We were very glad of our experienced driver Cosmas and the 4WD Toyota Hi-Ace as we bumped along on the three-hour trek over murram (stony dirt) roads in mountainous country. It was really like traversing high passes in the Alps. Except that despite being 2000-2500m above sea level the air was warm and full of dust and every scrap of hillside up to almost the summit of hills is cultivated – matooke (plantain) plots, ‘Irish’ potatoes in the dark earth of valley floors, small stands of timber, tobacco fields, maize and much more. Tin-roofed houses dotting the vertiginous hillsides, occasional small villages (each with its mobile phone air-time stalls) and often on the top of lesser summits a church building, many of which in a fertile and heavily-populated area, lovingly evangelised by the Church of Uganda, are being extended.
And schools too – this was the afternoon, when children often learn crafts like basket-weaving, farming and brick-making, and then towards the end of the long school day (typically 8am-5pm) play football and other games, so the surprising sight in a remote area of a muzungu family passing by caused great wonderment! Many schools are church schools – ‘Rugyeyo Primary School, Church of Uganda’ proclaimed one smartly-painted noticeboard, adding in brackets (for the avoidance of doubt?) ‘Anglican’.
The contrast in the last half-hour was dramatic. We descended gradually from the populous green hills to the empty wide brown savannah plains which I suppose is most westerners’ image of rural Africa. Ishasha area takes its name from the Ishasha River, which here is the border between Uganda and ‘the DRC’. It’s a remote corner of the Queen Elizabeth National Park (named in the Queen’s honour before independence – we saw a plaque in the north of the park commemorating her visit here with the DofE in 1954). Wide and empty plains punctuated by tall acacia trees and sustaining no human habitation but an abundant animal life – antelope of various types in abundance, their predators, elephants, and an abundance of birds. Here we stayed in two ‘bandas’ a stone’s throw from the river and were surrounded during the night by the grunts of grazing hippos.
Ishasha is one of only two places in Africa which is home to prides of lions with a unique habit: they climb trees for rest and shade. We spent a long drive the next morning fruitlessly looking! (There were many other creatures to observe – including lions on the ground). But imagine our excitement when on the road to the gate leaving the park at the end of the morning we found ourselves observed from a wide acacia by four lions! There was further excitement when Tom chose that moment to have a diarrhoea attack and needed to leave the vehicle with his nervous parents . . . but that’s another story. (All is well!)
