Uganda delivers the best roadside chicken roaster…

It’s the amount of food for me in Uganda.

You cannot even bear to complain. “That’s how we do it here, Ssebo,” says the roadside vendor who was kind enough to, well, be kind enough.

If you drive north from Kampala, at the junction that goes to western Uganda, about 80 kilometres out of the city, at the junction in Kafoo, there are roadside traders who roast all kinds of meat. I would advise that when you alight, forget about the ones who will bring roasted meat to your window. No.

Ask for Robert.

That’s your man. That’s the person to sort your stomach issues.

In Kenya, we say the thing that makes roadside food sweet is the environment. It’s the dust, the sun, the roaming dogs, and mostly because you are often caught hungry, and somehow everything tastes better.

But that’s beside the point. Let’s go back to Robert. Robert has a charcoal burner and roasts about six pieces of chicken at a go. “I was born in Canada,” he says. He has a smirk, and secondly, he is betrayed by that beautiful accent that rolls out of his tongue.

He calls it Kafoo Enterprise because he has the best chicken! He is not even joking.

Emmanuel, our friend, our videographer, knows him. Hands down. I must say, Steve our DOP and I rather enjoyed that piece of chicken more than anything else we have ever had. Robert from Canada did not disappoint. It had chilli, it had the right salt, it was not under-roasted. It was just it! So if you head down there, please ask for Robert, the best chicken roaster on these sides of Africa. He will not disappoint.

In Gulu, where we would meet some incredible people, the Nile perch arrives the size of my couch cushions. I kid you not. The chef carried ours out personally, to see for himself which lunatics ordered a small whale. When that plate hit the table, the conversation we were having stopped. I was shocked!

There was ugali on the side, and I think some local vegetables. But we are men of courage: We excavated that beast like the local archaeologists in our muram quarry back in my village. But I can tell you for free, you will not finish that thing. It’s massive….And so the men of courage bravely gave up, yet our stomachs were slouching..AAAH.

Anyway, a few days later, around Lake Victoria, I heard a story about the islands of the lake, Lake Nalubaale, as they call it in Uganda. In Kenya, it’s Lake Lolwe…but you guessed it, colonisation kinda won on this one, and so it remains Lake Victoria on the map, at least for now.

The Ssese Islands are a collection of 57-ish small islands that make up Kalangala District. Ish, because I heard different versions of the exact number!

So the story goes that one time, at night, one of the inhabited islands moved from the south to the north, for hundreds of kilometres and was seen floating near the mouth of Lake Victoria in Jinja. The island had given up on Lake Victoria and decided to head to the Red Sea. Interestingly, there was a guy who lived on the Island, and when he woke up in the morning, he could not see the rest of the island and was surprised to see people on shore looking at him. Even Ssebo H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, I am told, had to go there himself to see this half awake, topless, yawning dude, and also obviously see this shocking event of nature.

I was told this story by three different people, two of whom I met at a bar. They were very kind, but were drunk and kept interrupting each other in between this intriguing story. So I will let you decide whether there was indeed an island that once drifted in Uganda, or whether the two wonderful drunk men had conspired to tell me a story, together.

Anyway, I thought the Ssese Islands were some of the most beautiful places I have been to. They thrive on palm tree harvesting, run by companies, and obviously are run by fishermen, who have to leave in the evening to go fish in the lake.

It’s a beautiful island. Wish I had more time to write about this beauty that I speak of. You will learn that some of the islands do not yet have electricity, and it will take you up to two hours to get there by boat. On the day we were hoping to film on the lake, there was a heavy storm. It was incredible to see nature in power. Just one week earlier, a waterspout had swept across the island, leaving eight dead and many others injured. A police officer I met showed me wounds he was nursing. His friend had lost his wife that morning in the storm. The police officers had just come from a morning run. “The waterspout only lasted less than a minute,” he recalls. Tragic.

And so this time the Pearl was a blend of humid lakeside and wonderful hot north…. Delicious meals: From Nile fish to the lake fish of Nalubaale.

But Uganda doesn’t just feed you;

It flirts, hugs and takes care of you.

It’s always the people.