A royal encounter... & some grasshoppers

It's not everyday that you get the chance to dine with the Queen of a Kingdom; especially one whose title, 'Nnabagereka', originates from the Mushroom clan, or who grew up with the Edible Rat clan.

My friend Pete kindly invited me along to the Nnabagereka's 10 year celebration of her Development Foundation, in the form of a dinner and fundraising event. The Nnabagereka is married to the Kabaka, the King of the kingdom of Buganda. The country of Uganda being traditionally made up of a number of kingdoms, these were abolished by Prime Minister Obote in the 60s and then several were restored as cultural institutions by President Museveni in the 90s. Buganda is the largest of these traditional kingdoms.

Although I was slightly disappointed to find that I was not sitting at the same table as Queen Sylvia http://www.nabagereka.org/, it was certainly very interesting to attend a royal event. She is a relatively young woman, is attractive, charming, clearly very popular and is involved in a large amount of social development / charity work; reminiscent of Princess Diana I thought. She was accompanied into and out of the dining hall by a host of traditionally, colourfully, ostentatiously-clad ladies, herself in an elegant black number. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to curtsy to her or exchange any words, which was a shame given that I'd done my homework on her clan origins and so forth, and was ready to enquire into the well being of her daughter, whose name means 'buffalo's horn'. Nor was I able to make a particularly active contribution to the singing of the Uganda and then Buganda national anthems throughout the evening – something to brush up on before my next royal encounter, wherever that may be.

It was a dramatic contrast to go from such pomp and ceremony one evening, to the humble home of one of the little boys who had stayed at the Childs i Foundation Babies Home for 5 weeks several months ago, the following morning. I accompanied a couple of the social workers on this check-up visit, to find out how little Nimrod is getting on living back with his mother in their community. We found them outside their home, a simple 1-room building, with 1 bed and a mattress on the floor, some clothes hanging on a line and some coals for cooking, housing Nimrod, his mother and her 2 sisters. Nimrod was wandering around the community in his bare feet and the social workers were very happy to see his level of attachment to his mum, and his lack of recognition of themselves. He was also prattling away in Luganda, the local language and has apparently stopped speaking or recognising English words. It was a positive visit as far as my colleagues were concerned.

Mary, a social worker at the charity from England, and I were honoured if a tad disconcerted by the family's hospitality, as we were offered a plate of the seasonal speciality, fried grasshoppers! We were treated to observing the process of preparing them – a brimming bowlful of limbless and writhing grasshoppers (surrounded by jumping plastic bags full of the next serving's unfortunate victims) which were then tossed into the sizzling hot pan with oil and onion and minutes later proudly presented to us as a tasty snack. Well! We were being watched from all quarters so managed to sample a few, made the requisite sound effects of pleasure, before being able to bag up the remaining thousand insects (so it seemed!) to take home in a doggy bag. On the wall of their modest dwelling was a poster of the Kabaka and Nnabagereka of Buganda watching over us as we tried to ignore the gritty after-effects of having a mouthful of grasshopper eyes.