Uganda, Rwanda and DRC (sort of)
Lake Bunyonyi proved to be a most halcyon retreat. Beth, Lauren and I spent four days sharing a rustic cabin, gorging ourselves on the outstanding food, and relaxing over a growing army of empty beer bottles. I passed the days reading volumes from Boonya Amagara’s extensive library, awkwardly coexisting with the other backpakers, and drilling the wonderfully informative Beth on the legal minutiae of Limited Liability Companies (LLCs to the layperson).
Things did get a little strange now and then. Beth and Lauren were fast approaching a toxic saturation level of Larium, the malarial prophylactic notorious for provoking deranged dreams and psychiatric disorders. The first time I visited Africa, I had taken Larium only to notice a strange spike in the significance of colors and a multiplying pixelization of my visual field. I switched to Malarone which instead of disturbing my labile brain diminished my bank account.
Given the general onset of Gothic horror attending protracted Larium use, the cabin was ill-suited for the girls—especially Lauren and her personality’s mixture of OCD and arachnophobic qualities. In other words, the cabin was absolutely infested with spiders. The amount of spiders crawling, spinning webs and slowly descending into Lauren’s hair was truly remarkable. On Monday, the day after the afeared ‘Larium Day’, I spent the evening bravely dispatching spider after spider to insect limbo while Lauren trembled inconsolably. My valiant efforts came to aught. The foes were simply too many for me.
Lauren took solace in her dwindling supply of unnamed Tanzanian spirits. I busied myself walking around the grounds of Boonya Amagara. If you’re ever in Uganda, you should really make an effort to visit this not-for-proft organization. Otters swim backstroke in the lake, strange birds call mellifluously from the trees, and Jason—the American coordinator—huddles behind the desk scoping out the internet and nursing the contents of ‘the Box’. It’s a scrupulously eco-friendly place with composting toilets, locally fashioned furnishings, and a wonderfully competent staff. The food is among the best I’ve had in Africa; the profits are all re-invested in the community (which has access to the library and computer lab); the location is stunning and tranquil. It’s basically a workable utopia—not to mention fantastically cheap. I wondered why nothing of the sort had been attempted in Ethiopia where every tourist hotel seems curiously indifferent—even downright hostile—to the local community.
Not much of note happened, the true measure of Byoona Amagara’s pleasant remoteness. My admiration for Lauren and Beth grew steadily until we parted ways. They headed back to Kampala en route to Cairo. I was westward bound trying to see Rwanda and the Congo. I hugged them with unusual warmth as they boarded the bus. They were really good friends.
On the road from Kabale to Kisoro, the earth undulated into clusters of green hills. Some of the vegetation was so green and rinsed in the sun that it appeared an iridescent blue. Prodigiously rumped women busied themselves in the agricultural plots, slamming hoes into upturned soil, some with slumbering children cradled on their backs in kangas. I was headed to Mgahinga National Park on the border of Uganda, Rwanda and Congo. As the bus swayed its way into Kisoro, the cloud strewn-peaks of the Virunga volcanoes came into view.
I spent the night in Kisroro and got things together for some mountain hiking in Mgahinga, the densely forested habitat of one of the world’s last troops of mountain gorillas. As the taxi belched along a horrendous 14 kilometer stretch of road to the park gates, I saw a small girls’ school with this heartening scrawl smeared across it: “Moving alone is not safe. You could be defiled.” Indeed, this part of Uganda had been the site of some terrifying fall out from the civil war in neighboring Congo. A couple of years back, the self-styled Mai Mai militia—noted for its espousal of cannibalism, wanton slaughter and other nihilistic delights—had crossed the border at Bunagana and wreaked havoc on the hapless country folk. As anyone conversant with reports from the many NGOs in the area knows, rape had been widely used as a weapon of war to devastating effect. I was assured that there was no longer any danger—the UN had driven the rebels back into the jungles, and the Mai Mai leader was now part of the DRC’S power-sharing government.
I arrived at Mgahinga Community Camp, another model community-oriented tourism initiative, and began pitching my tent. While struggling with the poles, a brunette Swedish woman walked out of one of the bandas, looked at me with a blasé expression, and threw back a swig of water.
“Hello,” I offered with a smile.
She glared at me cooly, turned around and walked back inside.
I learned later that her name was Louise and that she was studying the local Batwa community known more commonly—and pejoratively—as pygmies. Improbably for an agrarian backwater in southwest Uganda, Kisoro was literally crawling with bonny Swedish women in the early-twenties age bracket. They were there taking part in some sort of government-sponsored school program. I started wishing I was Swedish.
I found what I thought was an outdoor urinal, a wall of thatch enclosing a couple of bricks and apprehensively used it. After four days of camping at the MCC and
pissing in the same place, I still didn't know if it was a urinal. But my transgressive urination aside, I did spend four magnificent days in and around the
the park.
More on that soon.
Labels: The Story
