From Swiss watches to ‘war gin’: my experience of Ugandan cuisine

Uganda is a landlocked East African country home to 43 million people of various ethnic groups and religions. Like its population, Uganda’s cuisine is diverse as it involves a range of vegetable and meat dishes, modern and traditional cooking styles, and influences from the UK, India, and Middle East.

My first encounter with Ugandan food happened last year while volunteering in the country for the Tag Rugby Trust (TRT). This unique charity uses participation in tag rugby as a tool to address issues such as poverty, poor access to education and gender discrimination in the UK and overseas in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Romania and Ghana. By establishing rugby clubs in local communities, TRT gets people of all ages and abilities active in sport and provides them with useful skills such as leadership, writing and finance management that will assist them in the job market.

While I would love to tell you more about TRT’s amazing work, the subject of this article is of course Ugandan cuisine (but I do encourage you to visit their website at https://tagrugbytrust.co.uk for more information). So, without further delay, let me describe some of my favourite culinary encounters in the hope that it will inspire you to try Ugandan food.

Lunch and dinner

In the first half of my visit, I stayed in Entebbe in central Uganda at the home of Fortunate Irankunda: Country Manager for TRT’s Uganda programme. Fortunate is a larger than life character and mother figure for many in her community. Her house functions simultaneously as a home, a club house and one of TRT’s two Ugandan headquarters. This made it a hive of activity with local volunteers, players and neighbourhood friends dropping by regularly to chat or discuss TRT’s work. This warm sense of community extended to the cooking; visitors would often dine with us and lend a hand in the kitchen.

*The road leading up to Fortunate’s home*

Lunch and evening meals were always similar. Usually, they were centred around a hearty main such as beef or tilapia fish stew with onions, tomatoes and garlic. This would be served alongside a starchy side dish such as matoke (a type of banana served solid or mashed), cassava, potatoes (known locally as ‘Irish’) or posho (a type of maize flour porridge). As Entebbe sits on the northern shore of Lake Victoria, tilapia fish caught from the lake are a main component of the local diet. Therefore, they were a regular feature at our mealtimes.

While delicious, tilapia was served differently to the fish I had eaten at home. When cooked as part of a stew, it was left intact creating a difficult path of bones and scales to navigate before each bite. A second surprise was the inclusion of fish heads. When looking down at my plate, I was sometimes alarmed to find my meal glaring back at me! However, despite the bones and occasional eye contact, the tilapia fish had a fresh taste and soft texture; its meat fell easily off the bone. This made it one of my favourite meals at the house.

What struck me about the style of cooking I observed was the time that went into preparation. Lunch and dinner would take several hours to prepare as the stews were cooked in a large pot over a simple gas stove. This was a stark contrast to the midweek cooking I am used to in my own home that usually starts with the question ‘what’s quick?’.

On the go

While travelling with Fortunate to TRT’s many sites, first to Entebbe and then to Jinja and Mbale in the east of Uganda, I came to depend on rolexes. No, not for telling the time with but for eating! The rolex I am referring to is a popular Ugandan wrap containing omelette, onions, and tomatoes (although you would not be the first to mistake the name for an equally popular, but considerably less edible, brand of Swiss watch).

Rolexes are prepared and sold by roadside vendors from outdoor kitchens that double as shop fronts. Their name is a contraction of the words ‘rolled eggs’ reflecting the wrap’s method of preparation. One vendor will fry eggs over a metal hotplate while another stirs flour and water in a deep drum to create dough for the chapatis. Once an omelette is cooked (or two or three depending on your appetite), it is rolled inside a chapati along with the vegetables.

In addition to the classic rolex, vendors offer a variation known as kikomando where the chapati is sliced and mixed with beans. Both snacks are extremely filling and affordable at around 2000 Ugandan shillings (40p). In contrast to brands such as KFC, McDonalds and Subway that populate UK highstreets, roadside vendors provide Ugandans and tourists alike with an alternative, less globalised, form of fast food.

Waragi

In Jinja, I also had the opportunity to try homemade Ugandan gin called waragi. The beverage is thought to originate from a north African spirit known as arak that was drunk by Nubian soldiers enlisted by the British Army during its conquest of Uganda in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The British referred to the spirit as ‘war gin’ because it was used to induce Dutch courage before battle. Over time ‘war gin’ spread throughout Uganda and its name localised into the Ugandan term waragi.

Today, waragi continues to be brewed from crops such as bananas, cassava, and millet. Once ripe, the plants are mashed, and their extract placed into large drums which are heated over wood fires to release ethanol vapour. The vapour rises through cold metal pipes and condenses into a liquid. This is then bottled and sold as a form of moonshine.

Whilst commercial brands are typically 40% proof, the local homemade brews have a significantly higher potency. So strong are they that President Trump almost endorsed their consumption as a form of Covid-19 treatment in the U.S. before settling on household bleach as his medicine of choice.

Editor’s note: this was a poor attempt at topical humour by the author. Eate Collective and its members do not endorse the use of bleach, waragi or topical humour to treat Covid-19 or any other ailment. I have asked them, and they state quite unequivocally that it is a really, really dumb idea.

On a serious note, waragi’s high ethanol content and widespread consumption has caused genuine concern among health officials in recent years. Although its production is an important livelihood for many low-income households, its consumption is blamed for Uganda’s status as one of Africa’s highest alcohol consumers. This in turn has exacerbated issues concerning poverty and poor public health.

There have also been reported cases of unsafe production without the use of filters to prevent harmful impurities from entering the finished product. Therefore, those wishing to try the spirit should be wary of the homemade kind and instead purchase from regulated brands, such as Uganda Waragi, that use triple distillation to ensure safe consumption.

*A drum containing fermenting plant extracts used to make ‘waragi’ gin.*

Before drawing this article to a close, I would like to mention a few of the foods I tried that, although memorable, lacked the kind of interesting name or anecdote that comes with a tilapia fish, rolex or ‘war gin’. One of the nicest foods I ate was mandazi: a fried bread, popular in East Africa, that is shaped into a triangle and sweetened by coconut milk. I first encountered this doughnut-like snack one fateful night at the end of my journey. We were travelling along the main highway from Jinja to Entebbe, the law and a school of vengeful tilapia fish hot on our tail, when suddenly…

Oh, would you look at that! Having just said that the food in this section lacks interesting anecdotes, there I go trying to tell one. Moving quickly on…

A final thought must also be given to the fruits I enjoyed. I had the chance to sample tropical pineapples, mangoes, avocadoes and jackfruits with a much sharper and fresher natural taste than the shrink-wrapped varieties we are used to in the UK. I would like to say, quite un-anecdotally, that the mangoes and avocadoes I tried were so delicious that I brought a few of each home in my luggage for my family to enjoy.

And there you have it: a rundown of some of my favourite Ugandan foods tasted during my visit. No doubt, there is much more to say on the topic of Ugandan cuisine and more foods to try. However, I hope that by describing a few of the most memorable and delicious, I can inspire you to visit Uganda yourself, global pandemic permitting, or at the very least to try Ugandan food. Aside perhaps from waragi, I can say with certainty that you will not regret it (especially if you drink in moderation).

-tOM sTEVENSON

About the author

'Tom is EATE’s man in the field. It is a very nice field and Tom is very happy there. However, he is occasionally lured out by his friend Sam who offers him work as a travel writer. When he is not writing for EATE, Tom is undertaking an MSc in Climate Change, Development and Policy at the University of Sussex with the aim of becoming a climate professional in the field of adaptation. Through studying international development and volunteer work he has gained an understanding of issues, such as climate change, that affect food security and the food and agriculture sector around the world.'