Undo

"It was like a big fat nightmare on the plate"

                                              -My big fat obnoxious Fiancé

Acholi Bur, 11:30:  We are very hungry. We all woke very early and skipped breakfast. We have basically finished with the days’ work. The bus from Kampala will be arriving soon and we hope to catch it to Kitgum town. We can’t wait any longer so we enter a restaurant. The menu is rather enterprising for a Kampala stomach,

Viz: -

-       Anyeeri (Edible rat)
-       Malakwang (bitter vegetables)
-       Otigo (okra)
-       Lacede (okra mixed with tiny fish popularly called mukene)
-       Roast meat in simsim paste
-       And accompanying food included; Millet bread, Cassava, Potatoes. 

In excitement we all order Anyeri at 3000 a plate with all accompanying foods. We didn’t have to wait long. My plate came with a rat head staring at me, its front teeth fanged out, facing the lump of millet bread, part of its chest hidden under the potatoes.  High paste soup gleams in rich grey waves that lap at the inside edges of the plate.

My heart missed a beat, I swallowed a lump of saliva so loud everyone looked at me and wondered what kind of appetite I had. Shock, awe, trepidation and panic. The other plates arrive without heads, laugher! Nothing funny here. There was something ghastly about that plate head when it came. The blacked out ghoulish eyes, the tiny burnt ear orifices, the five thin white incisor teeth, and the sneaky rat head trying to burrow into the millet bread. No way!

 I offer to exchange plates but no one wants a rat head staring at them eat the rest of the rat. I ask the woman why she has given me the rat head; ‘you are the group leader and the group leader eats the head.’ She answers simply, “you are visitors and the special dish for visitors is anyeeri.”

What? Laugher! I tell her to bring me another plate without the head. All talk of the ‘head’ is luck is bull. There was no way I was going to eat a rat head. If I can’t eat a fish eat how can I eat a rat head.

So, when you finish washing your hands, how do you dry them. Do you flip them till they dry or clean them on your trousers?