Kabale

The Kigezi highlands were farmed and grazed for centuries by Bakiga clans living without kings, in scattered homesteads on ridges they terraced by hand. The British reached the area late: a station was established at Kabale early in the twentieth century, after boundary commissions had divided the highlands between the British, German and Belgian spheres, leaving related communities on either side of new lines towards Rwanda and the Congo. The town that grew around the station became the administrative centre of Kigezi district, with a hospital, mission schools and the offices of a colonial government that treated the district as a labour reserve.

Population pressure shaped everything that followed. The hills were among the most densely settled in East Africa, and the administration resettled thousands of families northwards into less crowded country in present-day Ankole and beyond, a movement that spread Bakiga farmers across western Uganda. Kabale remained a small, cool upcountry town of tin roofs and eucalyptus, remembered by colonial officials as a place to escape the heat.

Independence brought the upheavals of the wider country, and the town's position near two borders made it a transit point during the region's later crises, including the movement of refugees to and from Rwanda and the Congo. The tourist economy arrived with the gazetting of Bwindi and Mgahinga as national parks in 1991 and the growth of gorilla tracking, which turned a market town on the Kigali road into the gateway that travellers now pass through.

Kabale is the main town of the Bakiga, whose language, Rukiga, is heard everywhere in the market and on the buses. The Bakiga are known across Uganda for a reputation as hard workers on difficult ground — the terraced hillsides around the town are the evidence — and for the vigorous stamping dances, the ekizino above all, performed at weddings and gatherings, in which lines of dancers drive their heels into the ground to the beat of drums. Sorghum beer and millet drinks have long accompanied these occasions.

Clan and family ties remain strong, and marriage negotiations, burials and church events fill weekends. Christianity is deeply rooted here, Anglican and Catholic in roughly equal measure, with cathedrals and mission schools on the hills above town and congregations that spill out into the open on Sunday mornings. The East African Revival of the 1930s, which spread through the churches of this borderland, left a strong evangelical strain that persists.

The Batwa, forest hunter-gatherers who lived in Echuya, Bwindi and Mgahinga until those forests became protected areas, now live in settlements on their edges, and their loss of land and continued marginalisation is an open issue in the district. Cultural visits run by Batwa groups have become part of the local tourist economy. Kabale's other cultural marker is simpler: the cold. Sweaters, blankets and hot tea are part of daily life in a way they are not in most of Uganda.

About 50,000 people lived in Kabale at the 2014 census, in a town that spreads up the slopes of its bowl and along the highway. The economy is farming and trade: Irish potatoes above all, along with sorghum, beans, peas, wheat, vegetables and passion fruit grown on terraces that climb to the ridge tops. Lorries take produce north to Mbarara and Kampala, and traders move goods south through the Katuna crossing, which ties the town's fortunes to relations with Rwanda. When those relations deteriorated in February 2019, Rwanda closed its borders with Uganda; the crossing at Katuna is now open around the clock.

The university and the colleges have added a student population, hostels and small businesses on the eastern side, and the hospital and district offices are significant employers. Tourism supports drivers, guides, boat owners and lakeside camps, though much of the money that gorilla tracking brings to the region is spent in the parks rather than in the town.

Days start early and cold, with mist in the valley, and the market is busiest in the morning. Land is the recurring issue: holdings divided between children have grown tiny, soils on the steep slopes erode, and young people leave for Kampala or for farms in the resettlement districts to the north. Firewood and eucalyptus plantations, water, and the price of potatoes are the everyday concerns.

Kigezi eats differently from much of Uganda. Irish potatoes, introduced in the colonial period and suited to the cool, high ground, are the staple here as much as matooke, boiled and served with beans or a sauce, and sorghum and millet are ground into kalo, a stiff dark bread eaten with the fingers. Beans and peas from the terraces are cooked slowly and heavily; groundnut sauce, greens and, on better days, goat or beef fill out the plate.

The characteristic drink is obushera, made from fermented sorghum or millet flour, taken mildly sweet and thin as an everyday drink or left to ferment into a beer for celebrations. Sorghum beer is still brewed at home in the villages, and tea with milk and ginger is drunk all day against the cold. Local honey and passion-fruit juice appear on guesthouse tables.

Lake Bunyonyi had no fish of its own and was stocked with introduced species, so tilapia, catfish and crayfish from the lake are a relatively recent local speciality, usually eaten at the lakeside camps rather than in town. In the centre, the eating is plain and cheap: chapati and fried eggs rolled together as a rolex, samosas, grilled meat from roadside braziers, roasted maize, and buffet plates of matooke, rice, potatoes and stew served at midday.