The Wonderful West

I bet you were thinking about cowboys and Indians and whatever other connotations “west” has today. Well sadly no, I was actually referring to the western region of Uganda.
Sam, Mich, Rukundo, Geoffrey and I took a trip to Kabale to visit with Mich’s great grand mother (Sam’s grand ma), Mich’s grand aunt and other relatives.
Kabale is breathtakingly beautiful, it’s defined by hills, mountains, lakes and valleys. It’s also very fertile; I got the impression that every household owned a farm.

Looking out the window I could see acres upon acres of tea, sorghum, millet, cabbage, bananas, onions, Irish potatoes, rice, mangoes, pineapples, green vegetables and lots more. I’m told it’s the land where “mirik, frows on the virrage paths” – “milk flows on the village paths” in other words they have lots of cattle - break that down to milk, cheese, ghee, butter and everything you can squeeze out of a cow.

“Nyogukuru”, grandmother in Rufumbira was really happy to see us, especially Mich. She spoke in Rufumbira which Mich and I are still learning. I thought I had mastered the greetings and basic words of conversation until I visited and she pulled out ancient words that I couldn't fathom, they were nothing like the ones I learned and so I was thrown off. When I thought I had learned those, someone else would come up with yet another version.
Eh! The beauty of marrying into a different tribe.
Some of the greetings I know ; “umezute” response “mezeneeza”, “amasho” response “amashongore”, “uwiriwe” I don’t remember the response to that may be “uwiriweneeza”, “osibirotya” response “ndiburungi” or something like that. My favourite response was "yego", you could get away with almost everything if you said "yego" meaning yes.

We visited relatives in Kisoro with Nyogukuru as our guide, I was a little concerned especially considering the fact that her eye sight is failing. Just when we needed direction she would turn to Rukundo, now, neither Rukundo nor any of us knew the area, so we had to stop and ask the locals.
She is an amazing lady, did I mention how at some point she accused me of wanting to throw her down because I was trying to help her get out of the car?. Well I learned not to be so "helpful", at least not until the help is sermoned for.

We had about 5 hours in which to visit 5 people and considering that they were located in different places and we had to stop to ask for directions we actually didn't have that much time.

We nearly did some stand up visits - stand at the door, greet, make sure everybody is fine, time keeper says times is up, we say our goodbyes and hit the road.
Even with our impromptu visits, nyogukuru managed to get some presents. I think they had been waiting for her.

One of my highlights was meeting her brother. He was whisked from his garden, dressed in gum boots, a sweater, what looked like two layers of clothing underneath, a walking stick and a hat. He has clearly lived a long life, still I was amazed at his energy and stamina. Nyogukuru is the last born of 15 children and her brother is the 7th. Now if she is around 89, just how old would her brother be? Well, he told us he is 93 but quite honestly I suspect he is over 100.

We visited another old lady, I think I know how they coined the phrase "little old lady" because she was little. She was so glad to see us, especially Nyogukuru, their conversation went something like "if you get there before me, keep me a place. And if I get there before you I will keep you a place". Do you get the drift? Mich was certainly concerned, between beautiful scenery's he got to see old people.
On our flight back from Uganda he asked me if all the people in the plane had been visiting their grandmas. Hmmm ... he wasn't traumatised was he? :-)

We drove passed Lake Bunyonyi on our way to Kisoro, apparently its the second deepest lake in Africa. Saying it was such a pretty sight would be a serious understatement. I could have driven back to Kampala after that- not wanting anything to tarnish the picture that it had imprinted on my mind. That was the icing on the cake.

Lake Bunyonyi

But the fun was not over, Geoffrey is a wine connoisseur and we couldn't leave Kabale without visiting the local store. The lady and her husband brew wine in their backyard.

We stopped by the healing Kitagata springs in Bushenyi, and found some crazy guy who claimed to work at State house but did tours part time. He seemed to know a lot about the springs but frankly I think he had 'lost it'. He gave us some detailed information about what potent was in the different temperatures of water, he said the waters healed all diseases. But clearly there were women and men bathing in the water and drinking it.

Later on we got to eat the hugest hottest tastiest roasted cassava on this planet courtesy of Geoffrey.

We drove through Queen Elizabeth National Park, spotted some Elephants drinking at a water source and nearly jumped out of the car in excitement. We also saw some Buffaloes, and antelopes. Uganda is a truly the Pearl of Africa.

Elephants at Queen Elizabeth National Park

Birds eye view of Queen Elizabeth National Park

Mount Habura