However walking back to camp that evening, flashing fireflies marking our path like tiny beacons, I reflected on the real highlight of the day, which surpassed even the natural wonders we'd seen: the astounding warmth and kindness of the people that we'd met along the way.
Our friend and guide that day, Michael, is a native of Buhaara village, a few miles outside FP. He is an immensely bright and proactive community organiser, and founder of a small-scale NGO that supports his community with necessities such as materials and uniforms for children to attend school. As well as proudly showing us the environmental spectacles his home had to offer, he also took us on a tour of the village, introducing us to his neighbours and hosting an enormous lunch for us in his family home. Though the village itself is the visual embodiment of rural African poverty - small huts of thatched roofs and walls of wooden frames packed with mud; skinny chickens being chased by barefoot toddlers in torn clothes - the spirit of people we met was incredibly moving. It's hard to explain why, but our group all left Buhaara with a glowing sense of having seen and felt something beautiful in that community.
The idyllic atmosphere of the village was unique in its intensity, but the enormous physical beauty we saw there is common to the region. Uganda is an extremely exotic and verdant land. The staple food, grown and eaten everywhere, is banana. Also abundant, both farmed and wild, are pineapples, mangoes and papayas. The wildlife is also distinctive: Uganda is home to the Ankole Cow, famed for their enormous horns, and the Marabou Stork, whose huge hulking frames can be seen lurching across rural swamps and urban rubbish heaps alike. It feels very different to London.
If the country is beautiful, its politics certainly isn't. By most counts Uganda's President Musoveni, who's run the country for 23 years, is an autocrat. He wins elections by improbable margins and stifles dissent at every opportunity. However looking at what Musoveni took over in 1986 - a country brutalised by the Obote-Amin-Obote dictator sandwich, which ensured that the first 22 years of independence consisted largely of misery - he has done a good job. His record is far from perfect: human rights are often ignored, corruption is horrendously bad (Uganda recently came third last in Transparency International's corruption index) and half the population live under the poverty line of $1.25 a day. However on the whole Uganda is remarkably safe, stable, and boasts a growing economy.
Much of the economy still relies on international NGOs, one of which employs my friend and host, Nigel (author of this splendid blog). I stayed with him at his official residence in Kampala's 'posh slum' of Kansanga. It's posh because the houses feature luxuries such as electricity, flushing toilets, and more than four square metres per inhabitant. It's a slum because it's built without the faintest hint of town planning; houses built wherever possible, infrastructure an ad hoc free for all.
It was a great base to explore Kampala's much heralded nightlife, the many virtues of which were extolled to me to the point where I thought my expectations had no chance of being met. But amazingly they were. I only had two nights to revel there, but they both ended at dawn and took in an array of fantastic venues. The clubs took one of two forms: either glorious open air venues, or large, labyrinthine warrens with black walls and black carpets with flourescent splashes, all doused in ultra violet light. Everywhere the music perfectly balanced exciting and powerful beats with funky rhythms that enraptured a positive, energetic and euphorically dancing crowd. Or maybe that was just me. Either way, I can definitely recommend a night out in Kampala.
Though the capital has the biggest clubs, there are also great nightspots elsewhere in the country. I was lucky to be invited clubbing in FP by some local guys I met. I found those same black carpets with flourescent splashes, and those same excellent tunes. But what I remember most from my night out there was how my hosts described the towns two clubs in overtly elitist terms. One was a 'low class' club, where entry cost just 1000 Ugandan Shillings (about 30p), and was full of matatu (motorcycle taxi) drivers and cheap prostitutes. The other was a 'high class' club, costing 5,000 USh (£1.50), which the lowly matatu drivers could never afford. Therefore it was better. Though my friends felt otherwise, I found the high class club painfully dull, while the low class club people actually seemed to be having fun.
This growing class consciousness perturbed me a little. Coming from the UK, a bastion of classism, I was hoping to escape all that nonsense in rural Africa. But the next day I met some people that renewed my faith in the purity of the human spirit. A very kind young academic, having patiently explained to me his work on ageing in Uganda, agreed to let me practice riding his motorcycle. Having stalled and spluttered my way around the field a few times, I noticed a big pink box at its edge.
Going to explore, we discovered it was a dilapidated squash court, recently painted by a mobile phone network as a branding exercise. Inside we found a gang of teenagers milling around, idly kicking an under-inflated basketball. As their elders we received implicit respect, and when we asked what they were up to they sheepishly explained that they were making music. With a little prompting we learnt that they were Freakman and the Akamba Crew, who eventually agreed to give us a performance. Freakman launched into his rap: "I love to play with my basketball; every day I'm with my basketball; momma wants to give me my basketball; why don't you come and play basketball?"
I was stunned. These guys were smart, friendly, and content to compose odes to their favourite items of sporting equipment in their spare time. I can't imagine many youngsters in the UK doing this. I was definitely far too cool.
It may sound trite, but despite the enormous challenges facing Africa, and the huge moral compromises that leaders like Musoveni represent (and many feel are necessary), the innocence and optimism of guys like Freakman and the Akambda Crew, and the kindness of the people of Buhaara village, have the potential to change everything. And not just for Africa.
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