More Safaris

 Rhona -

Our friends Donald and David from the UK have been here for twelve days and just left on Tuesday. It was great having them, and they packed a lot into their stay. Bobby was patrol leader and Donald youngest or “bim” scout of the Kingfisher patrol – I trust Donald was more deferential to his PL in 1964 than he is now! They arrived late at night so stayed in Entebbe and we drove down the following morning, delayed a little by torrential rain. However, the sun came out and we had a good tour of the botanic gardens with lots of birdwatching, then lunch in Gately Inn Entebbe (recommended) and then home to Kampala for walk through village and up the hill at the back of our house for an introduction to real African life and a good view over Kampala. On Sunday we had a trip into the centre of Kampala and the taxi park and market before escaping to the more peaceful Kasubi Tombs,

where the Kabaka kings are buried and their female descendants take turns to sleep even today.

On Monday they were off to Rwanda for gorilla trekking and returned latish on Thursday for a quick turnaround before we all set off to Lake Mburo for three days safari. On the road down we all had the opportunity to straddle the Equator.

Lake Mburo is very underrated, it has lots of wildlife, and is the only park in Uganda with zebras and impala, both of which were plentiful. There are no big cats, but we saw plenty of buffalo and 50 species of birds (Donald and Bobby were into making lists, maybe a throwback from the 1960s) - more photos at end of blog. We stayed in Mihingo Lodge which was very comfortable with fantastic food, which the owner attributes to the input of his Scottish mother-in-law.

 

Impala and Zebra at Lake Mburo

Yellow billed oxpeckers on a buffulo.

One of many Fish Eagles on the banks of Lake Mburo

 

 

[Note - Bobby is extremely jealous of Donald and David who saw this Shoebill on the way to Jinja last Monday] 

  

The only negative aspect of our trip was as usual, the roads. On the way down we had an accident in heavy rain when the minibus in front of us braked hard to avoid a  boda boda and we went into the back of the minibus. We were going very slowly at the point of impact and we, who were in a very sturdy Landcruiser with a driver, were unscathed, but three of the passengers in the minibus had minor injuries (two had concussion and one probable cracked ribs). They were on their way to Bwindi for gorilla trekking but neither they nor the minibus were fit to continue, and with the delays at the police station they would not have got there in daylight. They were a bunch of physicians and some medical students over from USA working in Mulago Hospital, the big and grim tertiary referral centre for Uganda, plus another American who is working for a few months and is a colleague of one our fellow VSO ers. They were getting more than their “fair share” or statistically anticipated of road traffic accidents; the weekend before they were on their way to Jinja and were involved in a much more serious accident, with one of their party sustaining a severe laceration to her leg down to the bone, and drivers of two of the three vehicles involved pinned down for hours.

 We are supposed to be in the dry season but the weather is unpredictable, often hot and sunny but with a fair smattering of rain, some long downpours and some cooler days and nights. There has been a mudslide in the east of Uganda, killing nearly 400 people, in a village where the population has doubled in the past two years. The mudslide is being blamed on intense cultivation of steep slopes and removal of trees and grass with subsequent loose soil which does not absorb the water. The average family has ten children but polygamy is common and fathers having 26 children is not uncommon. The only way to address the population explosion is to educate girls so that they get interesting jobs but education in these poor rural communities is very poor (typically not beyond P7), so it is a vicious circle. Most of our women colleagues in Reach Out have only few children, (they are the lucky ones who have qualifications) despite being Catholic, but upcountry it is very different.

We had a slightly guilt-ridden day on Wednesday, having decided to miss Reach Out’s quarterly spiritual retreat, which consists of spending all day in church, with breaks for morning tea and lunch. We went to one before and it was really just too much spirituality in one sitting, although many people do seem to get a lot out of it. There are two church services in the morning with very long sermons and a full mass in the afternoon. As Reach Out parties are memorable affairs with a good programme and lots of structured interactive activities which make use of our colleagues’ innate abilities on the singing and acting front, it is strange that the spiritual retreat consists of being talked at by a priest. Anyway, we got on with work of which there is plenty.