Uganda, Gorillas, Bugs and mud

Equator sign at Kikorongo

Kampala is the capital city of Uganda with a population of nearly 2 million and lies near Africa’s largest and the world’s second biggest freshwater lake, Victoria. We are here as guests of John and Tisha Morley who have magnanimously allowed us to stay in their beautiful home while they visit their children for half-term in South Africa. Once again a beautiful home like this is a refuge from the storm of rugged muddy tracks, rough campsites, long-drop latrines and hoards of people. A time to catch up on e-mail, blogs, schoolwork and laundry as well as get a local perspective on life in East Africa. John is as much a native here as anyone, having driven overland from the UK in the 70’s via West Africa and Uganda and stopped in Kenya, where he met his future 4^th generation Kenyan wife Tisha. He is a successful self made engineer who is presently steering an Irish company here that has found crude oil at various sites in and around Lake Albert that have been drilled and capped and await government approval for extraction; a move that will change the fabric and future of Uganda forever. His laissez-faire nature is infectious and warm generosity exceptional as he instructs us on what to do in Uganda, how to work the flat screen TV and where the whiskey is kept! “Seriously, stay as long as you like”, a very tempting offer for a travel weary family recovering from a bad bout of flu!

patchwork fields Uganda

Fisherman on lake- Uganda

After our brief but wonderful stay at Kibogora Mission Hospital we are on the road again and soon stop at a coffee bean ‘factory’ nestled in the lush hills near Lake Kivu. The locals are warm in their welcome and guide us through the labour intensive process of coffee bean production from drying the berries, separating the husk from the bean, washing and a long drying process that leaves albino like beans ready for roasting. I’ll never look at a latte in the same way again. We drive on into the thick Nyangwe forest and have great sightings of beautiful L’Hoest monkeys with their white collars and silky coats and take a short walk into the depths of this rich vegetation with massive trees and towering lianas. The last elephant was killed in this forest in 1999 and reminds us how lucky we are in South Africa. We visit the excellent USAid sponsored visitor centre but balk at the short canopy walk for US$60each. Then it is on back to Kigali and Ilda entertains us with gory genocide details from her latest book and we are delayed by our repaired tyre blowing again and so arrive in the dark.

Mark and Samela Priestley live just below the British consuls’ home and enjoy wonderful views of Kigali and traditional life in the fields below their home. Their young children attend the International School of Kigali, like most of the ex-pats living here, and they enjoy quality lifestyle. We use the time to get the tyre and car shocks replaced for the second time on this trip, get some school work done and the girls get to walk the dogs and have their dose of DVD’s. A highlight in Kigali is the motorbike taxis which we use a lot and revel at being whizzed around the city. The car is fixed, visas due to expire and so we start the climb towards the Ugandan border.

Uganda appeals to me as the country where my parents lived prior to my birth and where my sister Amanda was born. Also a fascination, a bit like Rwanda, with a country that can be tortured, decimated and devastated so extensively and yet show resilience and recovery, to become the prospering and peaceful country it is now. We arrive at the border post in torrential rain and certainly seem to have caught up with the rainy season. The border crossing is quiet but we have to again go through the tiresome process of visiting first the police, then immigration and finally customs and forking out the customary fistful of US dollars. At least we get to drive on the left side of the road again and I am relieved that my comprehensive insurance is again valid.

The Ugandan town of Kisoro is nestled amongst towering 4000m high volcanoes and lies in the bottom corner of the country near Rwanda and the DRC. We opt for a clean guest house to avoid the rain and enjoy excellent chapatti and vegetable stew at one of the local eateries. The next morning we climb dramatically up a road under construction and juggle with massive lorries, bulldozers and mud. We discover later that this is one of the main arteries linking Uganda and the DRC and are relieved to get back onto tarmac and stop at the picture-postcard Lake Bunyoni with its glistening blue water and crop laden slopes cascading down to the waters edge. We watch traders arriving at the local market by dugout canoe and marvel at the tranquility of this place, touted in the guidebooks as a “Little Switzerland”.

Bwindi Impenetrable forest

Bike street seller

Our Garmin GPS takes us off the security of the tarmac onto a rutted dirt track towards the famous Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and we are gob-smacked at the dramatic transition from cash-crop agricultural land to the thick, literally impenetrable, forest that makes up the park and is home to nearly 300 of the world’s last few Mountain Gorillas. We can only pray that this tenuous border prevails. We seek refuge from the rain and camp on the verandah of the Ruhiga Community camp where we are spoilt by the locals with a wood fire and hot water for a wash. Samson, a park guide hitches a lift with us along the muddy track and we head for Buhoma, the headquarters for gorilla tracking. Alas we will only be distant spectators of this incredible experience because the age limit is 15yo and we are all coughing and spluttering which puts the gorillas at risk. Also the US$2000 price tag for the four of us is a definite deterrent!

Sandy considering his next bike for the Coast to Coast!

Crested Crane

We are on the road again, northwards up the Albertine rift towards Lake Albert and ease into the Queen Elizabeth national park. Unlike South African parks there is no gate or fence and crops and cattle give way seamlessly to buffalo, impala and the Ugandan Cob. We visit the QE pavilion after crossing the Kazinga channel linking Lakes Edward and George and over a coffee enjoy watching a herd of nearly fifty elephant grazing. This was the sight of the royal visit in 1953 and then again of the Duke of Edinburgh in 2007. We cross the equator and pose for photos where my parents stood about 50 years ago, only the rough dirt track has been transformed into a modern macadam road. We follow yet more rough tracks toward Kibale national park, this time hoping for an encounter with the chimpanzees, but are again flummoxed by age limits and viruses and Zara takes a turn for the worse overnight. Her high fever, delirium and vomiting have me digging deep into the medical kit and drawing up the Ceftriaxone and iv fluids but her thrashing refusal to have an iv line reassures me. Her Malaria test is negative and she wakes smiling with the dawn.

We view the magnificent Ndali Lodge perched on the edge of a volcanic crater lake but at US$480 a night we ease down the road to an excellent site and camp for US$10! We visit the local vanilla processing plant and learn about the lengthy process of curing and ‘sweating’ these finicky flavoursome beans which need about as much attention and TLC as a good red wine. Then we bypass Fort Portal where my Dad worked at the local hospital all those years ago and take the excellent road east to Kampala. I am struck by how things have changed in Africa since my backpacking days in Malawi and Zim in the eighties. Smooth tar roads, fancy luxury coaches and the cell phone explosion have transformed Africa beyond belief and somehow transport one too fast past the rich fabric of this complex and chaotic continent. In parts of Tanzania we witnessed a Chinese company laying broadband internet cable in areas that had neither sanitation nor piped water. What for I ask myself?

And now in Kampala and bliss. Tomorrow we try again for a primate encounter with a boat trip from Entebbe on Lake Victoria and then on up to Murchison Falls national park, the Albert Nile and perhaps a boat trip to the falls. Then beyond that, to Kenya.

Kibogora Mission Hospital and Marvelous Market

View from our place in Kibogora- Lake Kivu- Rwanda

Kibogora Mission Hospital and marvelous markets

There is nothing quite as sickening as that feeling of having been ripped off. I felt numbly around my various pockets but it was gone. My treasured leather wallet from Bodrum in Turkey was now in the clutches of some Congolese or Rwandan urchin and with it my credit card, NZ drivers licence and 15 000 Rwandan Francs (R180.00). I know that I had opened it when Ilda needed change to buy spinach and then I had been marveling at massive rolls of handmade twine, golden buckets of spicy sauce and piles of multi-coloured beans, as well as clutching the hands of Margot and Zara, and then it was gone. Shock and humiliation. Never put a purse in your pocket, watch your money, and don’t carry credit cards. The market on the edge of Lake Kivu in Rwanda and on the border of Democratic Republic of Congo was heaving. Every imaginable vegetable; pyramids of blood red tomatoes, gnarled, purple sweet potatoes, large spreads of drying cassava, robust green cabbages and fresh crisp spinach; bleating goats, squealing black pigs and cow, freshly slaughtered in roadside abattoirs, with thick red blood dripping in rivulets into the orange African earth. A man with a machete hacks at white ribs while another slices through rich burgundy fillet and another delicately manipulates metres of slithery grey entrails ensuring that nothing is wasted. We are the only “Wazungu” in a sea of black smiling faces and are constantly accompanied by a scrum of persistent urchins and curious onlookers. We seek refuge in a ‘café’ and suck thirstily on cold Coke. Then on we go and I lose my wallet. I enlist the help of a responsible looking local and in broken French explain my predicament. Before long my sorry tale is being broadcast widely and there seems to be genuine disappointment at the Wazungu’s misfortune. Soldiers arrive brandishing offensive looking weapons, the crowd has swelled alarmingly and I am relieved to escape having being assured that they will return my wallet to the hospital should it be found. I have my doubts and after a struggle manage to speak to my bank in RSA and cancel cards. To cheer us up we opt to use the motorbike taxi service and the four of us enjoy an exhilarating ride up the hill and back to our haven at Kibogora Mission Hospital.














Classroom at Kibogora

Street Scene- Kibogora

Entrance Class!- Kibogora

We were meant to stop off here for a month but Ilda, Margot and Zara were only given a 2 week visa and at US$180 I was reluctant to extend it for a further fee. My RSA passport was a breeze and I got 90 days for free! Kibogora hospital is perched high up on a hilltop above Lake Kivu with the most exquisite views up this rift valley lake to smoking volcanoes lurking in the distance in Uganda, Congo and Rwanda. Our accommodation is in a beautiful 3 bed roomed house with all the comforts we could wish for and is in stark contrast to our park-home box we lived in for a year at Mseleni. We were welcomed with a lovely hot dinner, clean made beds, filter coffee and cold cool drinks and milk in the fridge. Why can’t RSA hospitals treat their staff like this? Thank you so much Sheila for all your kindness and hospitality.

The hospital feels about the same size as Mseleni but has about 250 beds to Mseleni’s 160 and this is probably explained by there being 21 patients to a ward the same size as ours, where we had 10. The wards though are immaculate, patients clean and our nurses would do well to pay this place a visit. Big difference though is family members hang around, feeding and caring for their relatives. 9 of the 12 doctors here are Congolese, enjoying better salaries than they would get back home, and the standard of care seems generally pretty good. There is a constant stream of ex-pats visiting for various lengths of time and I was fortunate to hook up in theatre with a retired American surgeon who was completing a 6 week stint. He was doing lots of hernia repairs, open prostatectomy’s and thyroidectomy’s, so it was fun to scrub up. I spent a day in the “ED”, which is really a couple of small rooms where clinic referrals are triaged to the various wards and procedures sent to minor theatre. I tried to see a few patients but it was fraught; me taking a history in broken French via nurse speaking similar broken French and asking patient in local dialect, translating back to me and then me recording in English. Oooof, too hard, so helping in OR was more appealing. Lots of the minor surgery (that we would normally do in ED) is done by nurses and ALL the anaesthetics, including GA’s, Ketamines and spinals are done by nurse anaesthetists, which I found remarkable. They seem very competent but seemed to stick to standard recipes comprising Thiopentone, sux, halothane and Pancuronium. Referrals are near impossible and forget about fancy stuff like CTscans, histology and image intensifiers! That said, these guys seem to do a good job, but a striking difference with our wards at Mseleni is the much lower acuity here. Patients that wouldn’t get a look in the door at Mseleni spend 3 days in bed here, why, I don’t know. The other staggering figure is their HIV rate of 3% compared with our 30%.

Heading to the market

Beans

Moto-Taxi

Rwanda Flag

Zara Art

Morning prayers happen at 07.30 and all the staff seem to attend. The singing is good but a sermon in local dialect is heavy going at 07.30! Then there is a brief handover from night nurses after which the doctors meet for a brief chat. They all start by shaking hands, which I found touching, but they don’t do grand rounds like we did at Mseleni. Otherwise, they do a horizontal midline incision for their c-sections, which I found unusual, and their hospital stores supplies the “ED” 3x per week where I struggled with our stores at Mseleni who thought that once a fortnight was ok! I was able to demonstrate the rapid “grab-and-slash” South African method of circumcision which was well received and managed to give a demonstration of trauma ultrasound in French, which I thought was a fair effort!

So, although brief, it has been very interesting to see what happens at a rural mission hospital in the depths of Africa. More than that, this has been a breath of fresh air, living in a lovely home with fabulous views, great food and an opportunity for the girls to get a solid week of school done. Sadly we missed our school delivery in Lusaka so that Ilda is a wee bit short of teaching material. However the road is rich and I am certain that as we head up into the mountains of Uganda we will all learn lots!

Boats on Lake Kivu

Coffee Cooperative- Coffee beans drying

Dried Coffee beans after 15 days

Workers doing the road to Kibogora under Chineese direction

Tea Plantation

Some more tea!

Now, that's Africa!

Mpulungu Bazaar- Lake Tanganyka- Zambia

Now, That’s Africa! May 2011

Well negotiations didn’t go so well with chief engineer Dismas from Burundi and the price had escalated dramatically over the w.e, so that we were contemplating around US$1500 to get us and the car up the lake to Bujumbura and Burundi. This would have holed our budget somewhat so we decided to drive. Given that we were on the west side of Tanzania we elected to stick to that side and follow the route up along Lake Tanganyika. This was probably unwise given that an expat had mentioned ‘bandits’ and our guidebook had talked about some pretty dire roads. However this was the route that Livingstone had taken so long before and it seemed to be a challenge that we had to take.

900km of track through Western Tanzania...eat my dust and shake, shake Rock&Roll!

What followed was the most brutal, jaw rattling, teeth shattering, dust infiltrating 863.4 kilometers we have ever experienced. I can only describe the road as a sort of rough farm track vaguely linking villages and traversed at times by massive road works of the embryonic new Chinese road. By the end of it both we and the car were battered and haggard with fine red dust infiltrating all orifices and the cars suspension floating alarmingly. There was a short section through one village of about 500m of (the only) tarmac where we managed to puncture when a screwdriver pierced and badly lacerated the tyre. The wheel change was witnessed and applauded by about 100 local school kids and went smoothly. I’m sure that the tyre would have been written off back home but in true African style was repaired and seems to be working well so far.

Dusty road through Tanzania

Transport of coals on bike- Tanzania

The border crossing from Zambia into Tanzania was no more than a padlocked gate and we had to arouse some lad from his afternoon siesta to stamp our passports. The Tanzanian side was somewhat grander and the visa price reflected this. No longer did the SADAC privileges apply and we had to buy visas for all of us including the children who had previously been exempt. At least we didn’t have to pay a whole lot of carbon and various other taxes this time but the border fees have been a big drain on our finances. I was alarmed to see the immigration officer putting sheaves of paper into his receipt book to prevent copies of my receipt being recorded, allowing him, of course, to pocket the US$120. I did mention this and he assured me that (in a heavy African accent) “this is a government book!” The road was challenging and we got excited whenever we got over 40km/h! Our first stop was in a delightfully chaotic town called Sumbawanga where we resided in relative luxury in the “country club” and got reacquainted with excellent Tanzanian beer while enjoying a marvelous dinner cooked on a charcoal stove. Charcoal manufacture is huge in Tanzania and doing a fine job at decimating the native forests.

Market in Tanzania

Women and child- Tanzania

The next day we set off unsure as to where we would get to and drove through Katavi National Park, one of the less popular Tanzanian parks. The bush was thick and game sparse but what was most incredible were the Tsetse flies. They would literally hitch a ride on the car and when we stopped for a pee we had to work in pairs with one of us batting flies while the other peed! Vicious beasts indeed. We lunched late in Mpanda and were assured by a local that we would easily make Uvinza by that evening. How wrong he was. The road was extremely isolated and worse than ever, but thankfully dry, and we saw little habitation but passed within a few kilometres of massive refugee camps which remain from the Rwandan genocide era. This made us reluctant to free camp. UNICEF, UNHCR, Red Cross and numerous other Aid vehicles were prolific and drove along this track at incredible speed alternating with the odd massive truck that kept us alert and offered more than one close shave. Night came and we felt edgy driving here in the dark but were rewarded with some amazing night game viewing, lots of owls, a mongoose and, incredibly, a rare African civet. Our GPS Garmin put us in the village but there was no sign of it and we were guided a kilometre or so further to a cluster of huts and basic buildings. We found lodging in what can only be described as a men’s truck stop but at that stage had no choice and the proprietor Ahmed seemed welcoming enough. Ilda and the girls crashed in the little room and I slept in the car as the electric locking wasn’t working thanks to dust buildup I think.

Do you want some dust! We sell it for...free!

The Moslem call to prayer had us all up at about 04.30 and so we were able to make some progress before breakfast. It was quite something to get back onto the torrid road, all filthy and tired, but we picked up a local woman and an amputee and gave them a lift into town which cheered us all up. The amputee directed us to an excellent ‘café’ for breakfast where, for the price of a cappuccino back home, we enjoyed piles of chapattis, samoosas, buns and copious sweet, milky tea. We ambled around the market and being the only white folk in town enjoyed many stares and frequent cries of “wazungu!”

Bazaar near Uvinza- Tanzania


Fish Market- Tanzania

First Puncture- North-West Tanzania

We finally hit the main tar road linking Tanzania and Rwanda and with it the endless procession of stinking, belching trucks and tankers. But we were oblivious. The ecstasy of a smooth road and no dust brought us immense joy and we sped on towards Rwanda, dodging potholes and playing cat and mouse with lorries. Our last night in Tanzania was in relative luxury in a roadside guest house where we enjoyed a warm wash, had the car rinsed and cooked omelets over a charcoal fire.

Children observers

Breakfast with sweet Chai and Chapatis

Rwanda- Rice Paddies

Arriving in Rwanda was like arriving on another planet. The post genocide Rwanda is undergoing a reformation of immense proportions and is the darling baby of every aid agency on the globe. The President is determined to develop an economically self sustaining and developed country. The country is CLEAN. Plastic bags are banned! The roads are immaculate with very few potholes and villages are neat with well laid out shops and sidewalks. Kigali is buzzing with high tech flashy banks, shopping centres and working traffic lights. Construction is evident everywhere. Unfortunately there are prices to match and so accommodation has been steep. We have used the time here to regroup….do all our washing, restock, puncture repair, sort out visas and get the car repaired, I hope. And yesterday we visited the Genocide memorial and museum. I have seldom felt so disgusted and horrified by anything. Nothing is hidden and the imagery is blatant. I was left feeling somewhat ill and not surprisingly didn’t sleep too well that night. The brutality is incomprehensible.

Then today we walked up to one of the hotels on the hill where a lot of the expats hang out. We enjoyed a lovely swim, café lattes and pain-aux-chocolate. We then spent a fantastic day with Mark Priestley and his family, braaing, drinking good red wine and contemplating this perplexing country. Mark is an economist attempting to develop an EU style union between Rwanda and her immediate east African neighbours. What a project. Thanks Mark for a wonderful touch of normal life and a fabulous braai.

Hopefully we will get things sorted in the next day or so and then hope to get to Kibogora Hospital and start some work!

In fact things didn't work out with the Visa Authorities who wanted U$200 for extention of Ilda + kid's Visa so...we will only stay the 14 days in Rwanda, 1 week at Kobogora Hospital. This is flexibility for you!

List of names from victimes of Genocide- Genocide Museum- Kigali

Genocide Museum- Kigali City Centre