Mum Judith and Sarah shelling the beans

The children play in the big hole dug to plant matoki banana seedlings

My view from my laptop. The latrines (middle one is mine!) and the piggery with fields of sugar cane

Sarah peeling the sweet potatoes. They are sticky and white in colour unlike out orange ones!

Innocent delivering the sach of charcoal to cook our meals

Preparing the stoves for the locally grownb beans that will bubble away all day!

Sarah preparing the banana fronds for wrapping around the sweet potato and matoki for steamin

There’s a certain knack in trimming to get the leaves to fold

It looked easy!

but it wasn’t! I had to concentrate really hard as the knife was razor sharp!

Sarah was laughing as she watched me struggle but she still managed to take photos after little instruction

I think in future I will leave it to the experts as dinner would be very late otherwise!

The sweet potatoe is wrapped up for steaming

Matoki (savoury banana) arriving with my rucksack full of bananas, g-nuts and other produce. Im being fed very well!

I could hardly lift the matoki off the ground it was so heavy!

I know I am in Uganda when I wake up to the gentle sweeping outside my bedroom window, also knowing it is best to stay out of the way until the sweeping is completed otherwise you are likely to get a lung full! I can here the young mother next door already digging in her garden trying to make the most of the rainy season to get new crops planted and her two small children Gaster and Gift playing in the coolness of the early morning. I can hear Innocents pigs telling him it is there time for breakfast too! The day is waking up and I am feeling totally relaxed!

Yesterday was a day of relaxation and getting used to my Ugandan home. Innocent was busy getting in supplies such as charcoal and matoki while the ladies, his mum Judith and a friend Sarah cleaned the house and compound and started to prepare food for the day. They allow me to do very little work while I am here claiming that I need to rest when I come to Uganda! But I do manage to sneak a bit of help in to their amusement – even just sweeping the floor brings laughter on! Today when I saw Sarah preparing the banana fronds for wrapping the matoki and sweet potato for steaming, I just had to insist I had a go. As you see by the photos I was reasonably successful though I did cut into the leaf several times making it useless for the proposed use! I was rather nervous with the sharp knife too as one slip of it would have had my hand off!! The ladies were quite impressed, though its difficult to tell when they chat on in their own language, shaking their heads and with big smiles on their faces!

When I am outside which is most of the time, there is a small but constant stream of people passing the end of the compound and each and every one of them slows their pace waiting to catch my eye and acknowledge them with a wave. Immediately they respond with a smile, then carry on with a lightness in their step! I find the great majority of local people are lovely and welcoming and, they don’t ask me for anything unlike some places I have lived in Uganda. I hope to be meeting some of these children soon as Innocent has arranged for me to visit their school later today. I’m looking forward to it!