Some Sprinkles, Tastes, and Other Ramblings

The rain has returned in buckets. The mosquitoes woke me up last night - I meet a disproportionate number of foreigners who have had malaria in Uganda compared to other East African Nations and my mosquito-net and repellent seem to be less effective every night, not psyched - and when I was coming back from the bathroom I noticed that it was particularly warm for 4am. I went out onto my balcony and the air was so electrified that I was convinced I could cause a spark by snapping my fingers. By 7 it was pouring and the surge on the tin roof won't let you sleep.

Another one of those things I never thought one could necessarily be good at: living with the rain. Again, I'm not good at it and never will be. Granted, I've never seen rain like this, but it's worse than snow in upstate New York in a lot of ways and that's why I feel justified with a one-hour delay for work. Besides, I need to give it some time to dry otherwise I look like I literally crawled to get there. Meanwhile, Ugandans will slosh around wearing all white at the height of the storm and look like they just pulled the clothes from the dryer when they get to work. I, on the other-hand, can't even wear flip-flops anymore because the ass of my pants always looks like I was riding a dirt-bike through puddles.

With the exception of the occasional violent monsoon, I'm pretty resigned to a quiet routine here now. I can feel home and school and to-do lists approaching and my desire for adventure is tempered a little bit by all of it. I'm quite ok with this, Kampala is a nice town to settle-down in. I'm basically into trying out different bars and restaurants and seeing the sights in and around the city. It's kind of like living in DC; the bars and restaurants even compete. Have made a tradition of a different Indian restaurant for Sunday night curry and had a stellar Palak Paneer the other night. There's an amazing French cafe that just opened up by my work where I had a poached Talapia in a dill-cream sauce for lunch yesterday. Tilapia is basically the only decent fish I've had in land-locked African nations, but it's particularly good here as it's coming straight from the Nile or Lake Victoria. Grilled whole Tilapia is amazing too, we even had a barbeque at the Hostel last Friday, which seemed like the first time I've cooked in decades. Have also enjoyed more than a few Chinese restaurants, a decent Thai place, some Lebanese, and will try some Ethiopian soon too (though that will only be an appetizer for my two weeks in Addis).

Street-food here is amazing. Indian style Chapattis and Samosas are huge. For a breakfast treat, they roll up an egg and vegetables in a chapatti - dubbed a Rolex (I like to think it came from "Roll-Eggs" but have no proof). There are also tons of cakes and funky chips and assorted nuts that are great snacks. And the cassava root is really good too. They grow tons of it here, but don't export it. It's a basic fried street food or sautéed as a side with meet. Liver, Goat, and Chicken are biggest here.

Ok, getting hungry and need some dinner. I know it would be really nice to have some pictures to accompany these descriptions...well, there's a couple new ones up now...I don't wanna talk about it...just know that those two took me a while.

I also added some new minibus names, you can check that out.