Uganda Forever

As I trudge slowly behind the three men hiking up from the bottom of Sipi waterfalls in eastern Uganda I take note of how quickly they hike and the lack of sweat on their brows. I’ve come to appreciate that although they lack much of the healthcare we take for granted in the U.K., they are ultimately healthier than me in many ways. Their diet, their level of physical activity, but also their smiles, perhaps a reflection of their mental well-being. They are constantly surrounded by lush greenery, even in the dry season. There’s not a keyboard in sight. I naively ask how much of their food they buy in the shops, they smile and say ‘none’. Their community grows all they need. That word ‘community’ is commonly used over the next few days.

We briefly stop hiking, likely followed by a glance in my direction and noting the state I’m in, probably wondering if I walked under the waterfall by accident. One of the men picks a small orange flower and hands it to me. He asks if I know what it does. Upon finding the answer I appreciate the question was rhetorical. He explains to me that every two years in this region, when teenagers become men, thousands of people gather in November. The main event, mass public circumcision, to mark the transition to manhood. The flower, he explains, is used to aid in blood clotting. All three of the men, aged 19-25, explain this to me with pride. It’s clearly a defining moment in their lives and an important milestone in their culture.  From what I could understand, those circumcised in hospitals are sadly ostracised. They are proud people and happy in their surroundings.

A few moments later one of the men hands me another leaf, it’s around 3 inches wide and soft to the touch, but it’s appearance reminds me of a stinging nettle in the U.K.. I’m asked the same question and I immediately assume it’s something significant like a cure for a brain haemorrhage. The answer is somewhat mundane, if not equally entertaining, it’s bush toilet paper. The 3 days spent in Sipi, abseiling the waterfalls and hiking, are an absolute highlight of our Uganda trip.

(My wife, Jess, hanging upside down abseiling from Sipi Falls)

It’s been three weeks since we entered Uganda via Entebbe airport and picked up our 4×4 vehicle. The car had unfortunately seen better days, with multiple overheating incidents in the first three days. But it’s quickly swapped by the rental agency who are extremely responsive and apologetic, delivering a new car at 3 am so we have it for a game drive the next day. The rental guy explains that most cars here have a long and chequered history prior to arriving in Uganda. It’s easy to believe with more than 250,000 miles on the clock.

Our first real stop was in Lake Bunyonyi, a beautiful Bilhazia- and crocodile-free lake in Western Uganda. We get a small canoe from the mainland over to the guest house on an island run by a co-operative of local women. Whilst we gently paddle our highly unstable dugout log canoe around our island we see otters, kingfishers, and fishermen all hunting for the selfsame thing. It’s a special place and a relaxing start to the trip.

The next day we move on to Bwindi Impenetrable Rainforest to go gorilla trekking. I’m left wondering if the name reflects the forest itself or a description of the roads leading to it. Google offers me four routes, each winding their way up to 1700m above sea level on poor quality dirt roads to the edge of the forest. It’s great fun to drive. The views on the way are stunning as we look out over terraced slopes covered in bananas, maize, cassava and tea.

As we reach the forest itself you can see a petrol-blue reflective haze hanging over it, likely caused by the oil seeping from the Eucalyptus trees, like the Blue Mountains of Australia. It’s breathtaking, even more so knowing it’s one of the last bastions of the Highland Mountain Gorilla.

(View from Nkuringo Lodge, looking out over the Bwindi Impenetrable Rainforest)

The next day we set off to the forest entrance gate. Our guide lays down the ground rules and hands out face masks. As a virologist I can see the point, and it’s not just Covid-19 virus that could threaten such an isolated species from regular human contact. We trek for around 2 hours to find our group of trackers who have been out for hours following our gorilla troop. They are conveniently, if not perhaps slightly disappointingly, located on the outer edges of the forest. My vision of gorillas in the mist is somewhat dashed by the ease of our introduction, but not enough to take away from it. The gorillas are utterly nonplussed by our presence, a result of many years of slow habituation to humans. The guide explains that there are still many gorilla groups that are not ‘yet’ habituated. He says it in a way that makes me feel that it won’t last long, but I hope it does. That is perhaps my only negative of the experience, that once we booked we were almost guaranteed to see the gorillas. I’m not asking to pay to not see them, but it takes some of the mystery from the event, although my wife Jess vehemently disagrees. It’s a wonderful experience, slowly following the family of gorillas under the canopy of the cool mountain forest as they play, groom and eat. After an incredible hour we hike back up the tea slopes at the edge of the forest, stopping for a packed lunch along the way.

It’s an expensive experience, probably costing us close to $2500 when we combine the accommodation and permits. I reflect on whether it was worth it, and I can say that it was. In part because I felt like there was serious efforts to help maintain the species. The number of trackers and guides, and the extensive conservation efforts being made are testament to this. But don’t get me wrong, it’s easily one of our most expensive days out….ever.

(Male Silverback Highland Gorilla, Bwindi Impenetrable Rainforest)

The next day we say goodbye to our wonderful accommodation at Nkuringo Lodge. We move on to Queen Elizabeth National Park, re-named after her visit in 1954. The locals think its renaming was in part in sympathy, her father King George VI having only passed away two years before. Either way, it feels like a small example of their affection for their former colonial years. Given that three decades of vicious civil war and oppressive regimes followed Uganda’s independence, it’s easy to understand why, however misplaced such fond feelings about colonialism might feel to me.

As we arrive at our accommodation a man walks up to the reception and I vaguely look in his direction, he returns the stare. After a few minutes we repeat the process and finally we both acknowledge that weirdly we know each other, quite well in fact! It’s John Cumbers, the CEO of the conference company SynBioBeta. He’s a fellow Brit that settled in San Francisco. I’ve presented multiple times at his conferences over the last 10 years in London and on the West Coast. I think both of our brains were hardwired to assume we didn’t know anyone we would see, but once we speak that lack of recognition completely disappears. We enjoy dinner together and discuss our respective trips. He’s been in the country to promote biotechnology in Africa, holding a conference in Kampala. It’s a surprisingly small world.

The Queen Elizabeth park itself is fantastic, with the highlight being the boat safari on the Kazinga channel, a strip of water separating Lake Edward from Lake George. We see hundreds of hippos, as well as a variety of beautiful birds, elephants bathing in the waters and crocodiles basking in the sun. Our guide seems to have eyes that would challenge the Hubble telescope, spotting kingfishers, lizards and chameleons at an incredible distance, so much so that I have to check some of them aren’t plastic. The next day we go on a game drive and see rare tree-climbing lions and a leopard, albeit the latter at very long distance. The elephants along the roadside were also a welcome surprise.

(Hippo and warthogs at the Kazinga Channel, Queen Elizabeth National Park)

We move on through a series of beautiful locations, including crater lakes near Fort Portal where we hike up through villages surrounded by plantain, cassava and more banana types than I can comprehend. We take a day trip to Semliki Forest, which I enjoy more than I should because I once worked on a virus closely related to one that was initially found in this forest. It’s certainly not a mainstream reason to visit. The bubbling hot springs and multiple monkey species make it a great day out less than 5 km from the border with Democratic Republic of Congo. On our way back we visit Amabere caves, meaning ‘breast caves’ because the stalactites descending from the waterfalls look like nipples. It’s a tentative link, but fun nonetheless. Fort Portal itself is a nice place to spend a few days, it’s lush and green and we spend a few days playing cards and enjoying a break from the road.

Next we drove north for 5 hours to Murchison Falls National Park. We arrive early and decide to go straight to the waterfalls, where the majority of the contents of the Victoria Nile river are forced through a gap only 6 meters wide. It’s said to be the most powerful waterfall on the planet. Arriving there late means we have the place to ourselves and enjoy the cold spray drifting up from the gorge as rainbows form in the mist as the sun sets behind us. It’s an awesome sight and the power and sound of the falls is breathtaking. It reminiscent of some of the biggest I’ve seen before in Iceland, albeit a lush and verdant version.

(Murchison Falls, Northern Uganda)

That evening we sleep in the tent attached to the roof of our 4×4. We stay just outside the main park entrance and consequently have to be very wary of wild animals come nightfall. Head torches are essential and the hippo dung around the campsite is testament to their evening presence. They can travel 5-10 km overnight while grazing. We self-drive through the park at 6:30 am the next morning, spotting a hyena on the road almost as soon as we enter the park. Giraffes lazily chew at the thorny acacia trees as the sun starts to rise. We turn off the main tarmac road and spend the next few hours enjoying the park and its wildlife. We don’t see any large cats but we see most of the other animals you might expect, except rhinos, for very good reason.

The next morning we start with another self-guided game drive and then head out of the park south for a brief overnight stop in Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary. The last wild rhino was killed by poachers in Uganda in 1983, but in 2005 three breeding pairs were re-introduced into a small private game reserve at Ziwa. They now have 38 rhinos and we spend a few hours tracking two of them on foot as they searched for water. The long term ambition is to reintroduce them to the other national parks of Uganda, and thankfully their numbers are approaching that critical threshold. Hopefully, if we visit Queen Elizabeth or Murchison National Parks again in the future we will find them there once more. The next day we have breakfast as a mother and baby rhino walk through the hotel grounds, it’s a reminder of the success of the breeding program and a welcome addition to the omelet and fruit juice.

(Southern White Rhino, Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary)

After Ziwa, we travel further south to the rather uninspiring town of Jinja, located on the Victoria Nile where it runs from Lake Victoria down to Lake Kyoga. This stretch of river hosts some of the wildest water rapids on the planet, going up to the rather suicidal grade 6. We spend an incredible day with a Belgian family hurtling down grade 5 rapids, ending up being flipped into the water on multiple occasions. Thankfully, the risk of contracting Bilhazia here is low due to the rapidly moving water, but it doesn’t stop me washing my mouth out at any opportunity I get. As the raft flips over on one occasion I catch my finger in the rope as I’m jettisoned into the water, cutting one of my knuckles. The guide pours something on to it and a few seconds later it’s bubbling white and stinging like mad. Their solution is Hydrogen Peroxide, a somewhat old fashioned method to clean a wound, now believed to cause more harm to the tissue than most alternatives, but I can unequivocally say it’s quickly sterilised. Most of the day is spent paddling gently down the river, eating pineapple and enjoying the sun, interspersed by moments of white water madness. It’s tiring but a very fulfilling day out.

(Rafting the Victoria Nile, Jinja, Uganda)

We travel back to the hotel for an hour, standing on a wooden bench drinking beer in the back of a lorry with no sides. It gives you a birds eye view as we travel through small villages dotted along the way. It’s a moment of reflection on what I’ve seen but perhaps not properly acknowledged in the past few weeks of travelling. The houses line the roads close to the sides and are mainly built from mud bricks with windowless steel doors for security. Many of the houses are making and firing the same mud bricks in their front gardens in cubic piles assembled to form small kilns. They’re partly being made to sell and partly to use. The mud is dark red and the fine dust covers everything as the lorry rumbles along the dirt road. Nonetheless, the women walking alongside wear clothes that look crisply clean and shine brightly in their multi-coloured patterns, even more so on Sundays. The children wave at you as you drive by, often chasing the vehicle in a stormy wake of red powder. Often they’re wearing no shoes at all, sometimes sandals, sometimes Crocs. You become used to these sights surprisingly quickly, they become familiar in a way that they shouldn’t. Many children are not in school at times when they should, many are working in the fields or carrying loads on their heads that they shouldn’t be. The people smile and you feel genuine warmth from all those that you meet, but there’s no escaping how poor the majority of people are. You feel the lack of infrastructure and social support, and I can’t help feeling that we could, and should, do more. When you refresh the news app on your phone it seems obscene to see some of the things we regularly complain about in the U.K., comparatively, most of us are living like gods. The people I pass will likely never go on holiday, the concept may even allude them entirely. Their loved ones will only have access to dubious ‘local medicine’ and by the age of 18 most will likely have done more manual labour than I will do in my lifetime. It’s a sobering series of thoughts, but I’m glad I had them, even if they’re hard and troubling to move on from.

(The view from Sipi Falls Lodge at sunset)

After Jinja we move on to Sipi, described right at the start. As we pull the car into a nondescript town along the way my wife heads to the ATM to draw out some money for fuel. As I sit in the car, keeping the AC on and the engine running, I watch the people passing leisurely in front of the row of cars going about their shopping. It’s then that I see a man, probably 40 years old, trip on a pavement slab directly in front of me. As he lurches forward with his entire weight he smashes the top of his head into an upright metal bollard. He attempts to stand for a split second and then collapses in a heap on the floor. Two local men notice he’s fallen and grab him up by the arms, trying to make him walk, but he’s out cold. They start to try and shake him and push his head up. It’s clear it’s not working, he’s not coming around any time soon. As I get out of the car a crowd is starting to gather. I have to grab the man from the two men propping him up and put him on the floor in the recovery position. I check he’s breathing but his pulse is fast. His tongue is clear from his airway. I pull one of his eyelids up and he’s clearly in trouble, they’re flickering and rolling back into his head rapidly. He has an indentation in the crown of his head, he needs an ambulance urgently. I speak to some people in the crowd and they explain that it will take too long, they tell me they will take him to hospital in their 4×4 pick up. I have to admit defeat in the face of a lack of alternative. We support him to the car and that’s the last I see of him. I try to explain the importance of supporting his head and making sure he can breathe, but I have no idea if I’m successful. As we drive on for the next hour I’m constantly plagued by thoughts of what more I could have done, grabbed some ice from a nearby shop? It’s not an easy commodity to come by at 30 degree Celsius. Should I have driven him to the hospital myself, even though I have no idea where it is? As we leave the town I see an ambulance driving in the opposite direction and hope it’s for him. It’s a depressing moment for me, I hope he is ok, but I’ll never know his name or if he’s even well. Again my thoughts return to the lack of infrastructure.

After Sipi Falls we drive to the border post with Kenya at Malaba. The post itself can only be described as hectically disorganised. As we arrive I notice the entire left lane is blocked by lorries waiting to cross into Kenya. We wait for our border agent from the car rental company and my wife Jess happily spends the time using our remaining Ugandan currency to purchase as much beer as she can possibly carry. It’s moments like these that I know she’s a keeper.

As I sit in the car waiting I reflect on the last three weeks. It’s been one of the most enjoyable trips of my life, and undoubtedly one of my favourite countries. The trip has been filled with smiles and laughter, coupled with the faint sound of African music wherever you stop. The country clearly has lots of issues though. Poverty being prevalent throughout. The men also appear to have an obsession with having more children whenever they can. It’s been a daily comical event to watch the alarm in their faces when we say we have no children. They presume you must mean ‘yet’ and give you a look you might give a person who just set themselves on fire. Widespread Christian religious doctrine throughout the country is not helping the cause here, but their level of faith is inspiring nonetheless. Regardless of its many issues, it’s been a wonderful stay and Uganda certainly deserves its nickname as The Pearl of Africa. I’ll be coming back if I can.

(An elderly woman carries firewood in Sipi Falls, Uganda)

Our border agent finally arrives on the back of a spluttering moped and I explain that we couldn’t get any closer to the border because of all the lorries. He looks at me like I haven’t understood something. He hops in the back and tells me blandly to use the other lane. I slowly drive up the wrong side of the carriageway to the border post with Kenya.

(Top image: Members of the Batwa tribe dancing, Bwindi Impenetrable Rainforest)