Uganda Lodge

We have a young couple who are taking a few months out to spend time in East Africa, and  between projects they had already booked on to, are planning to spend a couple of weeks volunteering at UGANDA LODGE.

They are fund-raising  some extra money for us and they have a fantastic website  that you may wish to look at   http://www.kateandbeninafrica.com/?p=42

Kate and Ben’s  experiences at Uganda Lodge

For a week in mid September, we spent time at Uganda Lodge through the Ruhanga Community Development Project. This, as many of you know who contributed to our fundraising efforts, was the primary reason for our visit to Uganda. We were devastated that our time here was cut short, mostly by the delay in our purchasing the car in Kenya and a dedication to meeting others on a time frame later in the trip, but we were happy to have been able to make it to the Lodge at all this month. For those of you who don’t know, we stumbled upon this project via Lonely Planet’s Thorntree forum and Ann Macarthy, who is the UK Ambassador and the lifeblood of this project, got in contact with us to give us more information on Uganda Lodge. We found out that it was in it’s infancy, and that she fundraises in the UK to develop the project further each time she comes to Uganda. Uganda Lodge is owned by a man by the name of Denis Kasiba Aheirwe, and as a local in the area, also identified the need for a development project for his local community. Ann and Denis teamed up and the Community Project was born- the community development art and crafts centre and computer room having recently been finished. You can read more on this project on our ‘Volunteering’ page.

Uganda Lodge itself operates as a bar and meeting place for locals, and accommodation place for visitors. We had heard mention of other events like video nights and functions being held in buildings onsite (a big open area where we did our morning yoga!), but were given the impression that these haven’t happened for a while – though they hope to get them organised more regularly. We stayed in one of the bungalows – of which there are four on the property and it was perfectly lovely. It was a big room, with a double bed and a big double mosquito net that protected us from the many insects in the area (drawn by the light – not many places in the area have electricity), and a small area off to the side that was set up as a shower. Unfortunately no toilet down that end of the property yet, but a perfectly good long drop further up towards the road. As funds permit, Denis is in the process of constructing a toilet right next to our set of two bungalows at the lower end of the property. People also camp – we had one group come through while we were there: Stuart, Fiver and Merryl, and their perfectly fantastic Landrover Defender on an overlander trip from South Africa to Germany. We have since run into them again, all because of our meeting at Uganda Lodge.

The setting of Uganda Lodge is fantastic – most of the staff are wonderful, and attend to your every need with a smile amidst the stunning rolling hills of the area. Denis took us both on a hill climb not long into our stay, and it truly demonstrated how amazingly beautiful Ruhunga is. There isn’t much else in the area for potential visitors, but it is on Kabale Road, on the way to the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and the mountain gorillas and makes for a good rest stop on the way.

The Lodge has a bit of an identity issue at the moment – it’s at the time when it’s defining where it wants to go – of course there is the bar and support for locals, but the community centre and schools are also deemed important and there are not enough resources to finish each of them around the same time. Some parts of the Lodge look a little tired, and they are hoping to fix a huge hole in the ground that sat directly outside our banda (and is currently being used as a rubbish bin) but the area has ENORMOUS potential and with development in each of these areas, by staying here you’ll be supporting local community projects and local business. Definitely watch this space.

When we first arrived, we were unsure as to where we could donate our skills. We knew of the community centre, and we knew of the nursery school that Denis had built on his land to help neighbouring family’s children attend school from an earlier age than they had been previously. What we didn’t realise was that Denis was also keen and in the process of building the next stage of schooling –the first two years of primary school in a P1 classroom, also on his land. To this, you can also add a project of building new toilets for the nursery school (also to be utilized by the primary school children on completion). Now the way it is in Uganda, and many other African countries we’ve come across, is that you buy materials for building when you can afford them, and labour you pay whenever you have the materials AND the money to pay for labourers/engineers services. When we arrived at Uganda Lodge, we found that Denis had engineers working on the building, but had run out of materials. Given so many of you voiced your hope for the money you donated to go towards education, we thought the primary school building was the perfect opportunity for us to help with this very thing. Over $AU1000 was spent on hard stone, bags and bags of concrete, timber, thousands of bricks, trailer loads of sand and reinforced steel rods to reinforce windows. These materials will now put the primary school room close to completion when the labour is available and there are the funds to help pay for the engineers. But we’ve donated solid materials and these will be used to help Ruhunga and the local children in the area develop their education.

Initially our focus was to be on the community centre, but we found the education of children at the critical ages of 4 and 5 to be of higher importance at the time. Having said that, we still helped out with the centre. Ben in particular, put his IT skills to good use and re-programmed and de-bugged all of the donated computers, and instructed the newly appointed computer trainer on some of the programs he intends to teach. To that, we also printed signs to go in each of the bungalows advertising the internet access at very reasonable rates to both guests and volunteers. Although these were more practical, we found that we had come at a time when we could not do much more than what we did in the time we had – although it was a lot of fun helping Denis source and purchase the building materials from local stores and markets. The community centre is ongoing, and will always be able to use a hand if you want to volunteer in Africa, and particularly Uganda. There will be the computer room, a sewing centre to help teach local women tailoring (still in the pipeline), and of course, the Ruhunga Community Development Nursery School and soon to be Primary School as well.

We promise to add more photos as we receive them from Denis and/or Ann on the progress of the primary school. The photos attached are of the site and some of the progress already made with the materials we purchased on behalf of all who donated money. We hope you’re happy with the decisions we made – the children were beautiful and deserve every chance of education in the world. Thanks to you, they’re one step closer to getting it!