Boiled Green Bananas and Cow Stomach

Our journey to North Uganda got delayed until tomorrow because the director of the program had to apply for a new Canadian passport (all the pages were full in his last one) at the Embassy here in Kampala. The northern region in Uganda where we will be working doesn't have power so I am enjoying reading my email and charging my cell phone while I can.

This morning I decided to go get a bite to eat and I walked into this little whole in the wall place. The man behind the counter didn't know much English so I tried to order in Swahili. (The woman washing dishes made fun of him and said in Swahili, "Ha, that white person's Swahili is better than your English."). Anyway, I tried to order several things on the menu, but he said that they didn't have any of those items. Finally I said, "What do you have?" He said we only have "something something something (I didn't know what it was)" and I asked him to describe it, but I didn't understand the description either. I said, "OK, give me that." I figured I couldn't go too wrong for about $1 US.

My plate arrived and I quickly recognized the cooked green bananas (a common staple in Africa). I took a couple bites and then gathered a whitish-meat looking thing on my fork and popped it in my mouth. I started to chew, and then I chewed some more, and then some more, and then some more. It was like having a ball of rubber in your mouth. I explored the item some more and discovered that it had a textured side and a smooth side. After swallowing the rubber ball and looking at my plate I realized that the whitish chunks were cow stomach and cow intestines.

Since there was no anxious Maasai wife watching me eat, I decided to not eat any more and snap a couple pictures for all of you to enjoy.

The plate of bananas and cow stomach and intestines. I turned over some of the stomach pieces so you could see the texture (slightly brown).

I thought about trying to use words to describe how I felt after I discovered I was eating cow stomach, but I decided to use a picture instead. Yeah, that is how I felt.