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| One of Sipi's waterfalls. |
Bududa is in the Mt. Elgon region of Uganda,
which straddles the borders of Uganda and Kenya. Mt. Elgon National Park is
said to be one of the largest surface areas of any extinct volcano in the
world. It is made up of 5 major peaks, with the highest, Wagagai (4321m),
rising on the Ugandan side. Wagagai is the second tallest mountain in Uganda,
and the 8th in Africa, though millions of years ago it was the continent's
tallest. It is a beautiful place with some of the best birding in Uganda, so
you know it is on our list to visit.
To date we have not visited Mt. Elgon,
unfortunately, and it is not due to lack of trying to make it happen. A
friend back in the states recommended a very fine birding guide to us. In fact,
we are going to use this guide and travel with this friend from the states in
August here in Uganda, birding in Murchison Falls National Park. But that's a story for
later. So we get in touch with Herbert, the birding guide, set up the trip, but
then find out his company doesn't take credit cards. They accept wire
transfers, or you can bring cash with you the day of the trip. The cash option
was not going to work for us because you are charged an outrageous fee to
change Ugandan schillings into US dollars here, or if we wanted to pay in schillings
we would have to bring a couple of suitcases with us to the ATM machines, which
are very temperamental. They have often not worked for us, not to mention that
they have a limit on how much one can withdraw in a day. One US dollar is worth
3,600 schillings, so even when you withdraw the equivalent of a few hundred US
dollars from an ATM in Ugandan schillings, you get a stack of bills so big that
they will not fit in your wallet. One other little complication.... there is no
bank or ATM in Bududa. The closest is in Mbale, an hour away.
To make a very long, arduous and incredibly
frustrating story a lot shorter.....we asked our bank in Philly to please wire
transfer the agreed upon amount to the birding company. I have to admit we had
never done a wire transfer before, knew nothing about it, nor have we done
anything like PayPal or any other money transferring method. But in an email, our
bank in Philly said they could not initiate a wire transfer without one of us
coming into the bank and signing papers for it. OK, so that wasn't going to work. We
then emailed our financial fellow and asked if he would send money to David's
sister and she would initiate the wire transfer. He did this, and she went to
her bank and did the transfer, but the birding company was not receiving it.
Days went by with numerous phone calls hoping to learn the money had transferred.
We were one day away from our departure, and still the money had not cleared,
but nobody could figure out why. After our departure date had come and gone we
found out that David’s sister’s bank sent the money, but it was returned. They
sent it again, and it was returned again because Barclays, the bank receiving
the money, said they did not have an account with our birding company.
Unbelievable!!! As you can imagine, all sorts of reasons went flying through
our heads and we were quite upset with the the birding company and the system.
We called Herbert to try and find out if he had given us the incorrect information
or what. He eventually told us that they have been having this problem at times,
so we asked…. why didn’t you tell us or why didn’t you think that perhaps the
problem was happening again!!! He never answered our questions. We were ready to scream.
As we have researched other birding companies here in Uganda,
we have found that they also do not accept credit cards. We were told that
foreign credit card technology is not yet widely used in Uganda in many areas.
We have even found this to be true at hotels. Luckily large grocery stores in the bigger cities are able to handle credit cards, but smaller stores are not equipped. One final note on credit card use in Uganda and
other places in Africa.... no one seems to take American Express so we put that
card away, and our ATM card from our small, neighborhood bank in Philadelphia often doesn't
work at ATMs, even though they swore that it would. Welcome to the 21st century
in Uganda!
Our disappointment about missing out on the Mt.
Elgon trip fueled some creative thinking about an alternate short excursion and
we decided to visit Sipi Falls on our own. The village of Sipi is in the
foothills of Mt. Elgon on the other side of the mountain from Bududa. There
is no direct route to get there unless you are a bird, so it is about a 3-hour
plus trip from Bududa.
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| The smallest of the Sipi waterfalls. This was the view from our room at the lodge. |
It is an area known for its waterfalls. There are three main waterfalls, and even though the upper two are beautiful, it’s the 95m-drop that most people want to see. From the high elevations, you can look down across the plains of Uganda. It is said that on a clear day you can see across most of the country. What a lovely area with a somewhat different ecosystem than Bududa. It is very mountainous, as Bududa is, but all its rivers and waterfalls create a real tropical and lush environment.... attracting some different birds than we have seen in Bududa. I tell you this with some regret, because the morning that I decided to sleep in, David ventured out early in the morning with his binoculars and saw what very well may be the best bird of the trip! You have to look this bird up to see what I’m talking about. It is quite amazing and pretty unusual. It is the white morph of the African Paradise-flycatcher. Paradise-flycatchers have gorgeous long tails. The more common one, the chestnut or rufous-colored African Paradise-flycatcher, has a slightly crested blue-black head, a grey chin into a white belly, lovely rufous wings, and an amazingly long chestnut rufous tail. The white morph, which David was fortunate to see, (damn that I didn't get up early!) has white wings and a long white tail, instead of rufuos, chestnut colored. He said it was seeing a ghost of the rufous one. What a stunning bird!
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| Vasco, his mother, Mary, and wife, Gloria, at Mary's home in Sipi village. |
We did hire a local birding guide to take us around Sipi one morning. Vasco - his full name is Shaka Vasco Zulu - does not use binoculars, most likely because he cannot afford them. But Vasco's eyesight and hearing are very acute and as we trekked through banana plantations up and down the hillside we saw many lovely birds. We also met his mother and his wife. Vasco is a somewhat unusual Ugandan fellow. He does live in a tourist area, which certainly helps because there are more ways of earning money in Sipi than in Bududa. But it is still a rural area with many people living in mud homes and subsistence farming. Vasco told us that as a young man he decided to go to vocational school to get a skill - he choose carpentry and joinery - because he felt he could make a living building houses. Well he did just that and managed to save enough money over a number of years to buy small plots of land and build houses on them to rent out. He is continuing to do this and showed us a recent land purchase of his. Coupled with the income he gets from being a guide, along with income from his wife who sells fuel, they seem to live a pretty good life. One other unusual thing about him.... he and his wife have decided to only have four children. In a culture that still, to this day, reveres having many children whether you can feed them or not, those who have consciously decided to limit their family size are doing so for very specific reasons. We have met a few other couples, actually in Bududa, who are using family planning to limit the size of their families. They all sight the fact that they want to be able to provide food and a good education for their children, which becomes impossible as family sizes grow. These couples are also breaking the long-held patriarchal tradition that says that men should father as many children as they can. With half of the population in Uganda under the age of 16 (yes, this is really true!), unemployment is quite high, and public education at a deplorable level, the future for all these young folks looks grim. These are some of the great problems and challenges Uganda is facing today, and how these problems are solved will shape Uganda's future.
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| A bunch of matoke and a man-made honey bee hive in Sipi. |
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| Another style of bee hive made out of black plastic and hung in trees. |
This leads me to one last comment in this post and the main reason we are so happy to be here in Bududa to help move the vocational school into the future. The Bududa Vocational Academy (BVA) is teaching skills to young people; skills that they can turn into jobs. The skills include masonry and bricklaying, carpentry, tailoring, hairdressing, agriculture, computers and entrepreneurship - very practical skills that are needed everywhere. BVA students graduate with a skill that they can go out into the world with and generate an income almost immediately. A shocking statistic states that only 8% of students graduating from college in Uganda find work in their field. We hear too many stories here about young people going to college and not able to find work when they graduate. Between the cost of university and the staggeringly low employment rate, we feel strongly that many young Ugandans will be better served if they gain a skill. Like Vasco, we have teachers at BVA who did just that. After they were working in their area of discipline, they were able to save enough money to go back to school and get a further degree at a technical college, making themselves even more valuable in disciplines that are still very much needed in Ugandan life today. The Bududa Vocational Academy’s slogan is “Skills for Jobs” and we are very proud to be part of such a meaningful and important endeavor.
P.S.
On another note entirely, it has been difficult for David to be away from Philadelphia with the Eagles finally coming of age and playing decent football. As the season marched on and the Eagles did amazingly well to everyone's surprise, he occasionally lamented about not being able to watch the games and tune into sports radio. So as it became clearer and more mind-boggling that our Eagles might really make it to the playoffs and perhaps even to the division championship, he looked into online streaming options and settled on one for $50. Unfortunately it has not delivered any live action streaming, but much delayed and abbreviated images, along with some stats. Certainly not worth $50!
So we found ourselves at Sipi River Lodge on the evening of the Eagles/Vikings game and David is desperate to be able to see and hear something. He even asked me when making the Sipi reservations to make sure they had an Internet connection in the wee hours of the morning, which they did. So at 3 am on Monday morning – since we are 8 hours ahead of EST – he got up and got on the Internet to hopefully hear and see his “beloved” Eagles. Well, it turned out to be quite a night – or early morning. He could only briefly get video images and they lasted about 3 seconds and then froze. However, he was able to get Ricky Ricardo live, the Philly sportscaster who announces in Spanish, and boy was that a hoot. He actually could understand much of what Ricky and his sidekicks were saying or screaming about, and the enthusiasm and excitement was palpable. Coupled with Ricky’s broadcast, he was continually Whatsapping a slew of folks – our son Derek in Charleston, SC, his sister, Karen, in Sellersville, Craig in Narberth, Charlie in Andorra, and Deb in East Falls. It was amazing and so much fun. And they won to boot!!!
P.P.S. Afterwards, he tweeted Ricky Ricardo to say he listened to his broadcast from Uganda and amazingly Ricky tweeted him back in thanks.
GO EAGLES!!!!
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| Pig washing, clothes washing and bathing all happen at the top of Sipi Falls. |
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| View from above looking out over the plains of Uganda (barely visible in the haze). |
