Uganda

Uganda

Uganda forms the western border of Kenya, along with Lake Victoria (the source of the Nile river). On one of our road trips in Kenya, we stayed at an old, British Colonial farm house that is now owned by a Kenyan couple. It was a beautiful evening, and I remember sitting on the back veranda watching the sun set over the distant hills. There was obviously a large valley between us and the hills in the distance, and we were told that the hills on the other side of the valley were Uganda. It was a beautiful, peaceful looking scene, even though Uganda was less than peaceful at the time. 

While the vast majority of the population still lives in the rural areas, the capital Kampala, is desribed as being quite cosmopolitan. We take our tea adventure from a video talking about tea shops in Kampala. According to this resource, in rural areas, black tea bags and local herbs are used to brew tea. In the city, they have tea shops that are experimenting with fancy ways to serve tea. The concoctions are based on black tea, but can contain fruit or other ingredients to make the tea more interesting. The addition of mint and lemon were both popular according to this video, but there wasn't much in the way of instructions. I can guess a little bit from the glasses of tea that they show, but the method for this tea is my own creation. As people who know me know, a lack of instructions never stopped me. This is going to fall under the category of tea inspired by the description of tea in this country, for lack of more specific information.

So, I have my bag of black tea, and an orange. I chose an orange because they were on sale at Aldi's, and I know oranges grow in East Africa. So, I made some hot water to brew my tea, and peeled and sectioned my orange. While I know the video showed tea with quartered slices of whole orange floating on the top, I'm a bit more practical. I want to eat this orange, not use it to look pretty. I also don't really know what all is on the outside of this orange, and washing the outside only takes off so much.

I discovered that this particular orange was one of those really dry, mealy oranges that had surprise pockets of juice. 

Then I pulled apart some of those sections of orange and put them in my glass before pouring the hot tea over them. 

The orange slices did cool the tea down significantly, and I added a spoon for eating the orange chunks out of the glass. You definitely want to make sure that you chew your tea before swallowing. I did try eating some of the orange slices on the side, but they were just so dry. What to do? Well, people dunk stale cookies into coffee or tea in order to enjoy eating them again, why not orange slices?

I admit that I didn't actually dunk orange slices like cookies (the tea level in the cup was too low, and I wasn't sure how long they would have to soak), but I did chop up the rest of the orange and dump it into what was left of my tea at the bottom of the glass. This doesn't look like the fancy, cosmopolitan drinks served in Kampala, but now I know what to do with dry, mealy oranges!