Bwindi Impenetrable Forest: a rainforest in southwestern Uganda. For USD$375, tourists are permitted to follow a guide to track gorillas in the forest. After an hour with gorillas (in which tourists can take pictures), tourists must return to Buhoma, the nearest village. The price is non-refundable, and there is no guarantee that the gorillas will be found. Three groups of gorillas are tracked, and at most eight people (plus a guide, plus two security guards) can track each group each day. (The security guards there are because of a 1999 incident involving Rwandan Hetu rebels, AK-47s, and short-lived tourists. I personally find it somewhat funny that such an unstable area of the world is home to such an exclusive tourist attraction.)
Usually, travellers will spend another USD$650 or so for a low-end package deal (including a hired driver). I made the package deal
mistake already with Murchison Falls National Park, and so this time I resolved to do it the real (read: cheap) way.
Friday: bus to Butagota. The scenery is stunning, especially around and after Mbarara. The last three hours are on winding, mountainous dirt roads. There are bananas everywhere. Very bumpy: I wish my camera had a better lens, because my pictures have bad colour (though reasonable shutter speed). After the bus, hopped onto the back of a pickup truck (with 18 other people) and spent another hour driving from Butagota to Buhoma (Buhoma is right on the edge of Bwindi Impenetrable Forest). All told, 13 hours of public transportation, for a total of UGX35,000. Ended up in Buhoma Community Rest Camp, sharing a room for UGX35,000 (ouch!), plus food and beer. I walked through the main street of the village before dinner.
Saturday: ate breakfast, picked up a packed lunch. Got a half hour or so of briefing, and then started tracking. After about five minutes in the forest, we found the gorillas. Lucky! (Another group spent four hours before finding them.) We spent an hour, absorbing the gorilla-ness. The silverback was huge and impressive. At one point, one gorilla was about four feet away from me. Scary!
Since we got back so early, I had time to kill. I went on the Buhoma Community Village Walk. The walk displays a crafts shop, tea plantations, coffee, bananas, a traditional healer, banana wine (and a distillery for banana waragi: Ugandan gin, which is fantastic), and pygmies. The entire village has somewhat sold itself to tourism; nonetheless, it was very educational. And the dancing with pygmies
part seems horribly strange: before Western intervention, the pygmies lived in the forest; now, they are integrated into the Ugandan community. For all intents and purposes their culture has been destroyed, but they are healthier and better-educated. Is the change right or wrong? I don't know. What I find interesting is the absolute contrast. See my Culture Shock Therapy post for more on this topic: when I wrote it, I didn't have pygmies in mind at all; but their story is a very strong example of the cultural effects (or instigation) of development.
Still Saturday, took a boda back to Butagota. The boda ride was breathtaking (both in terms of beauty and fear factor). In Butagota, checked in to a small (no running water, hole-in-the-ground toilets, candlelit) hotel. Finally, a village which is not overrun by tourists. I decided I wanted to go for a walk through town. The downtown
area was tiny, and I ended up walking for about an hour along the road, occasionally greeting the road-side residents with my puny grasp of the local language. (I'd only picked up the greetings of the language, which I think is called Rukiga, on Friday). In a somewhat meditative state, I ended up being a part of a small convoy of children of various ages. (As a statistical necessity, children rarely walk with their parents, and they often walk in groups. These children weren't following me, per se: they were just walking in the same direction at the same pace.) One younger child, Martin, told me that some were going to watch television
.
After walking in this way for a while (passing by the tea factory I'd heard of in Buhoma), the older kids branched off to the outside of a school. There were more kids there, playing with a football (real football, not the American kind). Some of them invited me to join them; so I bid Martin adieu and joined them.
They were good. They were all younger than I am (maybe aged 16-20; I'm horrible at guessing Ugandans' ages, so I could be far off). Footwear ranged from barefoot to sandals to running shoes to cleats. I wasn't completely useless: I did perform one diving defensive kick which earned me some respect. I immediately regretted that I hadn't played football in Uganda until this day: it's so universal, and cultural boundaries melt away. I may be the only mzungu to ever play football in Butagota, and yet I was accomodated without question: laughing, holding hands with teammates and opponents (holding hands is part of the culture here) and just enjoying life. I played for about an hour and walked back to the hotel for food and sleep.
I realized that when Martin said the kids were about to watch television
, he meant they were about to play football
. It occurs to me that with the exception of the very Western places in Kampala, television is football in Uganda.
My traveling companion had a rough time dealing with the complete lack of Western culture (not to mention the lack of flush-toilets), only walking as far as the tea factory. I'll keep that person anonymous. Personally, I loved it.
Total cost for the day: UGX50,000.
Sunday: bus back to Kampala. A Gateway bus (the company one is never supposed to take) at 4:30am, which ended up breaking down. Got to Kampala at 5:30pm. Cost: UGX20,000 (plus a thousand or two for food). As a welcome-back, I treated myself to Nando's chicken and some cheap-ish ice cream in downtown Kampala, for another UGX10,000.
So, my total cost for the weekend was about UGX130,000, which is about USD$75. Plus USD$375 for the gorillas.
My mention of prices and the quantity I write on each topic should give some idea as to which aspects of the trip I found most valuable. All my experiences have given me a clear perspective. If I had to erase one experience from the entire weekend, irrespective of price, it would be the gorillas. Sure, they are a once-in-a-lifetime experience. So is everything else I'm experiencing here.
I was very happy this weekend, in stark contrast with my mixed feelings at Murchison Falls. Bwindi may be a bit of a tourist area, but the tourists are more serious here: quiet and polite. There is a clear message that the mzungus are the outsiders here. There is a strong mutual respect between the tourist culture and the village culture: a duality which I could not find in Kampala or Gulu.
All in all, a surreal weekend. And I've decided I must visit Rwanda before I leave East Africa.
Pictures!
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Gorilla!
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Pigmy children playing with a drum.
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Butagota
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Football
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View from the road to Butagota