There are quite a few advantages to being in Africa. You meet nice friendly people, there is abundant greenery, almost everything that is grown is organic and more importantly, you have an insider view of the continent. A view not coloured by how the outside world views Africa.
When your perspective changes, your view of how to spend time also changes.
Africa celebrates Good Friday and Easter with a long weekend and loads of holidays for schools. Means, you can plan a holiday. But, we are living in Covid times, right? So, only the foolish can plan a holiday much in advance (a few travel vouchers of trips cancelled by Corona have made us wiser).
With it becoming clear that most African countries had eased travel restrictions, we started planning.
We had a source to start with - YouTube. We scanned from the East African nations of Mali, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe to look for holiday options. In each of these countries we found something worth visiting. We started short listing.
While Africa is great, it is not well connected. So, many of these countries had to be knocked off. Finally, we zeroed in on Kenya and Uganda. Kenya - everyone knows - the Masai Mara, the beautiful beasts, the lovely weather...
As we were about to book our tickets to Uganda and Kenya, we were informed that the Kenyan President had announced a partial lockdown. We thanked God that we had not booked tickets in advance - we would have been saddled with more vouchers.
So, it was going to be Uganda alone. But Uganda?
Unfortunately, Uganda carries a very scarred reputation.
It is the land of Idi Amin. The man who drove Indians away in 1972 (to those not in the know, the President ordered British Subjects and Indians to leave Uganda in just 90 days. With no choice left, Indians fled to UK, Canada, Kenya leaving behind firms, ranches, enterprises). It is also the country where Israelis unleashed a daredevil operation to rescue hostages of an Air France airplane hijack and rescued 102 hostages. Made famous by the book “90 minutes at Entebbe” by William Stevenson and made as a film - 7 days in Entebbe, it is considered one of the finest acts of counter terrorism.
With a low per capita income (at sub 1000 dollar), low life expectancy, significantly poor health indices, it was surely not beckoning a tourist - if we had not been Africanised, we would have given this country a miss.
Additionally, the YouTube videos had shown a completely different aspect of the country. A country that was bewitchingly beautiful. And, we took the plunge.
How glad are we now that we made this trip!
In subsequent blogs will share further details of the amazing experience that Uganda was...
