Thoughts on Jinja

When I first got to Jinja, it hit me how untypical it is of any place I've seen so far in Africa. It reminded me of a small American town, the likes of which you can still see on the Andy Griffin show. The streets are wide with little traffic. Jinja is neither a huge metropolis, nor a one road town. The buildings are mostly single story buildings with small alley-ways between them. There are some trees and green spaces and the people are friendly and walk most of the time. It is a pretty cool place, and I'm happy I went and didn't do anything "touristy" but just hung out with Patrick and his friends.

There were some differences though too. I think the market (which was very similar to every other market I've been in) would not be found in America, and all the buildings are made of concrete and the windows of every building had bars across them; while Jinja is safe (we often walked at night with no problems) the people are not stupid.

I ate with Patrick and his friend Phillip most of the time and they went to cheap places that were great. These places served buffets of African food, and by the thrid one I could already tell you what was on the menu. Guaranteed it was rice, irish potatoes, posho (ground corn boiled together into a mass), matoke (green bananas, again cooked to a mash), and cassava of some kind (either in the familiar mash form, random shaped chunks, or french fry like pieces), beans, one kind of meat (rarely there were two), a vegetable (usually greens or eggplant), and a peanut sauce (which I really liked). For drinks it was either a pop (yeah, I'm from Wisconsin, I can say pop) or fruit juice. If they had it, I'd always opt for that. The pineapple juice at one place was particularly delicious and I kind of wanted to take a keg of it back to Goma, but don't think they'd let me take it on the plane to Beni.

They drink "African tea" in Uganda most of the time. English tea requires seeping the tea leaves in water and then adding milk and sugar as you wish. African tea is seeping the tea leaves in milk and adding sugar as you wish. There is no water, and it tasted kind of good. I though it could have used a bit of cinnamon for flavor, and I'd stick with the juice if that is an option, but I will drink African tea like the Ugandan sitting next to me if that's all they have (well, almost like the Ugandan sitting next to me).

One thing that really surprised me was the incredible number of Indian people in Jinja. They were very nice people (at least the one's I talked to) and seemed to own every store I walked into (okay, maybe 30%). An African looking place would all of a sudden have an Indian guy walk out of a door at the back, and the Indian music was a dead give-away. Nothing against that though, especially because the supermarket (which usually had 2 young Indian guys there) next to the internet cafe had juices like apple, grape, and pear which I have not had in a very long time, and I gave them lots of business for that.

I also got a bag of Doritos at that supermarket and they were good until I remembered Doritos are inherintely covered in too much flavor.

One last thing about Jinja. There was a theater but it didn't look very attractive and I didn't recognize any of the things showing (either African or Indian). I thought the only things needed to make Jinja part of small town USA was a rennovated theater with a Western every now and then, and a bowling alley. Given those two things, I would want to live in Jinja.