The streams are still flowing with fresh natural waters, the hot springs bubbling, the birds always chirping away, forests and gardens as green as ever, Africa’s second deepest lake, Bunyonyi with 29 islands so calm – Kabale is a breath of fresh air in every sense of the word.
Nature has been respected and it seems to have reciprocated the gesture. Although there are the occasional landslides, these are not at worrying levels as happens year after year in eastern Uganda in Bududa and Mbale.
People here fit into nature, and not the other way round. You see no forest or hill razed to the ground for a project. No hill is too high for a house, and likewise, no valley is too shallow for a health centre or a church building; getting there is the real problem.
You may see your destination downhill or uphill but to reach there, you actually first drive away in circles, losing sight of it before reaching. You can only hold it up in praise for the road contractors who had to blast through rocky hillsides to construct the roads.
Boda bodas of course go uphill but you literally hear their engines struggling for power. The snaking single-lane murram road going round the hills sends a chilling bout to any new travellers. This road would actually make a nice rally circuit with all the blind corners, but as it is, any mistake with the vehicle’s braking system would simply be a point of no return.
With rocks everywhere, stone mining dominated by women and children is a common sight. Seeing the all-conquering heights of the hills and the contour farmlands, my primary school social studies and secondary school geography lessons were brought to life.
The slightly dark and brownish “volcanic, ferralitic and peat” soils – give dwellers appetizing and healthy yields. Crops, mainly beans, Irish potatoes, maize, coffee, sorghum, a few bananas, yams and even the weeds look so healthy, but that is before you even see the goats and cows.
The animals are predominantly the local breed but my, they look so healthy. No wonder the milk here is so authentically rich. Nobody loves the hills more than the baby goats. They keep racing up and downhill without a misstep. The official geographical narrative is that it is the plutonic formation of the Kabale hills that led to the creation of present-day Lake Victoria and Lake Kyoga after the water flow got reversed, creating depressions and flooding more than 400km away.
UNIQUE
That the word Kabale means a small stone, leaves you in bewilderment at what these Bakiga actually call a big stone; there are hardly any small stones. Well, the “kabale” apparently was a small piece of iron ore, so heavy that it attracted people from neighbouring villages to come and see it and feel its weight. The British colonialists eventually took it to Entebbe – it would be a miracle if it is still in Uganda.
Right from the entrance into Kabale town, you start morphing into ‘another country’ feel. Only two places in Uganda give you this feel – Kabale and Karamoja.
Sadly, the Kampala chaos and dirt has started eating up the municipality. The town has this enviable unique road design that welcomes you to the township where the pedestrian lane is in the middle of the road, and not on the sides as elsewhere – with inbound and outbound lanes on either side.
Some six to 10 years ago, traffic respected the lane rules, but not anymore – it is now hard to figure out what lane is for inbound or outbound traffic; some stubborn drivers use any they deem fit without any care in the world. I am sure the pedestrian middle lane is still respected only because of the guard rails.
BIT OF ALL WEATHER
Despite the generally cold weather – averaging at 16°C during the day and about 12°C at night, the sun is also in plenty in Kabale though served in intervals of between 10 and 30 minutes interchanging with a heavy cloud cover.
When Kampalans made a hullaballoo on social media about this year’s February 23 smog, locals in Kabale and Fort Portal mocked them for their ‘rural excitement’ because in Kabale this is an everyday occurrence. It is chilling cold and little wonder that jackets, jumpers and sweater shops dot every corner of town.
“It can’t take two weeks without raining here except in the months of June, July and August,” Samson Kabaziguruka, a boda boda rider, told The Observer.
Food is amazingly expensive in Kabale, especially at the decent eateries. Mere black tea, for example at the surprisingly good Manhattan hotel, goes for Shs 4,000. But you can get cheaper and even better spiced tea just two blocks away at just Shs 1,000. That is the upcountry tea price a Kampalan expects.
One roasted Irish potato or matoke finger costs Shs 500 and roasted meat or chicken is priced from Shs 5,000 upwards. ‘Local food’ will cost you above Shs 12,000 and there is variety. The high prices are attributed to the hilly terrain where few vehicles can drive uphill to pick and drop the produce.
LAKE BUNYONYI
A boat ride on this very calm and fishless lake costs Shs 3,000 on the rudimentary canoe and Shs 6,000 to Shs 10,000 on the bigger and shaded engine-powered canoes. We missed the chance to see cows being guided to swim from one island to another, or to the shores. I have seen the amazing pictures before and was looking forward to seeing it with my own eyes. Unfortunately, the timing was not right.
Uganda Red Cross Society last month posted on social media videos of school children who can’t afford the boat ride swimming to school in this terribly deep lake! Not that they can’t swim, but it was still a worrying and unimaginable sight.
Unlike other lakes buzzing with a flurry of activity and a fishy smell, there is not much on this lake except tour rides and the tourist resorts and camping sites around it.
A ride to the small punishment island stands out and is still sought after. This is where it is said, Bakiga used to abandon girls who got pregnant before marriage. The practice has since been outlawed, but still the harrowing stories from the island abound.
The locals are in fact, divided on this. Some say it was just used as a scarecrow for the girls to keep off sex until marriage, while some insist they actually threw the girls there only to be rescued by their boyfriends or other men who wanted wives but could not afford dowry.
fkisakye@observer.ug
