When we were young, wild and ‘free’, it was not uncommon to write a love letter and include the line ‘You are my sweet potato!’ or end the letter with ‘Your sweet potato!’. People, few foods ever make the wonderful leap into the world of romance but the sweet potato is a food in its own echelon. The sweet potato is a phenomenon whose profile needs to be raised, and its story be told.
No place on earth has laid the stage for a love affair with this root tuber than the Basoga-a bantu ethnic sub-group living on the beautiful banks of the mighty River Nile, in Eastern Uganda.
There, in Busoga, the sweet potato, reigns. It rules. Locally known as ‘embooli’, this Tuber is a kitchen staple that has become the love of millions, making appearance on the dinner table, or fire place, as families bond over food.
Now, allow me tell you a few things about the mighty sweet potatoes- the Embooli- the love of Busoga.
The sweet potatoes in Busoga come in all tribe of colour, shape and taste. You will find literally everything from round to long and slender, short and big, brown, white to deep purple skin, white, purple to yellow flesh, super sweet to water logged tasteless potatoes.
The Basoga prepare the sweet potato with an abundance of love and care. Our expertly mothers have learnt from their forebearers the art of boiling the sweet potato in an envelope of banana leaves, infusing into the potato a sweet aroma that leads you into temptation to eat more than your stomach can carry. Interestingly, sweet potatoes, emboli, are often best prepared the best way- boil/steam and serve.
Like everyone is expected to have some banana plantation or own a cow in western Uganda, in Busoga, a woman who has no potato garden is seen as a lazy woman.
In hard times, when scarcity of other foods strikes a household, the sweet potato is the food that stands in the gap. The sweet potato never fails even when all other crops crumble. The sweet potato is both sauce and main food. It can be eaten without sauce. It is a self-contained food. The sweet potato can be roasted on open fire, and it can also be eaten raw. The sweet potato can be served hot or cold.
The sweet potato can quench the thirst of a hungry man who has just completed tilling the land…and also calm the hungry baby waiting to suck the mother breast. The sweet potato is for the old and young alike.
But that’s not all, in Busoga, beyond the utility of these sweet tubers as food, their leaves serve other social and medical functions. The leaves of sweet potatoes are washed, squeezed and their juice used to cure headache. It is believed that once you feel dizzy, juice from potato leaves can relieve one of that condition. One simply has to bathe that water filled with the sweet potato leaves and they do just fine.
It is also believed, that the sweet potato leaves can also be mixed with bitter leaf (mululuza in Luganda or olubirizi in Lusoga) to aid a woman in labor give birth easily. It’s said that this concoction can be placed in a basin and the woman experiencing contractions sits in….and the chemistry will work on her to increase contractions so that she gives birth quickly. They say, the mixture helps a woman in ‘Okumena (breaking)…or loosely translated as to help soften the bones of a woman so that the baby can have safe and quick passage to mother earth.
There are also rituals around the planting of sweet potatoes in Busoga. It is said that to stop people from visiting your garden, to steal or bewitch your garden, you are supposed to pick some soil from the first heap of soil you make in your potato garden, and pour that soil behind your cooking stones/fire place. This way, it is believed, no thief will mange to steal or evil person succeed at doing something wrong or evil in your garden. There is a very strong belief that a bad harvest is always orchestrated by some bad person who visits your garden and leaves some charms or ‘bewitches’ your garden. So most sweet potato farmers often pick some soil, go back with it home and place it behind the fireplace. This is a way of insulating the garden from others with bad intentions.
There is also a belief that when you roast potatoes, you ‘invite’ famine in the household. Our parents often restrained us from roasting potatoes. If you did, the book of African discipline was brought out, and your buttocks were fried.
It is also believed that a woman who has just given birth should not eat sweet potatoes immediately after giving birth, without first taking a bite of a raw potato. They say, if she does, she will have a running stomach.
There is a saying that the eye eats before the stomach. Others say the eye is bigger than the stomach. I know I should have shared a better photo of the sweet potato to wet your appetite but this is all I could find.
In Busoga, people prefer the whitish, ‘silk’ potato. The watery almost tasteless potato called ‘Bunduguza’ is only eaten during times of lack or famine.
The sweet potato is a darling of the Basoga. It’s a food that bonds families, a food that breaks neighborhood, a tuber that is a life line for a whole community. There is a sense in which the Basoga find a sweet Potato a sensual pleasure, a satisfaction and sweet experience that words cannot explain.
Luckily, there is no bad way of cooking, preparing or eating sweet potatoes. You can have it anyhow you want. If you want to taste a good sweet potato, ask a musoga friend to identify for you one. We are experts in this field. After you have eaten it, that moment will become a gateway to accessing the culture and warmth of the Basoga.
The sweet potato is the food we eat as we wait for a full meal…it is a food we ate after the main course…it was a food we ate as we carried jerricans to fetch water from the well. The sweet potato was the food that we put in porridge to make up for the absence of sugar. The sweet potato, like onions in India, can cause a revolution in a village. The sweet potato was the food our grand mothers rewarded us for doing good, denied us for ill manners. The premium form of serving of a sweet potato comes as sweetness called omugoyo (a mixture of mashed beans and sweet potatoes). The sweet potato, my friends, is the hallmark of sweetness. You have not eaten a sweet potato yet, if you have never eaten one prepared by a mother from Busoga.
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