Everything here in Africa seems to be a size bigger than in the UK. I’ve noticed this especially over the last couple of weeks during my short holiday from work here at Kiwoko Hospital in Uganda. Distances, heights and depths, animals, thrills and spills… I’m still trying to process a few of the things that I was able to experience, but I’ll share a few of the bigger ones here!
I guess the one of the first things noticeable about Africa, and Uganda in particular, is the huge sense of space. Uganda is unique in East Africa in that it has lots and lots of vegetation – it is a very green country, and most of what I’ve seen has been rolling countryside stretching off for miles in every direction. In actual size, Uganda is not much bigger than the UK in terms of area, but as it has about a quarter of the population, there is no sense in which the various towns and villages run into each other. It’s much more like rural Scotland in that sense. Even along the main road to the North of the country, there are places where you can see the road stretching off into the distance for miles, with no evidence of human settlement to be seen – and this is in a country where bypasses are not seen: roads bring people and help the local economy, so each town wants the road to go through it.
It takes a lot longer to get anywhere too. A lot of this is due to the state of the roads: serious potholes slow a journey down considerably, and it’s not sensible to go much above 50km/hr on any of the dirt roads, even a recently graded one. And of course the rain is much bigger here – when it rains, it really pours with huge rain drops that are much wetter than rain in the UK (?!) – but this means that dirt roads become quagmires and have to be crawled along, while potholes on surfaced roads become harder to see, both slowing down your progress.
The animals are bigger. We visited Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary on our tour. Uganda only has eight rhinos, two in Entebbe zoo and the other six in a sanctuary – basically a massive park with a boundary to keep poachers out. The plan is to re-introduce them to the National Parks in the country once they get a little older and have started breeding. For now, it is possible to track them, and even get to within ten metres of them on foot in the company of the rangers (who stay with them during daylight each day for their protection). Rhinos are huge! They really are graceful, majestic animals, even if they do look a little silly – but of course I wouldn’t say that to their face, not with the size of their horns!
Uganda doesn’t have quite the same level of game animals that you might see in the parks of Kenya or Tanzania, but levels are gradually recovering since the civil war 20 years ago that saw most of them killed by soldiers and poachers. I’m told that you can see herds of elephants containing more than 100 animals – but due to serious rain we stuck to a boat trip on the Nile (a seriously big river: the longest in the world at over 4000km!). So rather than lions and leopards, we saw huge numbers of hippos and crocodiles, plus water buffalo and a wide variety of birds. I’m also told that East Africa has about eight times as many bird species as the UK!
Murchison Falls is a huge waterfall. The whole volume of the Nile passes through a five-metre gap, falling 45 metres to continue its journey towards Sudan and Egypt. The power of the water moving so quickly and with such fury through such a small gap is quite awe-inspiring. I must say that I have a bit of a thing for waterfalls, but Murchison has to be the most dramatic I’ve seen for sheer power – bettering even Niagara (although admittedly I’ve not been there for about 18 years!). We got to visit the top of the falls (where there isn’t even a guard rail to protect you from getting too close to the water), where the sound of the water and the touch of the spray demonstrates exactly how powerful the combination of water and gravity can be – and we also saw the Falls from below on our boat trip.
From Murchison we visited Lake Albert, the second largest lake in Uganda, forming part of the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. I was looking forward to seeing the famed Blue Mountains and the Mountains of the Moon (as the Rwenzoris are called), but it was unfortunately a bit too hazy to see to the other side. Lake Albert is big enough, probably as wide as the English Channel but long and thin, while the largest lake in Africa, Lake Victoria, apparently is big enough to lose nine times as much water from its surface in evaporation as flows out down the Nile towards the Mediterranean.
Lake Albert is near the top of the Rift Valley, the great chasm in the surface of the east side of Africa that in several million years may split off to form another tectonic plate. There’s also a huge oil field deep underneath which is just starting to be explored. Apparently there’s fifty billion barrels of oil just waiting to be extracted. I’m a little intrigued as to how they’ll manage to pipe that out, as the Rift Valley is an area of seismic activity – I’ve experienced two fairly major earthquakes here in the last six months: a very unusual experience!
And then of course there’s Kampala, the capital, home to only two million people, but always busy and full of life. The roads are crowded with minibus-taxis, and the main taxi park is an experience in chaos in itself! There are crowds and crowds of people covering the streets – everyone always seems to be busy buying, selling or just walking, walking, walking! It has a unique charm as despite all these people, the city feels very safe – it has very little crime, and has a friendly welcoming feel in complete contrast to other African capitals such as Nairobi (or Nairobbery as it’s known).
But that’s really the biggest thing about this country – the people. They may be small in stature, but they offer the biggest welcome that is possible. Everyone is genuinely pleased to see you, to stop and talk to you, to walk with you, to help you out if they can. This is despite their own poverty and lack of material things. Everyone wears the biggest smile you can see, all the time, white teeth standing out in the middle of a dark-faced grin! I’ve been reading Michael Buerk’s autobiography recently, and he mentions the contrast between the people of Africa, and the dull, dreary people of the UK when he returned from being African Correspondent for the BBC, based in Johannesburg. I’ve been told people here in Uganda are much happier than those in the West – “in the West you have things and God, here in Uganda we just have God” – and so they get on with life. Perhaps there’s a message here for those of us who grow up and live in the materialistic West.
Steve
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