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weirdest spaghetti ever
Friday, August 4 2017
location: Rain Forest Lodge, Mabira Rain Forest, Uganda
As we slept last night in our jungle cabin, we kept hearing crazy animals in the night. One such animal would start out quietly shouting a noise and then gradually get louder and hoarser-sounding in a way that made it sound as though he or she was ominously approaching in the night. Later we would learn from a nature guide that this creature had been a tree hyrax, a relative of the elephant (though our guide would mischaracterize the creature as being "a rodent").
But I'm getting ahead of myself. We woke up at 9:00am, much later than expected and just a the time we'd arranged for our breakfast to be delivered. It arrived on a single platter expertly carried by the cute little man who had also brought us the hand-written menu and been our waiter last night. We had a very pleasant breakfast out on our cabin's front porch, though the monkeys failed to materialize and entertain us. In this area, the main species of primate (after humans) is the red-tailed monkey. We'd seen a couple last night, and they have strikingly colorful faces.
The activity this morning was a nature walk with a naturalist. Our naturalist turned out to be the lodge's head of security, and he was another rather little man. He would later tell us that there used to be a lot of pygmies living in these forests, but they'd all intermarried with non-pygmies and all the traits for pygmy statue had been lost. But judging by the stature of the people we kept seeing, those genes, while diluted, might still be expressing themselves.
Not long into our nature walk, our guide asked how long of a walk we wanted to go on. All of the walk options cost the same, so I volunteered that we should go on the longest option, the hour and half one. At that point our guide got all weird and said something about how we needed to tip our guide to show appreciation. At that point I realized that our guide was probably the very same man who had demanded to guide us back to our cabin last night, and we hadn't tipped him for that. The tipping protocol in foreign countries is something of a landmine, and we tend to err on the side of not tipping, since the whole thing seems tawdry. But, okay little man, point taken. We did the big hour and a half tour, learning about how banyan vines and termites kill trees, how certain trees "can make a man strong," and how the pygmies were demographically erased by itermarrying with taller Bantu people. The most interesting part of the conversation came when our guide admitted that he was "born again [Christian]," though he might've just been saying that because it works well with American audiences. Gretchen told him that we are not religious but that we have a strong sense of morality, one that keeps us from eating animal products (among other things). In the end, we gave the little guy a tip that seemed to make him happy.
Before leaving the jungle lodge, we had a final lunch featuring summer rolls and yet more overcooked pasta. Gretchen was still going ape-shit over how surprisingly gourmet the food was, but I was less impressed.
Robert picked us up and drove us back through Kampala. On the way there, a massive downpour demonstrated the weakness of Uganda's stormwater infrastructure. The streets swellled with big pools of orange water while motorcyclists sought shelter at gas stations. Once we arrived in Kampala, we stopped briefly at the tour company's main office, which was situated in a creepy abandoned shopping mall directly across the street from La Petit Village, where our adventure had begun. After doing our best to smile and be friendly with the tour company's grand pooh bah, Gretchen and I took advantage of the WiFi to get all the internet-resident things we'd been needing. Most important for me was the dump of an old database; in its absence I'd been forced to cobble together a facsimile using evidence of the schema found in the PHP code base.
Going through Kampala meant traffic delays just because that's how it is with a third world city without highway bypasses. Not that this is a bad thing; I know from experience that highway bypasses present their own problems.
Our destination tonight was Nyange Resort and Marina, a small resort on Lake Victoria. Getting there involved a rather long drive on yet another long dirt road, one that passed through several full-feature villages (well, they had manequins wearing dresses and lots of chickens, but no active welding of bed frames). As for the Nyange Resort and Marina itself, it lay behind a security fence and seemed rather austere. There were some buildings, some of which were covered in festive murals, and there was even a tiny unusable section of Lake Victoria beach, but there was a lot of open space and few in the way of trees (or anything else to break up the almost barracks-like vibe). Adding to the overall creepiness, the check-in staff weren't exactly friendly. But at least there was WiFi, at least in the main building.
Back in our cabin (which was actually the largest cabin building and contained three units)
I tried to make myself some festive kratom tea, but quickly discovered that the tea pot provided with the room had a European-style plug that didn't fit the British-style outlets (the latter being the standard in Uganda). I went to the front desk to complain about this inconvenience, and a guy was sent to investigate. I could tell the caliber of employee that he was when he tried to jam the European-style plug into the British-style outlet. Had this issue really never come up before? After a delay, the guy came back with an adapter, which was what I'd told them I'd needed to begin with. Finally I could make my kratom tea (which, I should mention, was something of a risk to smuggle into Uganda in the first place).
By this point, Gretchen and I needed a drink, so we went to the resort's bar area. It was, we soon realized, perhaps the most depressing bar we'd ever seen. It's hard to say why, but it had something to do with the industrial furniture, the large screen featuring an unknown ball game, the dropped ceiling, and the dreary selection of floor tile. Think Lion's Club meets traffic court. Gretchen had already decided that the most compelling drink on the menu was "sex on the beach," though of course she didn't want to have to utter that expression. But when it seemed a woman was our bartender, she felt safe. After I'd ordered by Ugandan gin on the rocks (I forget what it was), she ordered her "sex on the beach." There was a bit of confusion and then the woman fetched a male colleague, who wanted to know what Gretchen had ordered. So she then had to say "sex on the beach" again, this time to some Ugandan dudebro. But the confusion continued and Gretchen was made to say it again. "Sex on the beach." It eventually turned out that the bar lacked three of the five ingredients necesary for a sex on the beach, so Gretchen had to order something else. By this point, we'd moved to an outdoor place adjacent to the main space, where at least we could get reasonable WiFi and connect with the world.
Then it was dinnertime. We went into the dining room, which was as sad and industrial as the bar, and were the only diners. The cook had done his best within the limitations of our diet, but the results were almost too weird to eat. There was a massive salad featuring gobs of avocado (which I love but Gretchen cannot eat due to an aversion), and after eating all that avocado, I had little room for the main course: spaghetti arrabiata. That was what it claimed to be, but it was so full of weird Indian spices that eating it proved to be something of a chore. And it certainly didn't help that it was badly overcooked. Unusually for me, I couldn't finish mine, and neither of us had any interest in taking it to go.
Our cute little cabin in the rainforest.
The drive on red dusty roads to Nyange. Click to enlarge.
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