Out of propane

It is no small feat to cook here. Much of what we eat has to be cooked from scratch and the local ingredients are somewhat limited. We can get flour, yeast, baking powder, salt, eggs, sugar, milk (thanks to Scott and Jennifer’s cow!) tomatoes, onions, beans, eggplant, rice, peanuts, cabbage, local cow/pig meat (freshly butchered on the spot),sour green oranges, avocadoes, pineapple and surprisingly enough Coca-Cola. Everything else has to be purchased and brought from over the mountain (either Fort Portal- 3 hours away, or Kampala- a day’s drive) We usually buy our groceries every 8-10 weeks when we travel to Kampala and Bob and Jennifer Chedester (our Fort Portal teammates) send weekly items like vegetables, for which we are VERY grateful. We have a small frig that runs on kersosene and a small oven that uses propane. While not up to American standards, we feel pretty fortunate to have such luxuries out in the bush, while just outside the school gate our neighbors are cooking over open fires on rocks selected from the river. Again, there remains the tension of holding the self-pity of my own sacrifice in one hand and the guilt of my comparative abundance in the other. All of this to say that my meals are pretty planned out in advance, and after a decade of cooking here my routines are nicely set. It does take a long time, but I’ve grown fairly accustomed to ordering my life around the preparation of our family’s meals.
However, this past week has thrown me a significant curve ball. Country-wide propane shortages have meant that my spare tank, which went out over the mountains 3 weeks ago has still not been filled and returned. So it was with a sinking heart that I noticed that the remaining tank attached to the stove was empty. Fortunately, the oven was hot enough to finish cooking the last two loaves of bread and to almost cook the pasta al dente. Sigh. On Sunday, Kev went out to the market and purchased a small kerosene sigili cooker. The picture should be at the top of this post. Let’s just say my creativity and resourcefulness will be stretched as I cook all of our meals on this one little burner. Pray that the propane would come soon!