New Year's at Lake Bunyonyi and hiking in the Rwenzoris

Lake Bunyonyi
In the very south western corner of Uganda lies a beautiful lake nestled between green hills and mountains. Lake Bunyonyi was apparently formed when lave from a volcano eruption (the 4,127m Muhabura volcano is a mere 20km away) blocked a river and created this 25km long and 7km wide water system. Fascinatingly, estimates of the lakes depth varies from 44m to 900m! Should not be too hard to figure out I think, but I guess it illustrates how remote the lake is. It is about 7hrs driving from Kampala.


As a backdrop for New Year's Eve - and the much derided 01st Jan - it was a perfect place to hang out. I drove down with three expat friends from Kampala and stayed two nights at one of the picturesque resorts on the lake shore. Surprisingly we were the only guests in this little paradise! It was a small resort, 8 cottages or so, and there was a large open terrace overlooking the lake and the hills on the other side. With a large fireplace and great food it was a wonderful setting for our New Year's dinner – and between the four of us we somehow managed to make it into a party later on.



As midnight approached we discussed whether we could expect any fireworks from the farms and settlements on the surrounding hills. We agreed that this was unlikely - fireworks is quite a luxury after all. I don't think there was an electricity grid in the area and it was pitch dark by mid-evening. Then, as we were finishing dinner an hour or so before midnight the sound of drums filled the night around us, and just before midnight bone fires were lit on most of the farms on the hillsides behind us and across the lake. The drumming, singing, shouting and clapping of the locals echoed back and forth across the lake. The sight of distant silhouettes of people dancing around bone fires to the sound of drumming was not quite fireworks, but far more fascinating!



The next day was spent lounging on a small pier by the lake. Free of bilharzia, crocodiles and hippos, Lake Bunyoni is one of the few places in Uganda where one can swim safely - and that is what we did!

The Mountains of the Moon
A couple of days into the new year I finally got to see what I consider to be Africa's most fascinating mountain chain – the Rwenzoris, or Mountains of the Moon.


Stretching along the border with DRC, the Rwenzoris are crowned by six peaks in excess of 4,500 meters; this is truly a mighty mountain chain! The tallest peaks are covered by snow and glaciers, from which meltwater forms rivers and lakes down the mountain sides and around them.

The history of the European discovery of the Rwenzoris is fascinating reading. The ancient Greeks had heard through trade links that the source of the Nile was a range of snow-capped mountains on the equator. They called them the Mountains of the Moon. This theory was never verified, and when Speke discovered Lake Victoria in 1858 and declared it the source of the Nile, the Greeks seemed to have been proved wrong. It was not until 1889 that Stanley by chance stumbled across the Rwenzoris and declared them to be the fabled Mountains of the Moon that the original theory was revisited. Remarkably the mountains turned out to be both snow-capped and a source of the Nile (there are many)! So the ancient Greeks had been right all the time.



We did a one day hike across the northern end of the mountains, crossing from Fort Portal on the eastern side of the ridge and over the mountains to the village of Bundibugyo at to the west of the mountains. The highest point was 3,014m – my highest ascent ever (I am not a climber..). Unfortunately, low hanging clouds obstructed the view to the DRC and the Ituri Forest from the top. I still can’t decide what was more challenging, going up or down. The way up was pretty steep, but on the way down we descended in excess of 1,000m in less than 3 hours, which is tough going for knees and joints.

I'd love to go back and go for the real peaks at some point - Mount Stanley is 5,109m tall. It’s an eight day trip and quite expensive, so lets see if there is time and money!

Kampala – the ideal city?

Kampala can be described in a few words as green, sprawling, peaceful and safe. In short, a very nice place to live and work. I moved down in October and feel at home after only two months on the ground. What is it exactely that makes a place pleasant?Its hard to pin down but for Kampala I think the following characteristics are key:

Green
At 1,200 meters above sea level and located right on the equator, Kampala has the most suitable average temperatures imaginable – basically between 20c and 30c year round. Average annual rainfall is 1,244mm (www.worldclimate.com) – same figure for Oslo is 655mm (and it rains a lot in Oslo too!) and London 752mm (same comment as for Oslo..) With that much perspiration combined with 12 months of sunshine and fertile soil (no frost or other impediments), one can imagine how green the Kampala is. The city is spread out across a range of hills (23 in total, I think), which makes it easy to find your way around.


Sprawling
For a city of 1.5 million people the town centre is amazingly small, a bit like you would expect of a town of 50,000 inhabitants back home. But the suburbs are huge and spread in all directions. The key reason for this peculiar development is rapid population growth combined with low levels of investment.

Kampala has not followed the growth pattern of a normal metropolis. Back in 1969, so 40 years ago, the city had 350,000 inhabitants – a CAGR of 3.7% (1969-2009). Uganda has one of the worlds highest population growth rates – 8th in the world at 3.24% - so that the urban growth rate stands at a little above that makes sense. Still, compare this with, say, London's population growth, which has been around zero over the same period, and you realize Kampala is a relatively young city.

Investment per capita is low in Uganda (Kampala). Its about USD 90 per capita per year (CIA worldfactbook) in fixed assets such as factories, machinery, buildings – basically the nations CAPEX. The corresponding figure for South Africa is USD 1,170 and for Norway USD16,600 (185 times more than Uganda..) An office building is an office building where ever it is, and construction costs are similar across the world. (Cement is a traded commodity and there is a global market for cranes, for example) Cost of Labour is of course very cheap in Uganda, but say for arguments sake that the cost of putting up a tall office building is about half in Uganda compared with Europe. That's still a long way from 185 times less..(Ignoring population size) And we don't even have skyscrapers in Norway!

In short, Kampala's population has quadrupled in the last four decade whilst physical construction has stagnated. The result is a low rise sprawl, spreading far in all directions out from the city centre, resembling a very large suburb. I saw a picture book once comparing photographs of the same area in Kampala now and some decades ago – the remarkable thing was not the change, but rather the lack of it. I live pretty much in the middle of the city, but if you saw the view from my balcony you would think I lived in the country side!


Safe and peaceful
About the safety aspect – there is very little crime in general. In particular compared with Nairobi or even more so with the large Southern African cities. There are no reliable statistics of course, but people say its safe, and that is the impression you get when living here. In two months I have only heard of one robbery – against someone I did not know – and given it's a small town you would have heard of it if there was more, so all in all crime is low. Especially considering the large income discrepancies.

Moreover, people move slowly in Kampala. To be sure, there is lots of people and lots of traffic, but movements are slow. The stress and running around of comparable cities is non-existent. It translates into slow service as well, but hey..

In sum, Kampala is a very nice place to live and to spend a year or two. Beyond that you need to be of a peaceful nature to enjoy it – but I guess after two years here you will have adapted sufficiently to hang on a little longer.

Working in Uganda

I am currently working in Uganda as a volunteer consultant for TechnoServe (www.technoserve.org) an American NGO offering business consulting services to entrepreneurs in developing countries. The organisations mission statement is

“to help entrepreneurial men and women in poor rural areas of the developing world to build businesses that create income, opportunity and economic growth for their families, their communities and their countries”.



I moved to Kampala, Uganda on 14.October this year to start my work and have so far had an amazing time in this beautiful country in the middle of Africa. “Uganda is truly the pearl of Africa”, Winston Churchill wrote in 1907 visiting Uganda for the first time. And indeed it is – blessed with abundant water resources (Lake Victoria, the Nile and Lake Albert) the country is green and fertile throughout the year. The country is boxed in by some of the most amazing mountains in East Africa – Mt Elgon in the east, the mighty Rwenzori’s in the west and the Virunga mountains to the south. These unique geographical features truly gives the feeling of being in the “middle” of Africa, cut of from the more outward-oriented countries like Kenya and Tanzania.


In this blog I will share some of my experiences and some pictures from Uganda and hopefully the wider East Africa.