Many systems, including all living systems, are unpredictable; but their chaos is not random. Many of these systems are deterministic but highly responsive to the conditions which create them. This is called path dependency or the “butterfly effect.” Children, created and nurtured by loving parents, are inherently unpredictable yet almost always turn out to be good kids.
In chaos theory, an attractor is a set of states toward which a system tends to evolve for a wide variety of starting conditions of the system. The concept of strange attractor was developed by Edward Lorentz when he tried to model and predict thunderstorms. He found that thunderstorms follow a set of deterministic paths, but are wholly unpredictable.
A couple of days ago I was watching a thunderstorm form over the city of Kampala from the rooftop of the Zara Garden Hotel. The Zara is located on a quiet street atop one of the many hills on which Kampala has been built. This particular hill overlooks Lake Victoria.
After the thunderstorms had flashed and boomed for awhile, a rainbow appeared over Lake Victoria. This was my first night at the Zara and what a wonderful greeting.
This was just one of the many welcoming greetings I received in Uganda. Warm greetings are one of the many strange attractors of Uganda.
I first came to Uganda 10 years ago to help with a maize project. The project was located in one of the hottest and most humid parts of Uganda. Toward the end of the project I was left in an isolated resort hotel for several days. This resort was not exactly the Zara. The food was boring, the AC didn’t work well, the staff didn’t seem to want to be there. After a few days, my hosts remembered me and sent a vehicle to bring me back to the capitol. I was never happier to leave a country and swore I was never coming back.
Then I discovered the Rwenzori Mountains. These mountains support some of the last native habitat of the mountain gorillas. They have glaciers on top and cold rushing rivers in the spring thaw. The tallest non-volcanic range in Africa, they host hundreds of unique species and likely others yet to be discovered.
Then, ten years later an invitation came to work on an agroforestry/carbon credit project in the Rwenzori. I could barely pack my bags quickly enough.
I’m now finishing three weeks working on the project and it has given me a wholly new perspective on Uganda. Maybe Uganda has changed. Maybe I am a different person from 10 years ago and Ugandans are responding to the new me. Whatever it is, I have never felt more welcome.
Leaving the Entebbe airport, my driver drove onto an expressway as modern as any in the US and occupied by very few cars. What a wondrous greeting! This was the first of many new highways I was to enjoy traveling on. The highways between cities are amazing. How did they get such good roads? They are in better shape than many parts of the US interstate system.
Traffic and roads got crazy when we got off the freeway and into Kampala; but the driver fought his way through and got me to the Fairview Garden Hotel. I’d stayed here 10 years ago and the open air restaurant with lots of tall trees was just as inviting and food/drinks just as delicious as then. I ate my favorite snack, garlic naan, twice in two days as I decompressed from the long flights.
Then I began meeting the Ugandans I was working with. Sure nice to meet Robbinah for the first time in person. George was here on my previous visit and is just as kind and gentle and helpful as ever.
My traveling companions were Peter and Augustine. We were soon laughing and joking our way toward our home for the next week: Fort Breeze Hotel in Fort Portal. Fort Portal is the ancient capital of the Tooro kingdom. The British established a fort there to protect the Tooro from raids from a mean neighbor tribe from what is now Congo. The palace of the king is still there on top of the highest hill around and a king still lives in it. Not sure what power if any he has. One of the employees at Fort Breeze is a granddaughter of the previous king. Her father, a son of the king, had 35 children from several wives.
She was a real help with so many things, including going with Augustine and I to a lodge called Top of the World, which overlooks two of the 44 crater lakes which dot the area west of Kibale National Park.
She had advised us not to go because the restaurant served lousy food once when she went with some Dutch friends. So I asked her to go with us and make sure the food was good. She went with us, took over the kitchen and she and all the kitchen staff made us a great meal. Some poor Englishmen had been waiting for dinner long before we got there and were a little put out that we got served first. But when I explained we had brought our own chef, they understood.
This visit was on Sunday after Augustine and Peter had gone to church. Peter then stayed in the hotel to work while Augustine, Juliet and I played.
Our week in Fort Portal region went by quickly with daily treks to the surrounding districts to meet tree nursery operators and farmers who had planted trees. It’s a big mango and coffee region, but lots of other trees are grown including the prized red stinkwood tree whose bark is a cure for prostate problems, including cancer, according to some peer-reviewed papers and lots of testimonials. It grows 3 feet a year and gets as tall as 120 feet, meaning it is a great true to use to accumulate carbon credits.
Our next stop was Kasese for one night, but we did managed to see elephant, hippo and water buffalo, vanilla production and a couple of youth-run tree nurseries.
Then it was on to Hoima where we stayed at Miico Eco Resort Hotel-where everything was just perfect. Breakfast and dinner were on time and luscious. And I had garlic naan four happy hours in a row. We spent our days visiting nurseries and on last day ended up at the Northern end of the huge Lake Albert where we watched three local boys cast a huge net and come up with at least one impressive fish.
Pretty reluctantly we left the Miico and headed back to the traffic jams, the pungent odors of the slums surrounding Kampala and the unexpected delights of Zara.
The chaos of Kampala is certainly unpredictable and likely deterministic, but the west of Uganda is the strange attractor for me.
Resilience 