Lake Bunyoni
UGANDA
Our Mzungu Corkscrew
By LYNDI
Friday, March 18, 2011
Travelers to Lake Bunyoni in southwestern Uganda are well-known (and often made fun of) for what’s locally called the “mzungu corkscrew”. The Ugandans that live on or near the lake learn to ply the waters in dugout canoes made of oversized logs at a very young age, so when white men (“mzungus”) attempt to row one of these canoes and inevitably end up going in circles, it’s affectionately called the “mzungu corkscrew”. Aaron and I laughed at the prospect of doing circles in a canoe – how stupid must these tourists be? How hard can it be to row in a straight line? We would quickly be eating these words during our visit to the lake.
After one reeeeally long busride from Kampala (well, the bus ride was only 8 hours – but adding the 30 minutes to get to the bus station, one hour of being lost and separated from each other, and two and a half hours waiting for the bus to fill up so we could actually leave the city all combine for a really long day) we spent a quick night in Kabale and headed out the next morning for a lodge on the lake.
Tourism on the lake is actually very popular with several large eco-lodges and some smaller backpacker accommodations. We chose a backpacker lodge called “Byoona Amagara” because of the long list of available activities (soccer, hiking, canoeing, badminton, swimming, a book and video library, card games, etc.) and the prospect of having internet available on the lake meant I would be able to possibly Skype or text my mother a happy birthday greeting on the 20th.
Arriving at the Rutinda market by “boda-bodas” (motorcycle taxis), we were then transported in a nice, deep dugout canoe with Jackson as our captain. Naturally, we were expected to help row ourselves out to the island – though I may have chosen a closer option had I known we would be rowing for an hour! Okay, okay… had I known Jackson would be rowing for almost an hour.
Aaron and I got to take turns with the other paddle and Aaron rowed the majority of that. But hey! My wimpy little arms made their rounds on the ride over.
We were greeted at the dock by the lodge’s owner and taken to the nice and simple dorm rooms that would cost us about USh14,000 per night (about US$6). What we didn’t realize was that nearly all of the previously mentioned activities on the island are entirely weather-dependent – especially considering that they solely use solar power, so when it rained the entire first day, our options were limited to playing cards and reading.
The word “Bunyoni” in the local language means “place of many birds” – and that was certainly true. We also killed a lot of time just watching the hundreds of birds chase each other and hop through the communal areas. One thing that the bad weather didn’t kill was the great food – they have a pretty extensive menu and all ingredients are fresh and local, so we had a well deserved plate of I don’t remember what – but it was definitely not beans and rice.
The rain held off for the most part on the second day, so we were able to stay plenty busy, which is when we decided we would show all those silly tourists how to do a canoe the right way. No sooner had we paddled for about two minutes when our canoe started to turn to the left. Naturally, Aaron and I paddled on our left-hand side to force the nose right, but it continued left. I can’t explain it – it really defies all laws of physics – with two people paddling hard on the left hand side, the boat continues to turn to the left. Hence, we began the first of many Mzungu Corkscrews. And even worse – with other tourists up at the lodge watching and waving. Doh.
What would have been a simple jaunt around the island became an hour of confusion and strife – though after a little while Aaron was able to use his back paddle more as a rudder and get us going in the right basic direction. We were especially humbled when a little old lady sailed by us in her own dugout canoe laughing. But we made it back to the docks just before the rain started, so I’ll call that a successful outing.
Even though the skies weren’t dumping rain on us, there was still a thick cloud cover and no electricity in the evening. My hopes of wishing my mother a happy birthday vanished – though it was an unlikely prospect to have internet on a Ugandan island in the first place – so it was another night of reading, cards and delicious food.
We had told Jackson that we wanted to leave early on the Monday morning, so he was reliably waiting for us at the docks at 7:30am just like we’d asked.
We (umm… mostly Aaron and Jackson) rowed back to the shore and we hopped back on motorcycles to take us into the town of Kabale, where we would be catching onward transportation to Rwanda.
But Lake Bunyoni was a perfect ending and parallel to Uganda – a country which provided us with plenty of challenges, a few disappointments, but many excellent memories. And a country which we provided with just a little extra tourist money, a nice pair of hiking pants, and yet one more Mzungu Corkscrew.
