The pearl of Africa

I was born and raised Ugandan; my country is also called the pearl of Africa. Uganda is a landlocked country bordered to the east by Kenya and to the north by the youngest nation in the world, South Sudan in a region known as East Africa. She is home to Lake Victoria, the world’s second largest lake and source of Nile, the second longest river in the world. 

Grass thriving on dormant land in Gulu district, northern Uganda
Photo Credit: Stella

Uganda's climate is tropical divided into two seasons a rainy season (April - November) and a dry season (December - March) with an average temperature of 26 degrees celsius. Our climate is ideal for agricultural success but many young Ugandans shun farming because it is tedious and prefer white or blue collar jobs hence we languish in poverty and unemployment because we do not use the abundant and dormant land for productivity.

It has however not always been like this, I never met my grandfather but I know he tilled the land for his own food and the land paid my dad’s way through school and clothed him, and like his father before him my dad even though with a white collar job engaged in farming for our own family’s consumption.

Many Ugandans like my father are subsistence farmers, producing for consumption and only selling the surplus. In Uganda food is often purchased fresh from the markets having only been harvested the same morning or the previous afternoon; meat is largely consumed from animals slaughtered the same day, however Uganda suffers its share of food insecurity and famine especially in the north and north eastern regions which have suffered war and prolonged drought respectively.

My country is multicultural  and so the food grown in differs depending on the area under consideration,  in central Uganda mainly inhabited by the Bantu matooke (plantain) is the common staple food in the north its is millet. However one food seems to transcend all cultural and tribal borders, maize is eaten across not only Uganda but Africa; in Uganda we normally call this meal posho, a name with an interesting origin. I will tell you all about it tomorrow.