From Silicon Valley to Swaziland, Rick & Wendy Walleigh [i love reading books .txt] 📗

Matooke in Uganda

Genocide Memories in Rwanda

Wendy and I flew to Kampala again to work with Erastus as he built up the Uganda TechnoServe program. Our flight was supposed to arrive at 2:00 p.m., so I thought I would have plenty of time to get to the TechnoServe office and get on a conference call by four. I say “office” because I had heard that TechnoServe would have a working office by the date of our arrival. Our flight arrived a bit late and immediately after another plane, so the lines were long at immigration. When the TechnoServe driver picked us up, we were told that an office had been rented, but it did not have furniture, telephone service, etc. We went to our hotel, and with traffic, arrived right at 4:00 p.m. I asked to go quickly to our room so that I could get on the call, using my cell phone. At about 4:10, I dialed into the call. After beeping a number of times for no apparent reason throughout the call, my cell phone cut me off after about forty minutes.

I didn’t know why the cell phone was no longer working, but I thought I might be able to get back on the call using Skype. So I went to reception to see how to get on to the Internet. Their process to get on to the Internet was to sell access codes that were good for a fixed period of time. I agreed to buy some codes, but they were out. The woman at reception promised to call the service provider and then send someone to my room with the codes. A half hour later, someone came to the room with the access codes. I tried them, but couldn’t get on. I called reception, and they said they would send someone up to check on my problem. About fifteen minutes later, a very pleasant young woman came to our room carrying a laptop. After looking at my computer and then trying a few things on her own laptop, she apologized that the wireless wasn’t receiving in our room. She indicated that it was working in the corridor and garden area, just outside my room. At this point, I was certain that the conference call had finished and decided it was time for cocktail hour. C’est L’Afrique!

The next morning, Friday, Wendy and I were working on our computers in the small garden area outside of our room where the wireless network was working. We were waiting to go to a meeting with a potential donor. Erastus arrived and told us our meeting had been pushed out to the following week and so we had nothing scheduled for the day. We had planned to go to the field to observe the TechnoServe matooke project on Monday, but now the logistics would work better to leave right away. Matooke (ma-toke-kay) is a member of the banana family, called a starch banana, that is boiled when green and eaten almost like mashed potatoes. William, a project manager who reported to Erastus, was already planning to take Payson Bullard (son of the TechnoServe founder) to the field to document our success on this project, and this way, we could all go together. So we quickly packed up some clothes and set off from Kampala toward Mbarara (hum the M, but longer than in Swaziland, bah-rahr-rah) in the southwest corner of Uganda, near the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), which gave Wendy some pause, but we headed out anyway.

During this time period, the eastern region of the DRC continued to experience unrest due to the multiple factions asserting their power against the weak central government. Some of these factions were guerilla groups left over from the 1994 “troubles” in Rwanda and the resulting migration, and some were more modern criminal gangs engaged in illegal mining. Often the lines were blurred, but there were periodic flare-ups in the conflict, which usually resulted in thousands of refugees fleeing across the border into Uganda.

For much of the drive, the road was incredibly good compared to what we had previously experienced in Africa. It was like a two-lane rural road in California. It would be interesting to know the history of various roads, as to when they were built and who built them because there was such diversity in the quality. We heard that President Museveni had originally come from southwest Uganda, so the roads leading to his home territory were especially good.

Our drive reminded me of my impressions from our previous trip. Uganda was green everywhere. Some people would say verdant. Practically the whole country gets enough rain for good agriculture. As we drove through farmland, my favorite view was overlooking the hills covered with tea plants. As it’s growing, tea is very dense. The low shrubs are very bushy and planted close together. From a distance, the overall effect is of a thick-pile green carpet covering the hills. I wanted to reach out and feel its dense softness.

About halfway through our trip for the day, we stopped for lunch in Mubende (Moo-ben-day) at a café William knew. We parked in a dirt lot in front of a nondescript concrete-block building. We walked inside where it was dark because there were few windows and no lights. The only electricity was being used for two soft drink coolers. William ordered food for all of us, and we walked outside to sit on the porch and wait for our food. The porch seemed to be the place to eat because there were several sets of turquoise, molded plastic tables and chairs, all with dark blue, oilcloth tablecloths imprinted with beer advertising. There were no other customers, but it was past normal lunchtime.

When lunch came, it was our first introduction to the typical diet in southwestern Uganda: nearly 100 percent carbohydrates! We had large helpings of rice, Irish (white) potatoes, sweet potatoes, and matooke. There was some peanut sauce to go on the matooke, which would have provided some protein and fat, but it was burned so we didn’t eat it. There were also two small pieces of chicken to share amongst the four of us. It didn’t look that appealing, so Wendy and I deferred to William and Payson who gladly devoured it with just a few bites. Later, when we reached our hotel, Wendy had an attack of hypoglycemia, and she had to be very careful over the next few days to get some protein with her meals.

Since the next day was Saturday, we decided to visit Queen Elizabeth Park. We couldn’t get reservations at the lodge inside the park, so we stayed in the town of Kasese (Kuh-say-say), just a few miles north. To quote the Lonely Planet Guide to East Africa, “Kasese is a boom-and-bust town that tasted glory during the copper years…but generally seems to have passed its use-by-date. It’s a small, hot, dusty, quiet town in a relatively infertile and lightly populated area, and it wears an air of permanent torpor.” I thought it was a perfect description. We were among the few guests at the best hotel in town. The accommodations were Spartan but adequate, and the modest dining room had a diverse menu with some very tasty meals, especially for $7 apiece.

On Saturday, William, Wendy, Payson, and I visited Queen Elizabeth Park, bordered on the north by the Rwenzori (Rw as in Rwanda-en-zoree) Mountains (also called the Mountains of the Moon) and on the west by Lake Edward (its outflow is ultimately a tributary of the Nile) that is shared with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The park contains Lake George, which flows into Lake Edward through the Kazinga Channel. The many bodies of water encourage the varied species of animals and particularly birds that are found in the park, and the number one tourist activity is to take a cruise on the Kazinga Channel to see the wildlife.

On our cruise, we saw the expected crocodiles and hippos, as well as lots of buffalo and a few elephants. However, the more interesting aspect was the bird life. Queen Elizabeth Park is purportedly home to six hundred species of birds, and we saw many of the most interesting ones. We had seen the majestic fish eagles and giant goliath herons before, but here we saw many new species including the wonderfully colored saddlebilled stork. This tall elegant bird, with its primarily black and white coloring, is initially reminiscent of a conservative waiter in a tuxedo, but the bright red and yellow highlights on its beak quickly establish it as a rakish dandy.

As we cruised the Kazinga Channel, our guide pointed out the small fishing village where he grew up, which is still allowed to remain within the park’s boundaries. He also recounted several stories that highlighted the unique dangers of living in rural Africa. The most memorable was from his early teen years when he and two friends were walking home one night after playing games at another friend’s home. A lion had come into their village and was watching in the dark as the three boys approached. Our guide and one friend walked by the lion, but the lion attacked their other friend. The first two boys ran and escaped, but in the morning, the villagers found remains of the other boy’s clothes and skeleton. Several other people in the village had been killed by lions in the intervening years. As if to drive the point home about the unique dangers of living in rural Africa, that evening we heard that earlier in the day a speeding bus on the nearby highway had hit a wandering hippopotamus. Several passengers on the bus, along with the hippo, had been killed. At times it was easy to get comfortable and complacent about living in Africa, like being a tourist and only experiencing the interesting highlights. But then, a story like these would wake us up and remind us how different our life was from those around us.

We spent the next few nights in Mbarara as we visited