. Western ways have never been observed here and I feel honoured to be the first one here.

Preparing the posho

Sometimes the food they eat at school is the only food these children get



I have been eating breakfast and lunch with the children and staff at Grace Children's Village and I must say that I am greatly impressed with the school's ability to serve 2 hot meals to over 100 people every day using a mud hut kitchen and only 2 fires to cook on and 2 dedicated kitchen staff. The kids at this school are guaranteed to have porridge with milk supplied from the cows belonging to the project. The base of this is maize, so not what we are used to thinking of porridge. Lunch is posho with a sauce of beans and greens. What is posho you might ask? It begins with boiling water to ensure it is safe to consume then adding maize flour and stirring until it has a very thick playdough-like, sticky consistency. Sound appetizing? I assure you it is every bit as bad as it sounds. Children in all schools across Uganda are given posho every day at school and I've been told that by the time you finish school you never want to see the stuff again. The children at Grace Village are lucky that they also get something with their posho and it is a good thing that the beans and greens are good. The school is trying very hard to be self sufficient and the majority of the greens that they use come from their own garden. For a lot of these children, the food provided at school is the only substantial food they will receive all day. I simply chew and swallow as much as I can handle (which is never enough to satisfy the headmaster who thinks I need to eat more) and don't complain.

Part of the garden on the school grounds

I have decided to splurge and get a gorilla tracking permit for Monday, which means a long weekend for me. Tomorrow (Sunday) I will get up early and travel with my own hired car to Bwindi National Park. It is on the far west side of the country (don't worry Mommy, they won't take us into the Congo and we have an armed guard) and home to 40% of the world's remaining wild Lowland Mountain Gorillas. I know that the drive is pretty bad as it is the same road that I arrived here on and I wondered on several occasions if the car would make it. I stay there over night and start hiking early on Monday morning until we find gorillas. It can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a full day of rainforest hiking. I believe it will be worth every effort I have to put in. I can't wait to see them.