Safari Park 10/28/1993 We Arrive At A Safari Park After A Full Day's Drive

Uganda Brides Paid For With Cattle
By Bob Van Leer

(QUEEN ELIZABETH II NATIONAL PARK, UGANDA, EAST AFRICA - Oct. 28, 1993) - We are spending the night at Mweya Safari Lodge on Lake Edward in the national park after a day's drive from Kampala. We arrived here in late afternoon at just the right time for animal viewing as we drove through the park to the lodge. The lodge is located on a high point jutting out into the lake. The border between Uganda and Zaire is just a couple of miles into the lake. Queen Elizabeth Park, also known as Ruwenzori Park, once reportedly had the distinction of carrying the largest wildlife biomass in the world due to incredible numbers of heavy-weight animals - elephants, hippos and buffalo. But much of the game was wiped out by armies in the wars in Uganda. Some of the herds have bounced back.

On the way to the lodge we saw herds of Uganda kop (a light brown antelope about the size of a large deer) numbering at least in the hundreds, perhaps more. We also saw 50-100 buffalo, huge lumbering beasts with massive horns. We saw perhaps a hundred of a larger, grey antelope called a waterbuck by our guide. Oher kinds seen were an impala, a pair of wart hogs and a hyena. A lot of birds were to be seen also and, on the drive over, we saw two crested cranes, the Uganda national symbol. It is a spectacular bird, taller than the great blue herons at home and much heavier in body. It gets its name from a fancy crest on its head.  The drive from Kampala to the eastern border took all day. It was a good tour through the country which is lush and green. The drive took us across the equator. Uganda has built structures marking the equator and we had to stop and have our pictures taken straddling the equator. Alongside the road was a rusted tank in the ditch, leftover from the wars. No one has gotten around to removing it.

  All roads have small stands at frequent intervals. Some have a wide variety of merchandise, mainly produce, and I saw one small stand that had about a dozen tomatoes as its entire stock. In towns there are open air markets selling everything including meat. The livestock we saw were mostly a kind of cattle our driver called acholi with huge horns. We have heard of similar cattle called zebus. There are also quite a lot of goats and a lot of chickens running around. The most prominent agricultural crop is bananas with tea a distant second. The tea fields are pretty to see. They look from a distance like a bright green lawn. The tea bushes are about three feet high and kept pruned by picking off the leaves. But every 10 years the bushes are cut back to a stump and resprout.

  Along the highway signs indicate many private schools from nursery to secondary, many of them religious. There are a lot of pedestrians along the roads. When school is out we saw a lot of boys and girls in uniforms walking home. Both sexes have closely cropped hair. As we got near the park we broke over the top of a ridge and were treated to tremendous view of Lakes Edward and the smaller George. And on the far side of the lake are the fabled Mountains of the Moon which reach up to 16,763 feet. The range is now also called Ruwenzori mountains. On the way over we chatted with our guide, James Bakeine, who said a normal age of marriage for rural Uganda, which is most of the country, is 18 for husbands and 15 for brides. Brides are still paid for with dowries of cattle paid by the father of the groom. James said he paid 25 cows for his wife.

   He also gave us a fill-in on Uganda's problems and its relations with its neighbors. Politics is as muddled here as anywhere else. We passed through the town of Mbarara where some of the key action of the two wars took place. Some buildings still show the result of shelling. Tap water here is not drinkable. It surprised us to find in the hotels beer for drinking is a third cheaper than potable water. The bananas and pineapple we have been served in Uganda are the best we have ever eaten. Tomorrow we are going on an early morning game drive followed by a boat trip down the Kazinga Channel connecting the two lakes.