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How to integrate Uganda’s rich cultural experience in your wildlife trip
Uganda is a country endowed with a rich culture. With over fifty unique tribes, the country has a complete range of languages, foods, building designs, dressing codes, social life, household and family patterns. On your next trip to Uganda, you have a chance to visit one of the most diverse cultures in Africa. Though some culture imprints may be found in the fancy hotels around town centers, this is a very small representation of Uganda’s culture. The pool of amazing cultural experience is deep in the villages and community centers around the country. the guide will show you their natural heritage and explain how they live together on the daily basis. These cultural tours increase your awareness on how the local people and their culture relate to wildlife, making your trip a complete experience. This is how you can ensure you meet and participate in the real culture of Uganda while on your wildlife adventure trip to the pearl of Africa;
Use the community centers as your base for exploration: For exploring the surroundings, you will be taken to participate in the activities just as they are done by the locals themselves. Give the people a chance to show you their home communities. Your stay with the community makes it easy to equal explore both the wildlife and culture on the same trip. You will be touring these rural areas in different undiscovered visits of the indigenous people as you witness how they have lived their lives for the past hundreds of years. These community centers are accessible from all national parks.
Stay in the home-stays or at least take a day visit to a local home: In the home-stays, you will participate in preparing local dishes and doing the household chores with the rest of the family members. After a day’s work, you have a choice of spending your night under the same roof with the family. Averagely, for every distance of 100 km or less, you will find a totally different tribe and culture. In this case, you will be having different dressing code, food, cultural housing or language in every home you choose to visit. In most cases, every national park is surrounded by a different tribe. This makes it easy to see a new culture at every destination of your trip.
Visit the open market days in the villages: communities have specific days for markets. All people bring their produce which range from arts, foods, performances and or modern products. The buyers come to meet the venders to trade or consume the different goods and services. These open markets occur on known days in specific places of the country once or twice a week. During the market visit, you will find an assortment of foods, languages, clothes, animals and artifacts. This typical Ugandan market is very colorful, making a good showcase of the diverse culture of the people in every village. During the visit, you will realize you didn’t know the opposite of a modern market.
Go to the local churches: You will enjoy the local rhythms. A variety of songs and moves in the different language. Church days are the best times people will dress very decorative and you won’t tell they are the same people you saw coming from the farms on working days. It is a happy day. After church, the men, women and children all collect at the local centers to network. On specific days, the members attend the local music concerts at the churches or other collective points.
Take some time off to the local children schools: This is better in the rural schools. Children will be willing to share their culture generously. In town schools, it may not be easy to see a big difference since all children will be in shoes, dropped and picked from schools and speaking English as one language, jusy like the western schools. Unlike the town schools, the village school have a different setting with most children demonstrating their cultural background. You will participate in making arts, playing games and learning other cultural skills.
Participate in different cultural activities en-route to the national parks: Normally, there are many stopovers on the routes to the wildlife parks. Stopping at such places that won’t even require you to change your travel program. Some of the activities include traditional dances, traditional meal, crafts making workshops, bee keeping tours, village walks etc.
Besides, while in the villages, the scenery, architecture, fashion and the welcoming people is common site as you drive from one point to another. For more information about how you can integrate cultural experiences in your wildlife safari, please contact us. We will share the draft itinerary that you could take on your next trip to Uganda, in the next post. Please visit again!!