I would wear hand-me-downs t-shirts and shorts from my sister and brother, and carry Pupu around the house like a baby.Įven though I put her in such an uncomfortable position she would stay put. At the time we lived with Grandma because my parents couldn't afford a house of our own. She would accompany me when my parents were at work and my older siblings went to school. The earliest memory I had of her is when I was around six years old. Pupu kickstarted my never ending – often time one sided – love with the universe's most ‘vile’ creature: cats. She would do her business at the school yard next door and catch mice at my grandma’s rodent infected house. I remember Pupu as a calm but adventurous kitty. Even though her fur was obviously not purple, and she could not flash a happy grin. But I like to think of her as Alice’s Cheshire cat who went down the rabbit hole. In the morning until mid-day she would roam around the outside to God knows where, probably to the fish market nearby to steal some freshly caught fish. She was a tabby cat, or what we Indonesian cat lovers refer to as oyen, (a cutesy pronunciation of orange), who spent the evening sleeping on my grandma’s flowery pink couch. And if mukenne were not indelibly coupled with a sickly experience in my recent past (as well as staring me in the face), I wouldn’t mind eating their eyeballs for every lunch. If I were blind and/or had super dim light to chew by, I would ingest more insects without my knowledge and therefore would be a more satisfied customer. ![]() And just then the realization came to me that this disgust for “visitors” in my nutriment is really fabricated in my psyche only and has no bearing on the quality of actual sustenance or even real savor. Halfway through the monstrous bowl, I remembered the varied species of small ant in my dinner last night that I had discovered just following the large lake fly in my hot mug of sugar-sweet tea. “I’m eating eyeballs” was the first thought to reach my head, and devoid of any like minded white folk to share the experience, I exuded a quiet smirk and pressed on through a difficult meal. As I took the first bite, my teeth ground the small chewy things as the familiar stench of Lambu filled my mouth and nostrils. Most Ugandans really love the stuff and the two teachers visiting the island with me were gleefully anticipating their midday meal, plotting with the local pastor how to commandeer some quantities of dried delicacy for their wives. ![]() I assumed the little fishies would surely be mashed or pounded into powder like the small protein deposits in our German Shepherd’s dog food, but alas, their full bodies were intact–somewhat flattened and curled by the sun’s heat, now soaked in yummy bean juice, beckoning to me with their silent open mouths. (Last year I had also successfully avoided eating “ensenene” (grasshoppers) until a student gifted me a small fortune of the expensive snack).īut now, here I was with a sizable bowl of sweet potato and poscho (solid state cornmeal) awaiting the beany mixture I had previously requested. Needless to say, I’ve never tasted nor seen that these bite sized corpses are any good for ingestion, and until this week I had staved off any propositions to partake. ![]() You can read all about our YWAM adventure in Lambu here, but for now let’s just declare that nine vomiting young adults and a fishing village that reeks of dead, putrid fish drying in the sun is not a happy mix. When Frank (our master chef at the Island Leadership School) queried whether we would enjoy “mukenne” in our beans this week, I much too hastily replied in the affirmative, my comment followed closely by a flood of not-so-pleasant memories of the smelliest town I’ve ever stayed four nights in. Let me take a short reprise from more serious matters to describe a unique lunch episode I enjoyed this week:
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