The Cultural safaris in Lake Bunyonyi
These can also be interactive cultural visits with in the villages, settlements on one of the islands or in the surrounding countryside that includes the Batwa pygmy people who are known to be the original people of the forest and these days, they struggle in their pursuit of survival away from their beloved forest. We can also arrange for the home stays with in the villages along with the visits to the schools, the local markets. Here you will learn how to cook in the traditional way and then how to dig in the gardens and the whole process of growing and harvesting of the crops.
There are also the two main Islands on Lake Bunyonyi, that’s the Akampene which is famously known as the Punishment Island which was used by the Bakiga people to put the unmarried pregnant girls and left to die of hunger or while trying to swim to the main land. This was mainly to threaten the rest, and also show them not to do the same act. The man without cows to pay the bride price could go to the Island and then pick up a girl. This practice was unrestricted in the first half of the 20th century.
There is also the Bwama and the Njuyeera which are commonly known as the sharp Island, in the year 921, the English missionary Leonard sharp came to this part of Uganda and in the year 1931 started a leprosy treatment centre on the then un occupied Bwama Island. There was a church, a medical facility as well as a patient quarter were constructed. Sharp settled on Njuyeera Island which means a white cottage after the similarity of the doctor’s small white house to sharp’s father’s house in Shanklin, which is now the White House Hotel. The foundation of the leprosy colony that was of voluntary segregation, where there was the provision of a happy community to live in that would attract the leprosy victims, and removing them from the communities where they might contaminate others.
There is also the Pygmy tribe that lives in the villages on the other side of the lake. You will met the pygmy at the bottom and will walk you to the top of their hill where the village and the rest of the tribe live. These will give you a welcome dance and you get chance to see the chief’s hut and the school. This tribe also used to live in Rwanda but as it hunted the gorillas, they were repositioned when they became endangered. It’s also known that as they live on this land, they have no government support for schooling and no health care at all. These also don’t value schools since they are not interested and don’t value Education.
