29th April - 3rd May: Uganda (Part 2)

After an all too brief trip into Rwanda, we headed back into Uganda, enjoying some stunning scenery on the way.

After arriving at our camp site in the early afternoon, we were met by a local man who ran a project to help displaced people and he took us to visit the village and school he had helped establish on a hill on the other side of the lake.

The people living in the village were members of a forest tribe whose home had been within the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest for many, many years. When the forest was proclaimed a protected area for the gorillas the people were made to leave, with no alternative accommodation or services provided for them.  

Outside of the forest, where they had lived as hunters and gathers, the people from the tribe faced discrimination from the broader community and extreme poverty. They struggled to adapt to a very new and different way of life; struggling to find work, or finding only very lowly-paid jobs that no-one else wanted and sending very few of the children into school, due to discrimination and the gap in attainment levels between them and the local children.  

http://www.survivalinternational.org/tribes/pygmies

The project we visited aimed to support the people in tackling some of these problems; by educating the adults in agriculture so they can grow their own crops, directly donating clothes, bedding and other supplies and setting up a school to educate the children.

The school - started for the forest children - also welcomes other local children to support integration.

After a night in Kabale, we headed East, eventually setting up camp about 100 metres South of the Equator! 

From the equator we headed to Jinja - a small town at the source of the river Nile, famous for its white-water rafting. Not being a massive fan of throwing myself down and into rivers, I spent my time kayaking on the lake, horse-riding through the local villages, browsing through craft stalls in town and enjoying the lakeside view...

Interesting facts:

• Forest tribes are often referred to as 'pygmies' - a term created to describe people who were seen to be unusually short. The word is still used, although it is deemed offensive by some and 'forest dwellers' is often preferred.  
• English and Swahili are the two official languages in Uganda, but 'Lugandan' is widely spoken
• Ugandan street food for vegetarians consists of the 'Rolex'. This isn't a fancy Swiss watch, but a thin omelette wrapped in a chapatti (roll eggs...!) Yes, I ate a few - it beats the alternative of 'meat on a stick'...

:)

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