Free The Bizarre Truth by Andrew Zimmern Page A

in Lwanika with an impressive amount of fanfare. All the women turned out, dancing and singing us into the main town square—just a dirt area surrounded by a cluster of four or five homes. It seemed everyone was curious about the arrival of these “mazungos” and their cameras.
Mazungo
basically means “whitey” in Ugandan culture, which never felt derogatory—they use it more as a term of endearment mixed with a healthy dose of good humor. The Embegge have an incredible sense of humor, and laughter is a regular part of the daily village cacophony of sounds. And why ignore the obvious? Mazungos just don’t show up in their village all the time, especially soft fluffy ones like me. The Embegge were very found of using that term around me, mostly because I totally embraced the culture, even if it meant I ended up making a complete ass of myself. Unlike me, most mazungos don’t dance with them, eat their traditional food, work with them, and sleep in teeny pup tents alongside their huts. I even went as far as joining the village’s all-female cooking co-op for an adventurous lesson in cooking matooke—a common dishmade from boiled and mashed green bananas. To the Embegge, this was probably the most bizarre thing they’d ever seen from any man, as the responsibility of preparing food belongs solely to females. In fact, once a male hits age twelve, he isn’t expected to even sit in the kitchen. Taking an active role in their everyday lives, instead of simply staring and gawking from the safety of my Land Rover as most visitors do, afforded me a singular experience that meant we bonded in a way that would have been impossible had I only hung out for a few hours a day, then bussed back to a cushy hotel room somewhere.
    Life for the Embegge is very rustic compared to life in the city of Kampala. For the most part, they do not wear Western clothes in the American sense. Women wear a traditional native shift, the same sacklike dress they’ve been wearing for years. Men wear pants and T-shirts in the village, or just shorts and flip-flops. Young men here dress like beach bums in Hawaii. But because national charitable organizations here in the States organize fund-raising drives on a grassroots level, you will often see whole families or villages decked out in prom shirts from 1997 in Cleveland, or see three boys walking together across a jungle field all wearing “Kimmelman Bar Mitzvah 2006, WE LOVE YOU KENNY!” Tees. The families live in small, circular mud and straw huts, which they share with their goats, cows, and other animals, depending on the predators who live in the jungles nearby. Some families are situated in homes made of brick with penned enclosures for their animals. With each passing year, this is becoming more and more the norm. They cook over small fires, farm and hunt off the surrounding land, sharing what they can with their community. It’s the pinnacle of sustainable living, except that buzzword doesn’t exist there. It’s just the only way of life they know. In America, eating well, eating sustainably, and eating off the land are increasingly becoming metrics of social status. In East Africa, it’s the norm. And no one here is hungry, despite the embarrassing cliché of starving children plastered all over themedia. Food choice is limited, and other health issues are in desperate need of attention, but the soil is fertile and the animals are plentiful.
    The Embegge people were gracious, kind, and generous hosts, more welcoming than I could have ever imagined. However, I’d be lying if I said these few days I spent with them weren’t one of the most physically, mentally, and emotionally stressful experiences of my life. You’re constantly fighting the oppressive dampness and moisture, the heat, hunger, hydration, the overwhelming stench of rotting plant matter, and the constant threat of disease. From dusk until dawn, all mazungos must cover themselves from head to toe in clothing that has been