Respite at Lake Bunyoni

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  Kabale, Uganda
Tuesday, August 7, 2007

After the DRC, I spent a night in Gisenyi on the border and did not much. The next day, I took no less than three separate matatu (minibus taxi) rides and a long boda boda ride through the most rural Rwandan and Ugandan areas, in order to reach Kabale, a large town in southwestern Uganda. This post will mostly detail some amusing things about rural areas in this region, as well as a short description of my stay on Lake Bunyoni, a beautiful lake deemed the "Jewel of Uganda."

Rural Rwanda is a place where any mzungu is a spectacle. Do not come here if you hate attention, or don't like being stared and laughed at. When matatus stop to let people off and take on new passengers in rural towns, there is an inevitable silent period before I hear someone shout, "mzungu!" and soon enough the area just outside my window is packed with people. Usually it's about 3-10 teenagers or kids

Beautiful little flowers, Lake Bunyoni

. Here's a one instance:

Matatu stops.
Silence, some talking as people enter and exit matatu.
"MZUNGU! MZUNGU!" come cries from across the street.
Crowd of teenagers gathers.
Crowd of teenagers stares at me.
I stare back at crowd of teenagers.
Silence. 20 seconds pass of this mutual staring.
I stare at one teenage girl as she stares at me. 5 seconds of staring pass.
"Mzungu." declares the teenage girl.
We stare at each other for another 10 seconds.
The matatu pulls back onto the potholed road.

This is one of those mind boggling experiences where not much makes sense. It is like standing in front of a wall for 30 seconds, declaring, "wall," and then getting on with your life

Dugout canoes, Byoona Amagara, Lake Bunyoni

. Of course, mzungus are uncommon. So it's like standing in front of a giraffe at a zoo, staring at it for 30 seconds, and then declaring, "giraffe." But such is the misunderstanding between cultures.

Some other experiences, and the more common, are of children greeting you with a "howahyu" before telling you, "mzungu, give me money," or the ever more charming, "mzungu, give me MY money." Sometimes they aren't even charming and just hold hands out or scratch at their pockets, hoping you will imitate the pocket scratching and part of your billion dollar fortune will spill out into their possession.

I met a guy in a hostel in Gisenyi, an adult businessman, who wanted to ask some questions about America. I was really worn out from playing the part of Mzungu, this mysical being, all instances being the same, who has the qualities of an ATM machine as well as total tolerance of people staring, laughing, pointing, and constantly talking about him or her right in front of him or her. But, this guy's questions gave me the opportunity to rant against the rural Rwandan's horrible misconceptions of travellers - a chance to mollify the situation of ignorance in one man's mind.

So I told him things he barely believed, like the USA is filled with all sorts of different types of people, with different skin colors and religions, too

Interesting orange sphere flowers, Lake Bunyoni

. That, while people in the US have many more dollars than people in Rwanda, their costs are also in many more dollars, so that some people even in the USA don't have enough money to send their kids to school. That not everyone in the USA is filthy rich, and even some travellers don't have that much money to spend. My personal favorite myth that I got to bust was that normal people in America had microchips all through their body allowing them to be connected to each other and the internet 24 hours a day, while information flowed in their bloodstream even as they slept. No joke, I had to try to convince this guy otherwise.

He also asked me some advice for his business, which is a one-man operation of trying to create a vehicle-importing empire. All he needed, he said, was some contacts. In the US or Europe. If he got a contact, the person would trust him, and would send him cars to sell.

This is characteristic of the Rwandan businessperson population, I believe, and potentially extending to Uganda and the DRC, as well. They are wildly ambitious folk, quite ready to work very hard to build enterprises. However, they don't quite understand business on a grand scale, and they all want to go it alone. Hence you see many, many little shops selling the same things all lined up next to each other

Lake Bunyoni at sunset

. Each selling bread, drinks, general goods. None working together in procurement, etc. They all want to become successful businesses, but they all work so very hard, and so very inefficiently.

I tried to explain to the man the power of having maybe 3, maybe 5 Rwandans, all working together, to try to import cars. Then, you could meet a person and say, we are 5 Rwandans working full-time on this venture. The teamwork concept, the organization concept is completely foreign here. Also, many businesspeople have no concept that a person in the USA won't just send a car, or a book or a bicycle or money, to just any Rwandan who emails them. It was all, hopefully, helpful advice to this man, but who knows.

Like I said, the next day I left and took two matatu trips to a very remote border of Rwanda and Uganda. My only option was a helmetless boda boda ride 11km into the nearest city, on the back of a dinky little dirtbike driven by a 15 year old. Every time we went over a minor bump, which was every second, practically, the bike's shocks struggled to keep my weight from pressing the frame against the wheel. The result was a constant bouncing and rubbing SCRRNT noise as my heaviness overwhelmed this tiny piece of machinery.

The infamous library of Byoona Amagara Retreat

The ride was frightening, uncontrolled, over hilly horrible dirt road, but with magnificent views of the Virungas volcanoes to my left, and through the most rural area I may have ever seen in my life. I got to this tiny town called Kisoro, walked to where the matatus should be in order to drive to Kabale, another 2 hours over mountain road. Bought some Ugandan Shillings from a store owner, waited in the matatu for 2 hours. Then it wasn't leaving any more owing to lack of demand, so six of us piled into a taxi cab which would take us.

A horribly bumpy mountain road with absolutely stunning views of the mountainous hills and vales of the region. Ugandan mountains are even prettier than Rwandan ones - all haphazardly terraced, just like the patchwork blanket of Rwandan farmed topsoil, but with bowllike valleys at the bottom rather than the flats of Rwanda. Instead of abrupt hills starting from a floorlike valley, Ugandan mountains and hills undulate into these smooth valleys, patchworked farmland flowing over and into them continuously. All very erratic, not ridged or regular like an ocean of waves.

Got to Kabale, stayed a night, ate a most delicious meal of chicken curry. It was a shock to arrive in Kabale. There was a hostel there just like the nice places in South Africa - brightly painted walls, all the amenities, food, everything. I hadn't had a meal for 5 days. In Rwanda, I ate a dinner, left for the DRC the next day with just bread and peanut butter for breakfast and lunch. In the DRC, there was no place to eat at night, and on my hike I had snacky food I bought at the tiny market. That was 3 days, then the fourth I finally made it to a place where there were supermarkets and where you could buy water bottles easily and other things I will never take for granted again. I was stunned, walked around in a stupor.

The next day, I went to Lake Bunyoni. The lake itself is just one of those previously described Ugandan valleys, large, but filled with water. So the shape of the lake is amoebic, with fingers poking into inlets underneath steep patchwork green hills. Huts dotting the hillsides, etc. All sorts of irregular shaped islands forming the interior of the lake, like little amoeba-eaten bacteria, themselves just hilltops whose bases are concealed by clear water.

For my 3 days and 2 nights there, I basically lounged around on the island. They had a library there which rivalled the best libraries and bookstores, even, I have seen on my journey. As a sample, I read all or part of the following books: Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos, Kurt Vonnegut's Canary in a Cat House, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Stephen Jay Gould's Full House, Bill Bryson's a Short History of Nearly Everything, various travel books on the region, Nepal, etc., A nonfiction history of the rape of Nanking, etc. There was an entire section on US Politics, an entire shelf on Africa, four shelves of classical literature or novels, a shelf of fantasy, an encyclopaedia, and so on. Combined with the tranquility of the lake, I wasn't so sure this wasn't a place I should stay for months.

Kurt Vonnegut was confirmed as my favorite author once I finished Galapagos. His short stories in Canary... are good also, but not as awesome as his novels.

I ate some bland food and hung out and relaxed for a few days. The hostel on this island was basically a resort. They had expensive and cheap accommodation. They had "the best food west of the Nile!" which was a horrible overstatement. But they did have some OK bites, and the library also included about 400 DVD's which could be watched if the sun had provided enough electricity to the solar panels that day.

I went back to Kabale after two days and ate another chicken curry at the amazing restaurant (The Little Ritz in Africa), ate some stuff from the delicious bakery below (Hot Loaf), lounged and read Economists in the hostel (Museum Hostel). Then, the next morning, I caught the bus to Kampala. I'm in Kampala today, so we're all caught up now.

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