Surprise Parties

Mbale and Kabale, Uganda



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There’s something about arriving in a beautiful place after dark akin to inviting yourself to your own surprise party. You know it’s coming but can’t be rushed; you know that it will be amazing but not the details.

Kampala is just north of the equator; the sun rises and sets between 6 and 7, and it’s strange to expect this to continue unchanging through the passing months. There will never be a season with late evenings or early darkness. The day begins with the Muslim call to prayer around 5:40, followed by the repetitive rooster. There is constant noise and motion in Kampala; people and animals are always living, all day and all night.

Given the early sunset it’s become tradition to arrive at weekend destinations after dark. This tradition began in Sipi falls near Mbale, at a campsite called the Crow’s Nest high on a ledge over the waterfalls and valley. Upon arrival we could hear the thundering power of cascading water but could not see it. We didn’t know how far away it was, how big, how beautiful – only that it would appear in its famous glory at sunrise. We could see only the tiny cabin, outhouses, and shack-with-water-can-shower. I woke in the night hoping for a view – there were more stars than I’ve seen in months, but the waterfall remained invisible.

The morning revealed an impressive vista over a valley and up the steep hillside opposite, with a cascade of three large (80m?) waterfalls ending in the longest and closest to our campsite. It was all the more stunning for its having been there many hours, hiding beyond our perception.

I interrupted a few German students, hoping to practice my language skills, and we hiked with them to stand in the falls' mist, looking from various angles at the panorama down a steep hill and out onto the endless green plains below. We also saw coffee plants and watched locals remove the shells, dry the beans, roast and grind them.

The campsite tradition continued in the southwest. Our first evening, we slept in tents erected on stilts with solid roofs and real beds inside…but the electricity was out and the generator wasn’t functioning that evening.

I’ve heard many different birds in my life, but adding all those sounds together would not have equaled the number of different calls I heard the next morning. There was chirping, singing, trumpeting, bell-ringing, and something like a graceful seal. The tent platform was like a houseless balcony over a lake. A steady trickle of dugout canoes (literally hollowed tree trunks) glided silently across the lake center and disappeared behind an island, each canoe loaded with bags of produce or people. Every hill around the lake was quilted in rectangles of terraced farmland, and in the distance tiny clusters of women were visible working along the terraces.

I wandered toward the lakeshore, watching the foliage for the diverse birds. There were small bright green and yellow ones, large greenish-blue ones, and from a tree across the lake came the song of the graceful seal. Using my pre-Africa gift to myself, my first binoculars, I followed the sound and located an enormous black and white figure standing atop a tree. It was startling to see a bird the size of a 4-year-old standing on top of a tree, and impressive to watch it alight and fly into the distance. Only with the binoculars could I make out the yellow mohawk of the crested crane, Uganda’s national bird.

It was clear to Joy and I that we needed to paddle a dugout canoe. With great confidence in my canoeing abilities I took the rear steering position on the only bench, and Joy squatted on a wooden stool halfway up. Our paddles were pointed at one end like leaves. The boat was neither streamlined nor symmetric, and my years of training at camp and with Megan provided little help…and so we paddled slalom, like a skier, zig-zagging around an island to the crowded market packed with people and produce from the trickle of canoes, then around a bend to discover a pair of crested cranes, one guarding and the other busy building a nest. They allowed us to watch them closely a long time before taking off past our canoe across the lake.