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A few years ago, my dear friend, Rachel, came to visit us here in Uganda. She spent a few weeks in Kenya first. The people she was with in Kenya warned her, “Uganda is banana country. You’ll eat so many bananas while you’re there!”

I’m not sure we fed her any bananas at all while she was here visiting, which is ironic because Uganda actually is known for their bananas.

Isingiro, the district immediately to our south, grows many of the bananas that are eaten throughout the country. Kabingo has even put up a statue commemorating this fact (pictured in the above photo). Whenever we drive to the refugee camp, piles of matoke stalks line the side of the road in readiness for the huge trucks that come to pick them up and bring them into the cities, particularly Kampala. Men push bikes laden with bananas along the side of the road. I’ve seen as many as 10 banana stalks on a bike at a time – or around 500 pounds of bananas.

We were told that there are 40 different varieties of bananas. I only know of 4 personally, and we have all of these growing in our yard. We have our own mini plantation in our yard with 20 banana plants. Each plant puts off 3-4 shoots at a time but usually only one of these is producing a stalk of bananas.

Note the banana plant at the far left of the above picture. This is a red banana plant. Even the plant itself is red. They produce bananas with a red skin that are huge and sweeter than any of the other bananas. They are used by some to make beer and wine, though I’ve never been able to figure out how you’d do that with a banana. That said, there are vendors selling banana wine at every trade show.

Next in line is a sweet banana plant, called a kabalagala. The bananas they produce are smaller “snack pack” sized bananas, about half the size of the ones you buy in stores in the US. They are our personal favorites so most of the plants in our yard are kabalagala plants.

Next is the matoke (ebitookye here in Mbarara) or cooking banana. They are the most common variety here. Farmers cut and sell the stalks while they are still jade green and they are peeled and eaten soon after. They taste sort of like potatoes, but that really isn’t even close to the flavor. Even the plantains you get in the States don’t taste the same. We love the flavor and enjoy them every time we get the chance!

Another variety (not pictured above) is bogoya. These look and taste the most like American bananas of any of the varieties we’ve tried. 

How can you tell the difference between the sweet bananas and the cooking bananas, you might ask? Note the plant (you might call it a tree or a trunk, but it is really a plant) in the picture above. The sweet banana has a green plant. The cooking banana (or matoke) has a black plant.

Now, I leave you with a picture of the biggest stalk of matoke I’ve ever seen. The entire thing was almost as tall as me and it probably weighed as much as I do. It had at least five poles propping it up when usually one is sufficient. 

And that, dear reader, is a quick introduction to the bananas of Uganda.

A few weeks ago I posted about the dry season here in Africa. This last dry season was long and very dry. Longer than normal, though not as long as they had last year when there was a severe drought and famine. 

Each season has its benefits. Dry season? The weather is predictable. It will be sunny and hot every day. It’s often windy. Sometimes it get cloudy in the afternoon because of the heating of the day, but it doesn’t rain. It gets very cool at night because there is no cloud cover to trap in the warm air.

Rainy season is not so predictable, though you do get to be pretty good at guessing the weather, even without a meteorologist. 

The weather gradually eases from one season to another. First, you get a surprise shower that pops up in the afternoon. It doesn’t rain long, barely enough to settle the dust or wet the ground. Sometimes it doesn’t even rain. The clouds will thicken and threaten it imminently, but it blows over.

Then, some evening as you sit relaxing before bed, you hear light sprinkles outside. It doesn’t rain long, but this is usually a lighter soaking rain that jump-starts the grass and plants. You start to notice that the grass needs to be cut, even though you don’t think you’ve gotten much rain.

Next, you get days when you wake in the morning to oppressive humidity — for here anyway. It’s not actually that high but after weeks of dry season low humidity, it feels like breathing under a wet blanket. Most days like this start out sunny, heat quickly, then a pressure system builds up and storms form. Some of these storms can be severe. 

Finally, the season settles in and you get rain, if not every day, the several days a week. Some days you wake to rain showers that last most of the day. Other times, the day starts off sunny but showers form in the afternoon. 

The rainy season tapers back into the dry season in the reverse of this pattern until the rain just stops for a couple months. 

I love the cool rainy days of the rainy season. I love how green everything gets.

I don’t love all the mud, but it’s a nice change from the dust of the dry season. It’s a pain to get clothes dry some days. Those cloudy cool days, even if it isn’t raining, clothes can hang out all day and still not get dry. We just have to follow our version of the adage “Hang laundry while the sun shines.”

Shopping in Africa is nothing like shopping in the US. It was one of the most frightening things about coming here. Where do people shop? What do they buy? Are the grocery stores anything like the ones in America?

With six kids, we look for ways to get food as inexpensively as possible. When we first got here, I shopped in the Central Market – an aptly named open air market right in the middle of town. However, quantity was hard to come by at a good price. James learned about Western Market, inaptly named as it is actually east of town. The prices were better, but it was more than 10km away so the added distance soon outweighed the savings of shopping there.

Then James discovered the market out at the refugee camp. We started buying from a beautiful woman named Angelique. 

We bought our veggies from her for years. Then she moved to Mozambique and her brother took over the shop. After that we struggled with supply issues. Sometimes he would have things, sometimes he didn’t. He didn’t seem as keen on running the business as she had.

We needed another source of veggies and decided to try something closer to home.

Not long before we left on our first furlough, Carla Bassett introduced me to the Wednesday market, not far from our house. I went once. It was loud, crowded, and overwhelming. I had no idea even where to begin shopping there.

About that time, another missionary couple moved here. The Campbells were planning to go to Rwanda but spent a year in Uganda to adapt to living in Africa before moving to a place where they’d be basically on their own. We became good friends.

We needed veggies. I knew about the Wednesday market but didn’t want to attempt it on my own. Christine Campbell was game to try it with me.

We launched into the unknown… and I fell in love with the Wednesday market.

I’ve been shopping there ever since. 

I even got pretty good at clothing shopping there. I’ve found the cutest clothes for Brennah, jeans and workout clothes for the boys, coats — yes, winter coats — for all the kids (and they were only $1 each!), baby clothes for women at the refugee camp, shoes for all the kids, plastic goods, I could go on and on. 

Shopping there is an experience in and of itself. Most of the vendors are limited in their knowledge of English so it’s great language practice. I make the most embarrassing mistakes there. People laugh at me. I laugh at me. I’m usually the only white person there. But people have gotten to know me. If I look lost, they help me. A few times I’ve had people lead me around to help me find something I was looking for. 

Brennah asked me the other day, “Mom, why do they call the Wednesday market the Wednesday market?”

“Because they only have it on Wednesday,” I answered.

“OH!” she exclaimed. “That’s why you can’t go on Thursday if you need to!”

Yep, that pretty much sums it up. If you miss the Wednesday market, you get to wait a week to go again. We don’t miss many Wednesdays at the market around here. 😉