Day 5
Country
After breakfast of bananas, pineapple, papaya and a not-fully-hard-boiled egg and couple of cups of tea we set off hoping to ease our aching bones in the hot springs at Kitagata. One look at the water which looked like Castrol GTX was enough to put us off from going for a dip. We had to pay even to look so we quickly left. The landscape changed as we headed further south-west. The hills were green, the temperature was cool and roads were twisty. We could’ve been in Ooty, India. We stopped in a copse by the road for a rest and some biscuits before carrying on towards Kisiizi Falls. The last 30 Kms was dirt roads and we were knackered by the time we reached there. As we had not seen any signs for any campsites and as we were so tired we decided to look for a guest house instead.
That’s when we found the Divine Guest House. What a place! A court yard with rooms all around. The rooms had concrete floors, metal doors and two single beds. That’s it. The doors had a weird contraption to secure them. There is a bolt on the inside of the room. There is hole in the door with a small flap to cover it. From the outside, you need to put your arm through the hole and throw the bolt on the inside of the room. You then pull the flap shut over the hole and secure that with a padlock! We didn’t have a padlock so we just used one of our bike locks.
There was a pit latrine in the back yard which stunk to high heaven and the shower was a jerry can full of cold water.
We left our luggage in the room and headed out to see the water falls. A gentleman introduced himself as the head security guard of the hospital offered to look after our bikes while we were at the falls next door. It turned out that the hospital and the falls were part of the same missionary/charity. Anyway, we left our bikes at the hospital and walked over to the falls. Our guide was called Melon and she showed us around the project which had only been going for a year so far. All proceeds from the ticket sales went to the hospital.
The story of the falls goes like this – women who fell pregnant before marriage were taken to the top of the waterfall (some 30 odd feet high) and pushed over it – hands and feet tied up. By their own brother with the clan chief and others looking over. This used to happen until as recently as 1958 when Christian missionaries first came to this area and changed people’s behaviour. They went on to build a hospital initially just a maternity unit but it has grown since then.
When we got back to the guest house, I did some laundry by the water tank much to the amusement of about half a dozen ladies who were pointing and laughing at me. They told me where I was going wrong even gave me some advice on how to do it properly. Thanks ladies!
As there was nothing else to do, we played cards while the phone and camera batteries charged. Tomorrow Buhoma and gorilla tracking!
