The return of the coffee mug cake

The pumpkin coffee mug cake was inspired by my cuddly couch crasher Marika, a student at Kenyon college that I play frisbee with who's sticking around in East Africa for two extra months to travel!

She made dinner for Meg and me this past Saturday night, as a thank you for letting her stay at our apt this week: homemade ravioli from scratch with pumpkin filling consisting of pumpkin, garlic, onion, carrot, and parmesan cheese, topped with a spinach and garlic cream sauce. I made a Ugandan salad of tomato, onion, cabbage, and green pepper, tossed with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette. Meg said that balsamic vinegar is good for killing stuff, which I guess kind of makes it the Coke of salad. We busted out a bottle of Robert's Rock red wine, and since we only needed 1/3 of the pumpkin for the ravioli filling, and used the extra we even had from that 1/3 and made pan-fried pumpkin pancakes, I now have 2/3 of a freshly cooked pumpkin in the fridge. I found and considered a Paul Deen Pumpkin Bars recipe (shameless!... and sans the icing), but that would require turning the oven on in our apt, which is the equivalent of shooting fireworks inside the oven in our apt (but which is nothing compared to when the power line falls across the street from our apt), so it will probably be slowly and steadily consumed cup by cup, destined to a fate as pumpkin coffee mug cake.

The (redemptive) dinner retrospective:

Making the pumpkin ravioli (and making impromptu pumpkin pancakes, which ended up being my favorite part of the meal!)



Chopping the nakati (Ugandan spinach)



ZOMG cheese!!! (The cheese easily cost 1/2 of the entire meal!)



South African wine



Dinner (Miles Davis "Kind of Blue" playing in the background not pictured)



I know, I know, you're all judging me (and conveniently, last Saturday was May 21st, 2011, the revised prediction for the date of the Rapture), but my apt has a microwave, so it was inevitable!

Pumpkin cake:
4 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 tablespoons cooked pumpkin
4 tablespoons milk (or water)
1 teaspoon cinnamon (or allspice, or whatever)
-adapted from Problem Solvin' Mom, with the utterly "apt" for being utterly generic tagline "because life provides plenty of opportunity for creative solutions"

Chocolate cake:
4 tablespoons chocolate (or vanilla, or whatever) cake mix
3 tablespoons milk (or water)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
(sometimes I add 1/2 tablespoon of coffee)

Microwave on high for 1 min or so, and enjoy!

Luganda linguistics lesson

OK so I've only met with Francis a handful of times in 3 months (5 times exactly), partially due to our busy schedules, partially due to the protests, but he's a natural Luganda tutor, his enunciation is beautiful (people either speak too fast or mumble, and sometimes both), his spelling is impeccable (people spell stuff in Luganda all sorts of ways), and we meet at the Makerere University Guild Canteen cafe, which has the best, puffiest, sweet-but-not-too-sweet chindazi (Ugandan donut) and African tea. African tea is just milk tea, even though Ugandans mostly drink their tea black.

The Makerere University Guild Canteen cafe




The Alphabet

The letters q and x don't exist, and there is an extra letter that looks like a script j and sounds like a soft "nj"

The letters h, i, p, r, and u don't start words but are used in words

The word for home = waka (tsamina mina eh eh, waka waka eh eh, tsamina mina zangalewa, this time for Africa...)

Ugandans know the word for cooking oil = butto, but the word for butter = siyagi, is never used and nobody knows it

Family

A mother's sisters are all called mother = maama, a father's brothers are all called father = taata, and an older brother or sister = baaba (that means father in Mandarin!)

If a female is speaking, there is no way to refer to a wife's family (because there is no way for a female to refer to a wife), and if a male is speaking, there is no way to refer to a husband's family (because there is no way for a male to refer to a husband)

Time

The word for mid-morning = kalasa mayanzi, which literally means "grasshopper's playing," and late afternoon = kawoza masiga, which literally means "cool down"

There is a difference between times at night, evening to midnight = ttumbi, and midnight to 4am = kinywa mbogo

Size Matters

The verbs kufirwa and kusuula both mean to lose something, but the first refers to losing something valuable, and the second refers to losing something regular

The verbs kutema and kusala both mean to cut something, but the first refers to using a large machete, and the second refers to using a small knife

Verbs, Nouns, Etc

The verb prefix ku is used to indicate the "to" form of a verb: kulya = to eat, kunywa, = to drink, kumanya = to know, kugamba = to say

The word ku means some: ku mmere = some food, ku mazzi = some water

The verbs to feel (physically/emotionally), to hear, to smell, and to taste something are all the same = kuwulira, but the verb to see/to meet someone is different = kulaba

The verb to choose/vote = londa, and the verb to wait = linda

The word for a story or a conversation = nboozi

There are 3 ways to say and = era, ate, and kyokka (I use ate, as in "ate gwe?/and you?" in response to someone asking "oli otya?/how are you?")

There isn't actually a way to say "I'm busy" in Luganda

Possession

Francis had to stop the lesson entirely because possession (mine, yours, his/hers, ours, yours, theirs) is so nuanced that he sat for a solid 10 mins thinking about how to explain it to me, and came up with nothing. We have yet to revisit this topic.

And just like that...

And just like that, police are spraying protesters bright pink.

"On Monday, at least nine unarmed people are believed to have been killed – including three shot in the back as they fled.

The tactic of spraying paint at protesters fairly common in Uganda and elsewhere in the continent.

It was used during the Apartheid era in South Africa, most famously in the 1989 Purple Rain Protest in Cape Town.

Spraying protesters a distinctive colour is carried out by such regimes because difficult for people to escape the police’s clutches while out of the demonstration zone.

The protests have sparked violence in the capital Kampala and several other towns for nearly a month.

But the protests show no sign of dying down..."-Reuters


Splash of anger: Police spray Ugandan protesters with coloured water during demonstrations in the capital Kampala


Pinked: Ugandan opposition politician Olara Otunnu is shielded by his supporters during the attack


Overcome with emulsion: Spraying tactics are the latest desperate tactic of disputed President Yoweri Museveni


Makeing their mark: The paint is used both to humiliate protesters and make it easier for police to track them down

And just like that...

And just like that, there's a "Walk-to-Work" Protest DVD already out.

The Letter M

M7 - President Museveni, comes from Mzee (pronounced "mzeh") and means "an old person, advanced in years" in Swahili

M$ - Microsoft, comes from a Uganda LUG thread today about buying Skype for $8.5 billion

I don't want to raise my kids...

I don't want to raise my kids in a place with too much aid, or too little development.

(But I do want them to experience it)

I don't want to raise my kids...

I don't want to raise my kids in a place that doesn't have Halloween and more importantly, trick-or-treating.

(Well, I at least want them to experience it, like, once or twice)