MAHTOKE!

Sunday, 18th July. Semliki Time: 05:09pm

Sundays, at the Semliki wildlife reserve, are rest days. Edson busies himself with the odd jobs he didn’t have time for during the week. William lounges around and plays draughts against anyone who will indulge him. Moses and Justice listen to the radio in their tents. Alex and I read. I’m now almost four-hundred pages through War and Peace which, at the pace I get through books, is quite an achievement. Alex put me to shame, however, by finishing The Da Vinci Code in the time it took for me to get from page 320 to page 350. Apart from that, there’s not a lot else to do, though simply being able to sleep till past six is a joy. Today, when I emerged from my tent at ten, William actually came to inquire if I was ill. I said that I’d been resting, guiltily aware of the fact that, back in Blighty, 10am was early for me.

Ugandans seem very fond of their just so stories and, yesterday, Edson told us how the Semliki National Park got its name. Apparently, when the first Mzungu visited Semliki, he walked up to a woman washing her clothes in a basket in the river.
“Dear lady”, the intrepid colonial had asked, gazing inquiringly over his specials and gesturing to the river, “what do you call this river?”
The woman, thinking that the man was pointing at the basket she’d just emptied and asking what was in it, replied “Semuriki!”, the local word for “Nothing!”.
The colonial gentleman jotted it down in his notebook and went on his merry way along the newly discovered river of nothing.

Whether there’s any truth in the story is another matter, but its spookily similar to the alleged naming ‘Matoke’, a mashed potato-esque dish made from boiled plantains. Apparently, a long time ago, a colonial British gentleman (maybe the same one) was sampling the local fare. Each dish he was given he greeted with cried of disgust until someone offered up the plantain surprise. Upon chewing the mashed savoury-banana dish for a few seconds the colonial master stood up and shouted “Aha! Now that’s okay!”. To the Africans, this sounded something like “MAHTOKE!” and that's how Matoke got its name. True? Probably not. Good stories? MAHTOKE!

(Oh and while I’m at it, thank you very much for your comments. Its nice to feel in touch with ‘civilization’, albeit slightly. Since the days here are quite similar, I’m slowly running out of things to write about. If there’s anything you’d like to hear, do tell.)