Beans for 27!

After reading my post about my cooking disaster with g-nuts, many of you offered encouragement and said it would take time for me to learn how to cook beans and other Ugandan foods.  So I thought you would be pleased to know that I successfully cooked beans and rice for dinner on Friday night for 27 people!  I cooked two big pots of beans and one big pot of rice.  According to my guests, the beans were really good.  Our guests included ten Pepperdine law students (working for two months for the Ugandan judiciary), one Pepperdine law student (working with a foundation for street kids), two American adoption lawyers (visiting Kampala this week), and the Alan & Holly Brown family of Texas (Alan, who is a Pepperdine law grad, and his family are adopting a little boy), and one future Pepperdine law student (former in-country director for Restore Leadership Academy).  The highest compliment I received was from Moses, the little boy the Browns are adopting.  He actually didn’t say a word about the beans, he just kept eating until he had finished two bowls full.  If I can make beans that a true Ugandan likes, I must have done it right.

Thanks to the law students bringing me chocolate chips from America, we made chocolate chip cookies for dessert.  The cookies were the best I have had in Uganda!  As the cookies baked, the games began – card games, board games, and group games like mafia and signs (not sure how to play it but the students and the kids had a great time).  We also had some delicious fresh pineapple – you can’t get better even in Hawaii.  We followed the cookies and pineapple with our other “dessert” Doxycycline (anit-malarial drug we take daily).  Some of the students are also taking doxy, so we passed around our Costco-sized bottle of pills and shared.

During the evening, one student told me that it was nice just to be in an “American feeling” home.  It did feel like America – dinner, baking cookies, and playing games.  For a few hours, we felt like we were home.  It sort of makes me miss home more, but also makes me look forward to future game nights in Malibu with the law students and others in our Pepperdine family.  It gave me a reminder of why I am so blessed to be in the Pepperdine community.  When we are back at home, I will appreciate these special people even more.