31st January - Mutanda Lake

This had been scheduled as a free day in our itinerary, but as we’d missed our scheduled boat trip the previous day, it was rearranged for today.

Local fisherman

We had a leisurely breakfast, and then were collected by our guide, Steve, and the boat driver and taken down to the boat.  We were all given a stick as the decent is steep and slippery down to the lake.  They were very dubious about my crocs, but it’s all I had to wear as Shindishi has my hiking boots in his car still, which is annoying.  Mum has been wearing crocs all the time anyway and managing fine, so I was sure I’d be okay too.

We eventually got down to the large pontoon boat and it was just us 3, Steve and the driver.  We pottered around the lake admiring different vistas and watching the local fisherman in dug out canoes with their 4 cane rods trying to catch fish.  Chris thought it looked very hard work as they had no floats or lures and certainly didn’t use nets.  From what Shindishi has told us and it was confirmed by Steve, the fishing community are the poorest in Uganda and have very tough lives.

Bones on Punishment Island

We stopped off to visit a cave on “Punishment Island”. This is where pregnant young girls were taken completely bound up and left to die as punishment for sleeping with a man outside of marriage.  The reality is that they were probably raped in the 1st place and were totally innocent.  The cave used to be full of skeletons, but today there are just 2 or 3 dating from the 1920’s.  It was a terribly sad and grisly site/sight and not one where you would want to linger.  We were told that girls now have equal rights even though they do most of the work including the heavy farming work as well as looking after huge number of children and running the house.  I asked how that could be considered equal and was told that the girls are lucky now as can go to the police if their husbands beat them up!!  So much for equality.

Just before the storm hit us

It was then suggested we visit a local fishing community and Mum was most enthusiastic.  We chugged round to the largest island which has about 160 permanent residents.  It’s mostly inhabited by women and children as the men are away trying to earn money or fishing.  It was quite a walk uphill to the village so Mum decided to stay on the boat.  Chris and I puffed and panted our way uphill surrounded by a small group of very scruffy bare footed young boys.  They were jostling for position behind me and I could hear them giggling and whispering to each other.  I think they were playing “Dare”, as I suddenly felt my hand being touched and when I spun round, they were all in fits of laughter and pointing at one bashful looking chap.  When we got into the village, all the ladies had put out brightly coloured clothes covered in home made plates and beaded jewellery.  We felt terrible as had no money with us and would gladly have bought something as they were so poor. 

At this point, the heavens suddenly opened, so we had no option but to turn round and get back to the boat as quickly as possible.  It was incredibly wet and slippery, but I was lucky as Steve held my hand for which i was very grateful.  Chris had to sort himself out and slipped over a couple of times but was fine thank goodness.  I did notice that Steve had picked a large banana leaf to use as an umbrella and naively assumed it was for me. But no, it was for him!!!

Of course, we were soaked by the time we got back to the boat, and I was glad I had a waterproof to put on as would have been really cold otherwise.  When it rains here, it really pours down so we had a slow journey back to our launching spot in the pouring rain, which miraculously stopped as we arrived back.

We then had to struggle back up the steep hillside to get back to the lodge.  We took a more gentle path coming back up and saw 2 of the most enormous earth worms I’ve ever seen in my life.  The first one was as thick as my fore finger and about 2 feet long - the 2nd about half that size.

We got changed when we got back and then went and had a celebratory Brexit drink with lunch before retiring for the afternoon to our rooms.

We’re hoping that Shindishi might catch up with us later and that we can get the rest of our holiday back on track.

We went up to the bar for a drink before dinner but had to sit outside on the decking as it was raining and all the seats inside were taken especially as there was a roaring fire going on in there.  We didn’t mind as it was more atmospheric outside.  At about 7pm, Shindishi appeared - hooray - we felt as if we’d been reunited with an old friend.  The car had finally been fixed - something to do with the gearbox and clutch.  The original repair lasted for 20kms and then the car broke down again on a test drive, so another part had to come from Kampala and they worked all night on it getting it ready for today, which meant Shindishi had had a very long drive to get to us.  However, you wouldn’t know it as he was all smiles as usual.

We had a choice for tomorrow of either getting up at 5am to leave very early for a remote national park on the Rwanda border to go on a trek to see golden tailed monkeys or leave at 8.30am and visit a Batwa community - a Pygmy tribe who had been thrown out of a national park and forcibly resettled outside of it.  Shindishi didn’t think Mum was physically up to doing the monkey trek which would have been similar to the chimpanzee trek but likely to be quite muddy, so we decided to pass on that and go for the Batwa community experience instead.