RAW Thoughts from Uganda
A Wild 10 Days in the Heart of Africa
If you’re new to my substack musings, I’m sorry in advance for any spelling errors or typos. I made a rule a little while ago that if I was going to get back into blogging, I’d allow myself to make mistakes. I spent too many years skipping out on blogging because I hated editing.
Solution: just don’t edit!
Anyways, Uganda…
I just spent 10 days in the “Pearl of Africa”.
Having never been to Uganda, I had no idea what to expect. Sure, I studied the country in depth during my university days. I knew about the Idi Amin days, I knew about the Bush Wars, and I knew that the current leader has been in power since I was 2.
But, I’d never stepped foot inside the borders. And it’s hard to judge a place based on history books.
My TLDR thoughts? Potential. Lots of potential.
And when I say potential, I say potential either way.
Uganda is stuffed with resources. From an ecological standpoint, it almost the perfect country for crop production. Volcanic soils, decent altitude to help negate extreme heat, active rainfalls, and lots of arable land. Driving through the country the roadsides were lined with all sorts of crops: bananas, pineapples, mangos, avocados, coffee, tea, corn, and basically everything else.
There should be no starving people in Uganda, with the epic wealth of their agriculture.
Geologically as well it’s a wealthy country.
Uganda is trying to transform into a mineral powerhouse. It’s driven primarily by gold exports and massive iron ore reserves. But also critical rare earths for green tech as well as significant oil and phosphate deposits.
And the tourism? Oh man, the potential for tourism in this country has barely been scratched. We visited in peak season, and it felt quiet. Uganda could be a tourism giant.
So when we talk about potential, all the potential for growth is there. But there are challenges. It’s landlocked. The government exerts complete control over everything. There’s obvious corruption. There’s a lack of tourism education. And there is already an obvious influx of exploitation of resources in the country from foreign companies.
It feels like it could go either way.
It could boom, or it could bust.
But the potential is massive. And as someone who loves Africa and building things, it’s the type of place I almost feel like I want to take under my wing and help it grow.
And the people deserve it. In my years spent on the African continent, I’ve felt mostly warmth from the people. But in Uganda, it was next level.
It was the kids waving at you as you drove past. It was the coffee plantation worker offering to give you a guided tour of the operation. It was the honest helpfulness of basically everyone along the way.
There were obvious bumps in the road along the way.
The drivers are a little bit wild, we almost got into 2 major accidents on the trip. Note - our drivers were awesome, it was the others that weren’t.
The systems are slow. At one point, it took us 90 minutes just to check into a national park.
The internet is, well, corruptible. We were there during an election and the government shut down the internet for 5 days.
But for the most part it was a special trip.
Visiting the chimpanzees in Kibale National Park was an absolute highlight for me. Chimps are my favourite animals, and to be surrounded by them was just an absolute treat.
The gorilla trekking, while extremely challenging, was also something just unique and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I’ll never forget the silverback in one group we visited named “Happy” being about 4 meters from me. Then, he got up, picked an entire tree out of the ground. I thought he was going to throw it at me. But, instead he dropped it in front of me, then started to dine on it.
I spent about 5 minutes less that 2 meters from happy before he decided that he wanted to have a nap exactly where I was standing, walked over to me, pushed my leg out of the way, and then laid down.
I mean, that stuff is just incredible.
The safaris in Murchison Falls and Queen Elizabeth National Parks were a little underwhelming if you compare them to places like the Serengetti or Chobe, but they were still very good - and will likely get better as the wildlife starts to re-flourish.
In sum, Uganda was awesome.
It’s the type of place that I’m already planning on going back to. It’s the type of place I could see myself returning to over and over again. As a lover of coffee, I could see myself trying to find ways to invest in the coffee industry in the area, or building partnerships with my coffee brand.
As a lover of travel, I definitely see myself leading more trips down their - but likely with TRVL.
So, I don’t think I’m done with Uganda.
I think I’m just getting started.
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