Uganda

Safari on foot and by boat

IT IS NOT EASY TO NAP ON THE DRIVE FROM Entebbe to Lake Mburo. The view outside the window puts paid to any attempts to doze. Our Land Cruiser trundles through hills planted with sweet potatoes, yams and banana palms, passing villages where small kids run out to wave, men gather round to fix beaten-up old motorbikes, and goats nibble at the verge. Vendors at roadside tables sell watermelon, pineapples and jackfruit, and grilled tilapia freshly yanked out of Lake Victoria, a strip of gleaming blue visible across the fields. The sweet smell of warm dust and wood smoke wafts through the open windows.

At the turning to Lake Mburo, tarmac turns to mud, and goats are replaced by zebra and giraffe. A national park since 1983, the area is not fenced, and cattle constantly wander in and wildlife out. Stopping to pick up a guide, Bonny Baloiganikiya, at the park entrance, we bump along an orange track through a landscape pocked with candelabra trees and termite mounds. Baboons casually move off the road to stare at us from the thickets. Warthogs match their indifference for a while, then whirl off through the bush in a panic. “Wild animals, cattle and humans compete for food, land and water here,” says Bonny. “The secret is for people to benefit from the park, to support them by putting up a school or a health centre. You can’t have conservation without the community.” Lake Mburo is a success story, with high numbers of zebra and antelope, among which are topi and eland. “The population is crazy because they have no predators,” says Bonny. “There is only one lion, and one lion cannot do much against 3,000 zebra.”

The centrepiece of the park is