Lake Mburu National Park ...mmmmmmmmm!!!

Mihingo Lodge, Mburu Lake National Park

Somehow I did the unimaginable and won top prize in a raffle at my sailing club - a full day’s board at one of the newest and most upmarket safari lodges in Uganda!! One of the team had given us enough money at Christmas for us to buy a second day, and so off we went to Mihingo Lodge, Mburu Lake National Park, on the Tanzania side of the main road between Musaka and Mbarara (look it up on the Web). The owners also own and run ‘Banana Boat’, the top shop chain in Uganda for tourist artefacts of local indigenous craft.

Perched high on a rock outcrop overlooking the national park, the lodge is an ecological dream. All water is rainwater, collected from the rock slopes and harvested and pumped by solar power to the 200,000L irrigation tank and then down to the bandas. Hot water comes from individual solar hot water panels, and the lighting from a solar PV panel on the same mounting. The bandas are set into the hill slope, built from sustainable timber and thatch with a tent set within for the bedroom. Each has a large veranda from which there is a view over the plain, surrounding hills, and the water hole, where Waterbuck, Impala, Zebra, Buffalo and Warthogs abound. The double bed was vast, with a superb mattress, and completely swathed by well-fitted mosquito netting.
How amazing – to stay somewhere with high quality ‘everything’! In Uganda! It IS possible after all. We don’t usually move in such rarefied atmosphere; I find these all-too-rare experiences reassure me and encourage me to keep my vision aimed high. Eating medallions of marinaded pork, and served with a fresh and excellent salad, I felt more hope rising!

A nice touch is the use throughout of beautiful, locally-made paper, and particularly the stories by each of the 20 staff members typed onto the paper, laminated, and set in a leather box for visitors to read. It is rare for staff to be given this sort of prominence, and it feels really good. It is not patronising. Good idea, I think …… (hhmmmmmm).

The walk down (and up, rather!) to the bandas from the lodge is steep (hundreds of rocky steps) and meanders between a dense, gnarled woodland, mostly wild olive. At night staff set 30 or more paraffin lamps along the path, turning it into a fairy grotto experience.

The best part for me was a boat trip on Lake Mburu. We must have seen about 18 Fish Eagles, along with a mother croc and her littl’uns, lots of hippo, various different types of kingfisher and heron, and more buffalo – very close up. The lake is named after a local inhabitant whose brother was warned in a dream that the area would be flooded and left for the local mountains (which are named after him), but Mburu stayed and was killed in the flood, which created the Lake. Myth, but good myth.
On the way back I had arranged to pick up a young man from a small village near Mbarara, Edgar (not his real name) who had been sponsored for 3 years by an English couple to be at school and learn carpentry. They had simply stumbled across him as they parked their car on a track near his village three years ago; they had been captivated by him and offered to pay his fees by ‘Western Union’. He called it “his miracle”, and I could only agree. In response to an email ‘round robin’ I had offered to try and see if he could be apprenticed with one of our carpenters on site. Anyway, his story captures some of the heartache of so many young people. His father died of AIDS when he was very young, and at 14 his mother also died of AIDS. He was left to bring up a younger brother (aged 4) who was dumb and mentally retarded, and two sisters. Each has several children. He had to be a breadwinner for them and so had missed out on school. Last October, at 14, his brother strangled the sister’s 2-year old baby boy and dumped him in the swamp. Edgar had rescued him from being killed by the villagers and had managed to get him somehow 200 km to the (excellent) mental hospital in Kampala, never having been outside Mbarara before! He left on Good Friday with us, without telling his two sisters; he had recently been informed by the hospital that he had to take back his brother as he was now well enough to return home. You can imagine that the villagers in such a remote area are not going to accept him back – they want him dead. Also the sponsorship money had not been enough to pay for the practical carpentry module at the vocational college, just the theory, so in fact he had never even handled carpentry tools!

None of this had been known by the sponsors, but I knew we had walked into a larger than life, but very real, situation!! I also knew that this was a lovely young man, full of faith, joy and hope, he had ‘lost’ his childhood in the service of his family, had no-one, and desperately needed help. Most people tell us not to get involved in such situations (we do - regularly), as there are thousands of stories like Edgar’s. But how can we “love our neighbour as ourselves” and walk away? My faith struggles with such ambiguity. Others may cope with it, but I find it hard to look God in the eye and turn away.
We have set him up in simple accommodation in the village here. As I write we have had him round for the day (Easter Sunday) having taken him to church and then had a sumptuous barbecue, together with our housegirl Christine, her baby Asher, and an orphan, Prossie, whom we sponsor at a local school. What an appropriate day! Easter! New life, new hope? He starts work tomorrow and I am full of trepidation. An Emmaus Road journey. We find the risen Jesus in the simplest of things – like the breaking of bread together.