Easter vacation
on Hoggs in Uganda (Uganda), 18/Apr/2010 05:53, 34 days ago
We had a week (31st March to 7th April) away over Easter to Lake Bunyoni in the southwest of Uganda. It is the furthest we have been with our own car. The distance is about 420 km butthe road from Kampala to Mbarara is very poor with rough road surfaces, many potholes and long stretches of roadworks. However the road from Mbarara to Kabale is good and interesting as it winds it way through the hilly countryside. Our journeywas uneventful apart from a search for petrol as shortages spread accross Uganda. We left Kampala on Wednesday at 7.30 am, had a an hour stop for lunch at Mbarara and we arrived at Arcadia Cottages at 5.30 pm when we were rewarded with a spectacular view over theisland-studded lake to the more distant volcanoes on the Rwanda/Uganda border. Arcadia cottages is a complex of 6 cottages high on the hillside above Lake Bunyoni.In the mornings the lake was covered with mist which burned off to give a hot sunny day. Mornings and evenings were quite chilly, which meant wearingjumpers for the first time since last September, but we did not need to worry about mosquitoes.We had a relaxing Thursday, meeting a VSO couple working in Kabale for lunch at the White Horse Inn, Kabale.It was greatto catch up with news and compare notes. On Friday we ventured onto the lake in a dugout canoe with a trip to Bushara Island.Friday is market day in Rutinda the departure point for boat trips on the  lake. As we paddled out we passed many canoes fully laden with produce and people on their way to market.Bushara Island is an eco-tourist centre provides accommodation, good food and trips in dug-out canoes to various places of interest. The centre provides employment to around 80 locals and the profits go to funding community projects round the lake. We returned to the mainland by motor boat!On Saturday we drove up a back road (track) to Muka at the head of the lake and returned by the main road to Kabale. The views were marvelous and there were interesting villages and people along the road. Although the scenery is wonderful, there wasa slight edginess to the area and Kabale town with the children shouting“Give me money” sometimes aggressively and some adults seemed a little hostile towards us.Itwas a contrast to Kampala where generally people are gentle, friendly and polite.Sunday saw us back on Bushara where we joined a walking tour of a local village.As the  village was on the far side of the lake we traveled by dugout again.We had hoped to dosome free-range walking in the hills as we do in Scotland but even with a guide we were followed by an entourage of children.On Monday we were back at Bushara and signed up for another dugout trip - this time  to Bwama Island, the biggest on the lake. In the 1920's a Scottish doctor, Dr Sharp, set up a leper colony on the island which  remained in operation until the 1960s. Now the  buildings provide a school for the children from around the lake. Some travel by canoe each day; other just go home at weekends.One of the smaller islands on the lake, Akampene Island(Punishment Island). Some time ago, the lone tree was used to  tie up and abandon unfortunate unmarried girls who became pregnant. The more fortunate were rescued by men who did not have enough cows to obtain a wife through the more acceptable process. On Tuesday we split the journey home with an overnight stop in Mbarara at the Lake View Hotel where we had a swim in the pool in the afternoon.In the evening we met up with a couple of young doctors who are working at the hospital. We had a brief tour of the hospital andthen had dinner together and again it was great catching up. They work extremely hard in difficult working conditions and are certainly at the sharp end of providing healthcare in a low resource setting. They have to teach students and junior staff the way things should be done, in order to prepare for exams, while the reality of what they canoffer patients is very different.We traveled back to Kampala on Wednesday - 6 hours for about 285 km including the Kampala traffic. When we got back to work, I found that most of the abstracts we submitted for the international AIDS conference in Vienna in July have been accepted as posterpresentations, and one senior nurse has been awarded a scholarship to attend the conference– she is quite ecstatic about her trip to Europe, as she has never been out ofAfrica before. It was a lot of work to prepare and submit all the applications but worthwhile, and the abstracts are all ready for future conferences.