Nyama Choma

Ryan has decided he's on a quest to find food poisoning so we've been visiting the dodgiest(?) road side stalls looking for diarrhoea. The food here is interesting. Contrary to popular belief I haven't actually lost any weight yet - I was told before I came that I would lose a lot of weight cos the food here is low in calories :) They eat a shitload of meat around here, mostly beef, chicken and goat. A lot of goat. I guess it's only logical cos there are goats everywhere. The meat is marinated in salt and stuff and then they throw it on an open coal bbq. This is eaten with either chapati (the indian influence I suspect) or ugali. Ugali is a hard to describe, it's like a starchy thing. Its like polenta I guess, with no added spices or salt or anything, just maize flour and water. I don't mind ugali too much, it's a little bland and heavy but it's ok. They also have whats called kienyeji, which is like mashed potato, with some green vegetable mixed in and bits of maize. This is kienyeji:

Yummy! That's Brad (a pilot friend of Ryan's from NZ) with some lovely fluoro green Kienyeji. It tastes better than in looks.

This is a Nyama Choma meal we had at a local road side stall:

You basically get the meat on a chopping board, a knife, some small piles of rock salt and your ugali, chapati and kienyeji, and you're just all supposed to dig in.

In town though, there are endless streets lined with places selling Chicken and Chips, Fish and Chips, Sausages and Chips - basically anything with chips, which I initially thought was a bit strange. Bloody Poms and their colonization...

On Saturday Ryan, Zelalem and I went for a drive to Mt. Kenya. We ended up getting side tracked and went to a place called Castle Forest Lodge which is in the direction of Mt. Kenya but is in a place so secluded, it's actually quiet - which is a really strange in a country like Kenya.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly the scenery changes around here. You only need to drive for one hour for the endless barren fields of dirt to turn into lush tropical surroundings.

The whole three hour drive there and back we were greeted with constant squeals of "Mzungu! Mzungu! Jambo Mzungu!" (mzungu = white man). The poor village kids probably didn't know what hit them - a Rasta guy driving the car, a white guy in the front seat and an Asian chick in the back. We got so many waves, and kids chased the car every now and then - I felt like the queen.

I then spent 12 hours on the overnight bus service from Nairobi to Jinja in Uganda which is famous as it's the source of the Nile. What a wonderful way to spend a Saturday night! Ryan and Zelalem insisted on dropping me to the bus station as it's in a really dodgy area of Nairobi called River Rd. It was a surreal experience. After we pulled out of the city the lights in the bus went out and everyone fell asleep despite the fact that it was only 8pm and the radio was on full blast. Even when we lost radio reception the driver didn't turn it down so we spent most of the ride with this loud disturbance in the background.

Thankfully, this was drowned out by the bus slowly and noisily falling apart as we bumped along a shocking road with potholes everywhere. It was so bad my teeth were chattering in my head and my glasses were bouncing on the bridge of my nose. That stretch of bad road lasted about 4 hours. We stopped at a number of small ghost towns along the way and everyone got out or random people would get on. I'll admit I was freaked out and regretted the day I thought getting the night bus was a good idea.

We reached the border about 3am and I made friends with a chick called Ayoh who was going to Kampala (the capital of Uganda - about two hours further than Jinja). Immigration was the most ridiculous process I have ever experience. We had to line up on the Kenyan side in the rain and get our passports stamped. Of course 7 other buses arrived at the same time we did so there were people everywhere... Then we had to walk 300 metres over the border to Uganda and once again line up there to get our passports stamped to enter their country. In this line we had to fend off people pretending to be officials and asking to see our passprts and dudes in labcoats offering to change money. Thank god Ayoh was with me...

Then we had to wait for our bus to get checked by officials for contraband or taxable items (goats and chickens and stuff) and then wait for the bus to pass thru the gate and drive the 300 metres to where we were waiting. This whole process took about 3 hours. I'm not joking. And we all had to stand out in the rain while this happened. I was so wet and muddy by the time we got back on the bus and headed into Uganda...