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Life on Buganga Hill January 2004 Dear friends, thank you for visiting this page. It is a great privilege for me to be able to share with you my impressions of this beautiful and special place, which I have come to appreciate in the brief time I have been here. So whether you are scouting out a potential holiday destination - or are just curious - this is my account of our new home. |
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| Bugonga
Hill In the midst of Lake Victoria on the southern end of a Ugandan peninsula lies Entebbe Airport just 4 kilometers north of the equator. Although it is Uganda's international airport it is best described as a sleepy landing field sided by a one-story arrival hall. To the south lies Lake Victoria with its 62,000 sq-km of freshwater, making it Africa's largest lake. Turning its back on the great water, an impeccably paved four-laned highway impends on its 40 km journey to the |
capital Kampala. The road follows a sandy beach on its eastern side, and to the west lie uninhabitable but lush-looking green wetlands, supposedly hosting a hippo family. Continuing up the road, just before the ambitious four lanes turn into two, lies the laterite covered granitic complex of Bugonga Hill. Here the green field turns to a green hill, whose gentle slopes host the outskirts of Entebbe town, and where the paved roads turn to tracks.
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Francis in front of a jack-fruit tree. |
Joyce in front of the house. |
Ksenia on the patio. |
Dennis guarding the gate. |
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The Botanical
Garden of our Backyard |
good mood and they are the people who are closest to me right now - almost like family. Then there is always something to be fixed by a carpenter, electrician or an insect-killer, so in effect the house is always full of people. Behind, there is an empty lot used by different people for cultivating crops such as food-bananas and cassava roots. In our own garden we have bountiful fruit trees including papaya, mango, avocado, lemon, orange and jackfruit. Recently we have expanded on the botanical collection by planting pineapples, passion fruits, chilies, vanilla, coffee and a banana palm tree. If anyone else has some good ideas, I am ready to try them out! |
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1st floor terrace. |
Ground floor patio 7 p.m. |
| Aircraft
& Sunset At the last strip of the sandy beach between the airport and Bugonga Hill stands the Air France jet famous for being hijacked by terrorists and raided by the Israeli forces in 1976 - the only event ever to put Entebbe on the world map. So rumor has it at least, and so the guide book says. In fact though, the hijacked Air France plane was brought back to France 15 years back and the deteriorating plane now decorating the beach is an old British Airways plane confiscated by the Ugandan authorities for running guns. Several layers of paint and sets of identification letters on the sides testify to its turbulent history of changing identities. On the west side of the road, before the wetlands, is the military airport. This is not as comprehensive as it may sound, especially since the Ugandan Air Force was decimated by a third when one of its MIGs crashed into the lake a few months ago. The remaining two are busy in the north fighting an endless war with the LRA rebel group. |
Much busier is the neighboring UN-base lined with white Hercules transport planes and an extensive tent camp of French troops, resting from their operations in the Congo. As it is, they are now closing down the camp. Perhaps they have founded a new base across the Congolese border and by their presence will add to peace in Congo as well as by their absence to the peace in Entebbe. With unpredictable intervals and frequencies planes rise from the airport with a distant humming. An occasional beach party with Caribbean-sounding tunes joins the voices of the night, which otherwise belongs to the waves on the beach and the cycads, or more sleep depriving: a persistently barking dog. The sunset is at seven sharp, and you can set your watch on it. Then lights are out, and if it is not overcast, the moon and stars appear though much to my dismay - I have not been able to locate the Southern Cross yet or not even the North Star. |
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The supposed Air France jet from the 1976 hijacking though in fact a detained gun-runner. Here accompanied by another scrap plane from Al Italia in the background. |
Another bugonga village house. Note the yellow jerry can in the front yard - these jerries are the current backbone of Ugandan water supply. |
| The Small Beach Fishermen We live at the southern end of the Bugonga area, and my work is at the opposite northern end, just where the Bugonga area stops and the golf course begins. The distance corresponds to a 17 to 25 minute walk, depending on which roads and paths are taken, for they are plenty and cross-cut Bugonga's semi-forested rural village like in a maze. From our house, Eric Magala road winds down along the lake-shore to the Small Beach, |
which functions as a combined landing ground for the fishermen and a laundry site for the women. Here, there is always full of kids swimming in the water, home to the snail-borne parasite Bilhazia, which, if left untreated, paralyses your central nervous system. Luckily, an efficient cure has now been discovered, for it would be a shame having to stay away from this water. |
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The Small Beach (official name) in Bugonga serves as a landing spot for fishing vessels, here fresh tilapias and nile perches can be purchased still kicking. |
Women
washing their cloth on the beach - and themself. |
| Local
Wildlife Even in such a short walk paying attention pays off, for here in Bugonga man is not alone. There is an amazing animal diversity ranging from loose domestic farm animals like goats, chickens, cows, turkeys, ducks, geese and stray dogs to natures untamed creatures like chameleons, geckoes, monkeys, butterflies, white frogs, bats, monitor lizards and a million different birds -some small, many colorful, and some plump and obscure. Millipedes come as much as one foot long and thick as a finger, but snakes are supposed to be rare. One time, on my way home from work, I even encountered a camel (!). |
On the other side of the peninsula in the wetlands there are supposed to be hippopotamus' and possibly crocodiles. Lake flies come at unpredictable times, and in unpredictable quantities and sizes. If one leaves the light on and a window open, like I did before one weekend in my office, they fly in, die and pile up on the floor under the lamp to an extent, where you can fill buckets with them! Clouds of grasshoppers buzzing around and eating everything, while the locals equally aroused attempt to eat as many as they can, is yet a sight we have to experience. |
WRMD overlooking the lake.
| DANIDA,
WRMD & DWD The Water Resources Management Department (WRMD) is an institution under the Directorate of Water Development (DWD), which in turn is under the Ministry of Lands, Water and Environment. Both were moved from Entebbe, when the capital was shifted to Kampala at independence. The WRMD however remains here, a bit out of the way, with a slightly dusty feel to it - not unlike a geological university department. The key function of the department is to provide the information, based on which, decisions on water abstraction, irrigation and waste water discharge are made. DANIDA (Danish International Development Assistance) has been involved in the water sector of Uganda for more than ten years, and strengthening of the Management of Water Resources is the focus area in this phase. On a large scale, this has significant geostrategic importance, as the scientific data (and in particular their interpretation) provide the ammunition for the politicians in the regional dogfight for the water of the Nile. With all ten countries in the Nile Basin from Tanzania to Egypt having growing populations, |
everybody
wants to deviate rivers to build power generating dams and irrigate
land. Uganda is a net exporter of water, and some people think the
country should charge the downstream countries by the liter! Needless
to say this is not a popular opinion in the downstream regional great-power
of Egypt. Who owns the water in a trans-boundary river? On a local
level only a mere 1% of Uganda has running water in the house. Most
households collect water in far-away streams or wells or buy it from
vendors, who transport the water on mopeds in jerry cans. Sometimes
the water is of questionable quality, and drinking untreated surface
water has obvious negative health implications. The problem is not
to build a well with a hand pump though, the problem is making it
work on a self-sustaining basis. In other words: People must pay for
their water, and the idea of paying for water is no less unwelcome
with local peasants than it is with downstream Egyptians! A major
challenge is then to sell the idea that you are not paying for water,
but for the service of having it delivered. |
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Typical house in Bugonga. Small winding paths, dirt
tracks and banana trees. |
The market of the neigboring village of Kitoro,
present everyday but big on tuesdays. |
The kids likes how they can see themself immediatly on the digital display after taking the photo. |
| People In general I found the country to be much better organized than I expected. The first thing, which stuck out, was the relative good conditions of the roads, the second was the high prevalence of people employed as armed guards in private security firms. Then a little later it surprised me how similar we think - Ugandans and us. You will not find the culturally determined misunderstanding so common in Asia; we even share the same sense of humor. People are friendly and helpful and hassles are minimal. You can walk largely undisturbed on the streets. If one thing stands out as being culturally distinct, then it is the quietness of the Africans: They talk in a slow, calm voice, almost whispering, so that they can be hard to hear. You have to pay attention to what is being said, because you most likely will get no emotional clues; the most deadly insult can be spoken in the most calm and restrained manner. In my little time here I have seen no real aggression orally or physically, but it occurs to me that this apparent emotional apathy should be seen as a warning of an even greater potential rage. It is also very characteristic how people voluntarily give out very little information of the kind: "You should have told me!" - "Well, you didn't ask…" |
As always, many cultural peculiarities become clear in the light of the language. The idea of African understanding of time as being a blurry concept is common wisdom. I was therefore much surprised, when I learned that in Lugandan tongue you have FOUR tenses of future. These tenses tell if you are talking about the near future, the more distant future or the completely remote future. When a Mugandan thus in English says: "I am coming now!" (which in fact is referring to the future in English, not the present) that is a direct translation of "I am coming now" in Lugandan, which has four different grammatical versions of the future of now. Hence, what does not translate is if the Mugandan meant the immediate now, the one-of-these-days now or the completely-remote-future now. Also, in Lugandan an apology is really a statement of empathy, but many foreigners are puzzled by the Mugandan exclaiming "Oh, sorry, sorry - I am very sorry!" - when you have an accident, in which they had absolutely no part. So the Mugandan are conversely indignant, when they tell you about their mother being robbed and you don't even say sorry!
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