Emmanuel Kihaule
28 July 2007
column
Last month I had a chance to appreciate how beautiful Uganda is as far as richness in attractive natural resources is concerned. I visited the famous Queen Elizabeth National Park in the western part of the country in a field trip.
It began at around 3p.m. from Makerere University. After spending some time struggling through the Kampala traffic jam, we got to the Fort Portal highway. We passed through Mityana and Mubende before reaching Fort Portal, our last destination as of that Monday. On the way, students were excited to see how many parts of Uganda were endowed with green landscape throughout the beautiful hills and valleys. Vast wetlands and dense forests were also commonplace.
WILDLIFE: A warthog in Queen Elizabeth National Park. Courtesy photo
The road was good, different from other roads in Uganda which are characterised by potholes that are deep enough to turn them into ponds for fish farming!
The smooth terrain made the trip enjoyable.
After about an hour, we stopped at Mubende where we had an opportunity to enjoy the famous Ugandan delicacies of muchomo (roasted goat or beef) and gonja. These two types of food are very famous in Uganda most especially along highways and each time I travel, I make sure that I do justice to them.
Thereafter, we continued with our adventurous tour and on the way, we came across extensive tea plantations. Finally we arrived at Fort Portal at around 7.30p.m. and we went straight to Cornerstone Hotel where we were to spend the night before proceeding to Queen Elizabeth National Park the next morning.
If there is anything that I like about Uganda, it is the country's hospitality industry (except for slow services) and for most of the students it was difficult to believe that miles away from Kampala, they could still find such a nice hotel that could out-compete even some of the famous Kampala hotels.
However, because I was a little bit tired, I couldn't explore much of the hotel or the neighbouring areas and instead, I simply retired to save my strength for the following day.
The next day, I woke up early and being on the third floor of the hotel, I could see many parts of Fort Portal town together with the palace of King Oyo of Toro from the balcony of our room. The trip to the National Park took three hours and on the way, we passed through Kasese town.
After crossing the junction to DRC Congo and Mbarara, we saw sign posts on both sides of the roads welcoming us to the Queen Elizabeth National Park and soon we came across wide stretches of long grass with scattered savannah woodland bushes. No sooner had we passed this point than we started seeing animals. The first ones to welcome us were gazelles, then warthogs followed by buffalos.
The magnificent look of the park's main gate promised that something good was ahead. We saw a number of crater lakes which were also used by locals for salt excavation in a small scale basis.
Then we arrived at Mweya Wildlife Education Centre where we were welcomed by the beautiful scenery of the Katwe Bay Panorama from where we could see lakes Katwe and Edward. We could also see the slopes of Mount Rwenzori that were hidden in smog-like clouds besides Katwe town.
Something of interest at Mweya was the mutual interaction of wild animals and human beings. We saw gazelles and water-bucks enjoying shades of houses and small trees in the centre's compounds that were not fenced.
While at Tembo Canteen we were joined by warthogs. We were scared at first but later on, we played with them. Thank God that at this point we were not yet aware of what a warthog is capable of doing even to fierce animals such as the King of the Jungle- the lion.
After lunch, we went for a boat ride on the Kazinga Channel. During the ride, we saw herds of buffalos and elephants, schools of hippopotamus, flocks of birds and of interest was the scene near Kazinga fishing village where women and men were busy washing clothes and fixing fishing boats respectively 'mingling' with buffalos.
After that ride, we came back and started our adventurous trip within the park and after a few minutes, came across a herd of elephants that were scattered across the road forcing us to stop because the big animals could easily get provoked and hence cause 'havoc'. According to her, it would only take them a few minutes to smash our van into pieces if charged.
During the tour, we saw several other animals such as gazelles, the Uganda Kob (which is only found in Uganda), waterbucks, antelopes and baboons. After a while, we came across a place where one of our colleagues spotted a black snake in the grass and the tour guide asked the driver to stop and reverse the van to that spot where we managed to see the snake.
We all had to close windows so as to be safe in case the crawling creature spat at us. Later on, we also saw a python crossing the road. We then drove back to our hotel as it was getting dark. The following day, we made our way back to Makerere University, Kampala.
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