Mabira Forest and Kampala

I spent the weekend before last in Kampala, the capital city of Uganda, with Sarah, Tess, and June, the three other interns here with FSD. June was traveling to catch her flight home on Sunday, so we thought we might as well go part of the way to the airport with her and visit a few touristy places along the way. We spent Friday night and Saturday morning in the Mabira Forest Reserve, which is conveniently located approximately 20 km outside of Jinja on the road to Kampala. On Friday night, we stayed in these cozy little bandas, which are basically just cement rooms with a tin roof and a couple beds. Dinner was fresh off the grill from roadside vendors, and consisted of a skewered chicken breast and wing, three grilled bananas, and chapati. Chapati is a bread product similar to a flour tortilla, but thicker and greasier. I was amazed at how dark it was in the forest that night. The combination of forest canopy and distance from any city centers resulted in such a lack of light that I couldn’t see my hand when it was just a few inches from my face. As I was falling asleep, I noticed it was just as dark with my eyes open as it was with them closed.

The next morning we went on a little loop hike through the forest. We passed several enormous trees, saw a few monkeys, crossed a few ant highways, and sweated a lot. It never felt too hot, but the air was already completely saturated with moisture so there was no way for our sweat to evaporate.

One of the several enormous tress in Mabira Forest

After our hike, we hopped on another mini-bus taxi to travel the remaining 40 km to Kampala. The mini-bus taxis are these little Toyota Hiace vehicles which are maybe a little bigger than a VW hippie bus. The small space is used very efficiently, however. Each mini-bus has 14 seats, but there are almost always more than 14 people in any given taxi. I always think about how the 15 passenger vans I’ve driven at Cheley Camps during the last three summers are so much bigger than these mini-buses, and yet they carry the same number of passengers. There is certainly a compromise on comfort and safety, however, when you fit the same number of people into that smaller space.

We walked around the capital city on Sunday. At first it seemed very crowded and chaotic, but things were much quieter once we moved away from the main taxi parks. We visited the Kasubi tombs, which house four former kings of Baganda. The house in which they are entombed is reportedly the largest grass building in the world.

The Kasubi Tombs

After a weekend away from Jinja, it was nice to return to what now feels like home here. Jinja seemed very small and cozy on Monday morning after spending the weekend in the “big city”.