Strange Journey

I travelled from Kampala to Entebbe today in a matatu with only one person per seat.

"Give me money"

This phrase is so common in this area that I am beginning to think that maybe it just means hello. But for the tell-tale outstretched palm. I cannot believe how often I hear this here. Occasionally it is interspersed with the odd, "Give me sweet," or the more eloquent, "Please assist me one thousand to buy book," and I can only presume that this is the legacy of tourists who have in the past given money or sweets. Yet I wonder, how often are these requests granted? I suppose even if it is only once in a blue moon, it is still worth asking. I noticed that the children never asked when there were adults nearby and never when they were in school, so clearly it is not wholely acceptable.

It is so sad that this behaviour has been learned and, probably, encouraged. By people who get a kick out of seeing children fight each other for hand-outs, love the attention of being the giver, feel guilty, or think they are helping? I don't know.

This area, a scattering of small villages, is not wealthy by any stretch of the European or 'Western' imagination, but compared to other places, it is much better off. Three rafting companies employ guides, cooks, drivers. As do quad bike operators and horse riding outfits.There are numerous campsites, guesthouses and cafes all bringing in the tourist dollar, each employing dozens of locals. Softpower has built two schools, an education centre and has refurbished numerous other schools. Boda-boda drivers shuttle tourists and their kayaks round the countryside, women sell crafts and jewellery, villagers take tourists on guided walks. A similar village, or string of villages, elsewhere in the country, away from tourist spots and glorious rivers would have none of this. Employment would be rare, money much harder to come by and life would mostly be lived off the land. Yet visit these places, where mzungus rarely tread, where need is so much greater, and nobody will ask you for money.

In Rwanda, I was never asked for money, but over and over I was asked for my address or phone number. I was touched by these people, so eager to make friends, asking me please to tell them about my country and about my experience of theirs. How different.

At the education centre here, as well as teaching children, lessons in cooking, art, craft, pottery and I.T. give adults the chance to learn skills that will enable them to get dollars from mzungus from their work - this strikes me as a much healthier handout than money. Adults here never beg, nor are the knick-knack sellers and boda-boda drivers pushy. Who taught the children to beg? And who will teach them to stop? There are many ways, good ways, we can contibute to improving the lives of people in places such as this, but none of them involve giving coins to small children.

No Husband, No God

There's a nice guy who works at the kayak school who I chat to most days. In the course of our conversations he was amazed to learn that I was thirty-nine and have no husband or children. Cassius himself is forty and a grandfather, like most people his age. It is incomprehensible to him, and many others, that I could be so old and still single. Hardly surprising in a country where, according to yesterday's paper, 70% of girls are mothers by the age of 18. Life expectancy here is about 50, so it made little sense for me to be brushing off his horror with comments about being young and having plenty of time for that later. The WHO says 'healthy life exectancy' is only about 42.

In another conversation, while sipping tea on a bench in the mud behind a tiny restaurant shack, I answered no to so many religion questions that I was left with no choice but to admit the truth, that I don't believe in a God. Poor Cassius nearly choked on his tea, but was too polite to make a scene.

Thereafter, he introduced me to anyone he knew by saying,
"This is Zoe, she's thirty-nine and has no husband and no god."
Thus began my career as a freak-show exhibit...

Bujagali Falls

Not so much a waterfall as a series of big rapids, this is a very pleasant spot. A grassy slope leads down to the rocks banking the river, so there is plenty of space to stretch out, relax, and gaze across the rapids, across the Nile.

This place is just ten kilometres from Lake Victoria, the source of the White Nile. The water here is just beginning its 6695km journey through Uganda, Sudan and Egypt to the sea, a journey which will apparently take three months.

A small sign advertises the "Bujagali Swimmers", and I had the chance to watch one of these men swim the grade 5 rapid with no safety but the bouyancy provided by the jerrycan he clutched to his chest with one hand, the other hand waving triumphantly every time he surfaced.

Enviously I watched as kayakers came down, disappearing into waves and holes, cartwheeling or capsizing, emerging one way up or the other at the end. Just then I realized how much I want to kayak that well, and cursed myself for not getting out in my boat more. Two rafting companies brought big groups of their big rafts through, making the whole thing look rather tame by comparison.

I stayed a week at the campsite here, just upstream from the falls. The bar had a deck overlooking the river, offering stunning views downstream. (Picture on right taken from deck).

There are plans to dam the river here, a horrific thought, seeing not only how beautiful this area is, but also how much the local economy relies on tourism - tourism that is based almost solely on the river. I'm not a big fan of dams at the best of times, but to do this here seems terrible. What's wrong with solar power? Heaven knows, there's enough sun in Africa. To read more about the proposed dam, go to:
http://www.gg.rhul.ac.uk/simon/bujagali.html

I went out with the kayak school for a day on easier water, but unfortunately rather too easy. Not that I didn't need the practice, but I would have liked a little more excitement, but I had been grouped with the only two other customers, both beginners. Still it was good to be out on moving water, right at the source of this river, pracising a roll or two and bouncing around on grade one and two rapids. This is such a big volume river was quite unlike anything I've encountered in Malaysia, with strong currents even on the flat, whirlpools and eddies all over the place.

Apart from a Sunday spent wandering around the villages nearby and watching kayakers and the river, the rest of my week here was spent volunteering with Soft Power education, painting schools.

A tale of two cities

Actually, one city and a town.

Kampala

Dirty, dusty streets strewn with rubbish.
Noisy chaotic traffic, every junction a somehow fluid gridlock, with bikes, motorbikes and matatus weaving treacherously between each other, in clouds of belching black exhaust.
A ridiculously overloaded matatu, broken down, with one man trying - and failing - to push it uphill.
Trucks piled high with bananas, one man sitting on top of each load.
The taxi-park viewed from above, a mass of white matatus, hundreds of them, tightly packed in curving rows, others unable to get in or out of the jammed entrances.
Brightly painted schools, their walls covered in pictures and advice ("Respect each other," "Brush your teeth after eating")
Mud in the overflowing gutters, left by recent floods.
Sweaty clammy heat.

Jinja

Lush greenery.
Air thick with humidity and the oversweet smells of flowers and freshly cut grass.
Wide streets with wide grass verges, tree-lined.
Peaceful, empty roads.
A quiet place, a gentle pace of life.

Lake Bunyoni

Three days at Lake Bunyoni was the perfect way to recharge my batteries. This place is stunning, a huge lake, with a wildly wavy shoreline and dotted with islands, surrounded by hills. At an altitude of nearly 2000m, it surprised me with its warm tropical climate and lush greenery. I stayed at a fabulous spot called Byoona Amagara on a tiny island reached by nearly an hour's paddling in a dugout canoe. (Resort pictured top right)

This little resort had a library - yes a real library! A whole room of books! It was bliss to spend days reading, occasionally moving from one comfy sofa to a bench by the shore or the swimming dock. When feeling energetic I would walk the length of the island (not far) or jump into the lake for a swim. As well as a dorm and chalets, they had two geodome rooms, which will best be described by a photo, to be added at a later date. I stayed two nights in one of these rooms, which are open on one side, offering wonderful lake views, fresh air and that beautiful feeling of sleeping outside.

It was so gorgeous and peaceful there, I could have stayed forever.

Into Uganda

Ruhungeri was a nice spot to stay, another very typical African town, populated by lovely friendly people. I left in the morning on a relatively comfortable minibus to the border at Cyanika. This was real nowhere-land. On the Ugandan side of the border, the immigration office was shut as the officer had apparently gone for his breakfast. I sat down for a wait.

From the border to Kisoro the only available transport was a boda-boda (motorbike taxi), so I clung on as the driver, balancing my pack on the handlebars, negotiated the rocky, rutted road. I was still doing quite well for time, so decided to try to push on to Kabale. The minibus (now back to being a matatu rather than a daladala), spent the best part of three hours cruising and tooting through the tiny town to pick up more passengers before setting off. The road to Kabale was stunning, steep and rough, clinging to the hillsides as it snaked round and over the mountains. If i'd felt in any way safe, I'd have enjoyed it immensely. But of course, in a seriously overloaded matatu, negotiating a road more suited to 4x4 vehicles, driving often terrifyingly close to the edge of the roads and the precipices it bordered, my mind was taken up mostly with other thoughts.

Kabale struck me as a dismal spot. Rubbish lined the streets, in huge reeking heaps. Children demanded money (to say they begged would imply a measure of asking), boda boda drivers responded rudely if you didn't require their services. In what could have been a small green "square" on a pile of slightly burning stinking rubbish, two cows grazed on smouldering newspaper. In a nice little backpackers' cafe, two American tourists (who would never call themselves tourists, but travellers) engaged in a lengthy and loud conversation which would best be described as "competititve travel", each had 'done it better'. This apparently invovles claiming not to use the Lonely Planet, but knowing everything it says and generally being above doing anything that tourists might do. But of course, listening to them, they were just like every other traveller, but with bigger egos. I hadn't seen another mzungu for days, but kept quiet when repeatedly invited to join the competition, simply explaining that I'd just arrived and hadn't been anywhere yet.