Sunday 14th:  We left Mbarara at lunchtime and drove south through the beautiful hills and valleys of Ankole with the pastureland and swamps looking so green and verdant. The obvious wealth of the whole of southwestern Uganda (where virtually all the houses are brick-built with tiled or corrugated iron roofs) is in sharp contrast to the north and east where the majority of people still live in small, round grass-thatched huts in spite of the problems of shortage of grass suitable for thatching.  I have always wondered whether the reason I much prefer hilly and mountainous landscapes is because the Ankole hills were imprinted on my psyche from birth! The climb up from Ankole to the Kigezi border gives wonderful views back over Ankole. But the beautiful stopping-off place has been lost due to buildings.

Kigezi is home to the Bakiga who have a reputation for being “difficult” people! But it’s not surprising when you see how generations have had to live on such huge, steep-sided hills separated by narrow valleys. The hills have to be terraced into narrow strips (which makes for attractive landscapes!) where it is often hard to stand up without sliding down the hillside. You either live up on the hills, which means a long walk down to collect water and carry it back; or you live in the valleys which means a steep walk up before you can even start the day’s digging and planting, weeding and harvesting! Heavy rain (which we experienced as we drove) pours off the hillsides causing erosion if the terraces aren’t well made. From the road’s highest point on a clear day, it is possible to see the first three mountains (Muhavura, Mgahinga and Sabinio) of the chain of eight Virunga Volcanoes which lie on the Uganda-Rwanda-DRC borders – but not today!

With a lot of recent heavy rain, it wasn’t easy to drive the minibus up the very steep, slippery, rocky road with hairpin bends and eroded gullies from Kabale and down the other side to the lake! The first view of Lake Bunyonyi (the “lake of little birds”) before the descent is imprinted on my memory – visits to Sharp’s Island as a child are a happy memory. Dr Sharp (one of the doctors working on the leprosy island hospital) had created an idyllic home on the island. It was where we were taken from KPS (the boarding school in Kabale I went to from 1951) in 1953 to listen to Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation on the one and only radio in the area!

 

Robert’s expert driving skills were to be put to the test again as we drove along a muddy track for a couple of miles, twisting up and down close to the lake to Edirisa’s accommodation. The final stretch was on a very steep sideways slope which was too much for the minibus – it slipped sideways into a deep gully, coming to rest solidly on a large rock. The vehicle was well and truly stuck. As the rain started again, I found a woman in a nearby home and asked for a hoe to help dig out the rock. As always happens in Uganda, people started to materialise from nowhere and watched as Robert dug around the rock to release it and lift it out. To get the left wheels out of the gully and back onto the track, he had to reverse, which he managed with help pushing the van sideways to stop it sliding off the track completely! It was quite scary as the sideways movement of the van was so unpredictable. Having done some minor road repairs, Robert made a second attempt, trying to keep as far to the right as possible on the narrow track to prevent the van slipping sideways back into the gully. He just managed to get past it but skidded to a standstill just beyond. Children came to the rescue and helped push the van onwards and upwards until it levelled out a bit and Robert could stop for us to get back in! To watch the drama, click here!

 

It was a relief to arrive at Edirisa, by which time we were all wet, very cold and muddy! The accommodation was situated amongst large eucalyptus trees (which continued to drip water long after the rain stopped) on a very steep slope down to the lake’s edge. It was so basic that it wasn’t easy to get warm and dry! To our surprise, Kerstin arrived in a dug-out canoe about two hours later. She had stayed in Teso for an extra week and then, over two days, made her way by buses all the way down to Lake Bunyonyi to join us. The last part, from Kabale, was on a motorcycle “boda-boda” who said he couldn’t go any further because the track was too bad (!!), so she transferred to a canoe for the final stage of her long journey.

 

Surprisingly, the rain stopped and the clouds cleared in time for a lovely sunset with the volcanoes visible in the far distance. We did eventually get a very nice meal – while Robert, who is a football fan, walked the two miles back, in the rain and dark, to watch an English football match in the small lakeside trading centre!

 

Monday 15th:  We spent the morning looking for birds and walking along the tracks and paths, surrounded by bushes and trees, never far from the lake and views of the steep cultivated hills. Dug-out canoes are the traditional method of transport between villages and markets, but increasingly, motorboats are being used – the noise of the engines, which travels such a long way, certainly spoils the natural tranquillity.

I was surprised to hear, and then see, a few European Bee-eaters. When we lived in Kabale we used to hear their characteristic call overhead as they migrated north in the spring to breed in central Europe during the summer and again as they flew south in the autumn. Were they over-wintering in Kigezi instead of going further south? I also saw a few Cinnamon-chested Bee-eaters which are permanent in Kigezi and which we saw many times again over the next week.

 

Walking down to a little inlet, I was excited to see an otter fishing, albeit quite far away.

 

It rained heavily in the afternoon, so most of us, lulled by the noise on the corrugated iron roof, snuggled up in our beds and slept. I think Kerstin went swimming twice during the day – she claimed the water was warm!!

A young lad who had attached himself to us in the morning, offered to take us in a canoe at dusk to look for the otters, but we didn’t see them again. However, he paddled us around what he calls the Crane island as dozens of Grey Crowned Cranes were returning to roost, their haunting “oooh-wang” calls amplified by the surrounding hills. Cormorants were also coming into roost on one of the trees by Edirisa.

 

Tuesday 16th: We left Edirisa and Lake Bunyonyi after breakfast eaten on a high platform built on the steep slope above the edge of the lake. Honey with pancakes was risky as it attracted so many bees which came to reclaim it!

Before starting our journey to Bwindi Forest, we went up onto Rugarama Hill to visit Kigezi High School where we lived for four years from 1969. There was hardly anyone around but we met the lovely Deputy Head, Peninah, who was so welcoming and excited to see us. After signing the ubiquitous Visitors Books (something which happens on any visit to an office or institution in Uganda), she asked the English teacher, Norris Aaron Bantu, to show us around. We were all impressed by how beautifully the grounds are kept, as are most of the buildings. A few of the oldest buildings are still there, as well as all those constructed by the World Bank (labs, classrooms, staff houses) at the end of the 1960s in 39 schools across Uganda. (Ngora High School was also one of them.) They were well-designed and strongly built from sets of pre-cast concrete sections which were quickly ‘slotted’ together. The labs were also equipped by the World Bank, although they were not ready for the first HSC (‘A’ level) students who arrived from schools all over Uganda in February 1969. Roger’s first lab was a temporary papyrus structure! Nor were the staff houses ready – we had to wait a year in temporary accommodation. It was great to see that the basketball court which Roger had constructed is still there and the school still has teams, including girls’ now. Norris asked if we (and others, please note!) would write some stories about the 1960s and 70s for the school magazine which he produces.

 

Having walked through the school, we walked on along the road where the ten World Bank staff houses had been built. Like at Mbarara High School, there was no longer any sign of the terraced gardens we had all laid out, nor the lovely distant views over the valley and hills. Instead, they were shut in with matooke plantations (which never used to be grown in Kigezi).

 

The visit turned out to take much longer than I had expected (because we were so warmly welcomed), so we didn’t even go and look at the outside of Kabale Prep School nearby which I went to as a boarder for two years (1951-1953). In those days, it was run by CMS missionaries for the children of missionaries working in Uganda and Rwanda. It is now apparently a very exclusive private boarding school for wealthy Ugandans.

We left Kabale and drove 25km westwards through the spectacular Kigezi landscape, climbing more very steep hills with hairpin bends. However, there was no sign of the abundance of large ground orchids we used to see 60 years ago in the swampy valleys nor all the epiphytes in the forests (orchids living up in native trees). We used to collect a few specimens which I illustrated (painting them was more accurate than photos taken with the simple camera we had) and grew a few around the house. When we left at the end of 1972, we took a few unidentified specimens of epiphytes home with us (which we first had treated and certified by the Ministry of Agriculture) and took them to Kew. However, they didn’t manage to keep any of them alive nor identify them all!

At Ikumba (Rubanda), we turned off the tarmac road onto a very rough, rocky track. The signpost had said 27km to the Ruhija section of Bwindi Forest – we’ll soon be there. But it was nearly two hours before we arrived!  Without going up and down very much, we wound our way through the boundary area between cultivation and the wild, protected forest, the ‘road’ clinging to the very steep hillsides (how on earth do the people manage to cultivate them without falling all the way down to the bottom?!). The original name of the Impenetrable Forest is still apt, despite all the developments associated with habituating 17 families of gorillas for tourists to visit,  along with all the accommodation and other facilities needed.

 

We settled into our rooms overlooking the edge of the forest and then enjoyed supper as darkness fell and we sat next to a large charcoal fire in a brazier which kept us warm. It gets cold at 2,500m high!