It is a very long time since I last looked in an atlas or looked up a map, neither have I used a dictionary lately. Last Thursday I found myself needing all these three things at the same time in my car but I could not lay my hands on any of them.
I was driving in Western Uganda, an escort van to a convoy of trucks delivering drilling equipment to an oil drilling site in the Queen Elizabeth National Game Park. We drove for over 700km from the border town of Malaba in Eastern Uganda, through Kampala, Mityana, Mubende, Fort Portal and Kasese to get to the drilling site in an area of the park on the shores of Lake Edward called Rwenshama.
I had read of and seen Lake Edward which was then called Lake Mobutu in Iddi Amin’s era in geography books and maps of Uganda and East Africa. It was renamed Lake Edward after the overthrow of the dictator Iddi Amin Dada by joint force of Ugandan exiles and the Tanzanian army. Amin had obviously named the lake in honor of his own friend and fellow dictator, Mobutu Sesseko president of Zaire, now Democratic Republic of the Congo. Amin had also named some other lake in Uganda Amin; I am not certain if it was Lake Albert or George.
Well, here I was in the thick of the geography and history that I only knew about as a child, let alone feeling part of the historic moment in the development of Uganda that I have until now only read of in the dailies; the exploitation of oil that has been lying underground while millions of Ugandan have swimming in poverty and the nation suffering from energy and fuel crisis. Hopefully, the oil will be a blessing like in the Middle East rather a curse like in Nigeria.
I had not been to Queen Elizabeth national Park before and neither had I seen a warthog or so many wild animals like buffalos, elephants, antelopes, hippos, baboons and birds in one place as I did when I visited Rwenshama last week. I also had the opportunity to see the Virunga Mt ranges across the lake in the DRC, the Rwenzori Mt ranges in Kasese and Fort Portal and crossing the Equator.
By now you might have begun to appreciate my need for a map, dictionary and atlas as I traveled through these places.
We left Kampala on Wednesday morning for Rwenshama, having spent the night there after setting off from Malaba on Tuesday afternoon. It all looked pretty familiar landscape and vegetation as we drove through Mityana and Mubende until we approached the Toro Kingdom when the tree cover gradually increased and palm trees, forests, hills and rocks than finally gave way to ridges to the rather mundane savannah grassland of Mubdende the last district of Buganda Kingdom on the border with Toro.
The landscape and climate closely resembled that of the Mountain district of Kapchorwa in Eastern Uganda and Kericho in the Kenyan highlands. There were a number of tea estates and a few small livestock farms on the ridges as we left Kibale Forest National Game Park behind and drove into Kabarole district that actually until recently I knew as Fort Portal.
All cool, green and serene, we were in Fort Portal town and the statue of the colonial explorer Frederick Lugard stands in one of the few streets of the town. The Rwenzoris were in the background hiding the evening sun and the ridges around town are mostly covered by banana groves. I can see in the not so distant background to the south of the town a magnificent building on a hill. The memory of what I have been seeing in the dailies tells me that it is the royal palace of the king of Toro who incidentally turns eighteen Friday April 16, two days after our visit.
So much for Fort Portal and we set off for Kasesse which is some 56km away. The way to Kasese was an up and down the hill journey and the green ridges on the foothills of the Rwenzori was a sight that accompanied us our entire journey through. The temperature rose up, though, as we approached Kasese and the landscape went flat all of a sudden as we got to Hima that is a few kilometers from Kasese town.
Once again, I was asking myself why one area herein Uganda resembled another somewhere in the East Africa? The answer was long in coming, though, as in the case of Kericho and Fort Portal that are both highlands. Kasese resembled Naivasha/Nakuru because it lies in the Great Rift Valley and my secondary school geography reminds me that Lake George that is on the foreground of Kasese town is a rift valley lake.
In Kasese come alive the primary school geography lessons about the Kilembe copper mines, Hima cement factory, the Rewnzori closer than it was in Fort Portal and the enormous savannah grassland Queen Elizabeth National Game Park begins down to Lake Edward. The sweltering heat here, tells me that the Equator is close by. I pause for a photo or two at the Equator and the crossroads to Bwera on the Uganda/Congo border before proceeding through the park down to Katunguru and over the Kazinga channel that joins Lake George and Edward on the road to Mbarara.
It is Thursday morning and a few kilometers across the Kazinga we turn right to a dirt road that takes us 53km through the game park to Rwenshama. It is drizzling and the road is slippery but our convoy inches slowly through the park save for one truck that failed way before we reached kasese in a maize growing area called Rwimi.
The road to Rwenshama is flavored with the fresh smell of elephant dung, butterflies swarming around the dung, baboons jumping into and out of the road, elephants chewing the curd in the thickets and herds of mud bathed buffalos grazing in the grasslands.
After more than an hour from the Junction to Mbarara, we get to the drilling site and I was surprised to find young Ugandan engineers there rather bearded white men in shorts save for a more aged man with a Kenyan accent who supervised the offloading of the equipment and signed our delivery notes.
About 500m down the lake away from the drilling site is a fish landing site and a small fishing community that is literally living amidst wildlife. Buffaloes are grazing behind the houses, children are playing not far away from them, warthogs are disappearing in the background into a thicket and hippos are wallowing in the water next to the boats where the fishermen are sorting out their nets.
A young man walks over to me and asks after a greeting where I was from and what I was doing in this rather filthy landing site of Rwenshama. After a short conversation and geography lesson of Rwenshama, Lake Edward, Virunga Mountains and the game park, he asks if there is any job e.g. offloading that he could do at the drilling site. He is visibly disappointed to learn that offloading id done by crane and there is nothing else for him to do. I walk back to the site and after a few moments we get our delivery notes and start off on the return journey home.
