Wake UP! to the transformative power of partnership & enterprise in Uganda

Tan­ner C Knorr of Second Look World­wide talks with Iain Pat­ton of Uganda Part­ner­ship (UP!) about trans­form­a­tion­al tours.

Tan­ner: Tell us about Uganda Partnership. 

Iain: Uganda Part­ner­ship is a win-win approach to trav­el­ling off the beaten track in Africa and fund­ing busi­ness solu­tions to the poverty in the com­munit­ies we meet.

At Uganda Part­ner­ship, or UP! for short, we want to go fur­ther and really push the bound­ar­ies of “good tour­ism”. Our tours not only delight our guests with the splend­our of Africa, but chal­lenge and inspire them with an intim­ate exper­i­ence of a pos­it­ive and hope­ful Africa. It’s the Africa most vis­it­ors nev­er see as they dash from one safari lodge to the next one. The res­ult of this isn’t just the jour­ney of a life­time, but life-chan­ging fund­ing for the rur­al com­munit­ies we vis­it. It’s quite ambi­tious, and of course risks fail­ing to do any of these things well! But if we get it right, it’s a win for all and a power­ful pos­it­ive leg­acy for travel.

Today, across Uganda, East Africa, there are inspir­a­tion­al stor­ies of Afric­ans work­ing togeth­er for their bet­ter future. It is this story that an UP! tour tells. On each 14 – 18 day tour, we get along­side and part­ner four or five small com­munity-led organ­isa­tions who are using busi­ness enter­prise to improve their lives. Yes, we will cer­tainly vis­it won­der­ful nation­al parks and enjoy the spec­tacle of nat­ur­al Uganda, but just as much we are here to be inspired by the people we meet.

Tan­ner: Where in Uganda does UP! take travellers? 

Iain: South West Uganda with its crater lakes, Moun­tains of the Moon, safari nation­al parks and of course Moun­tain Gor­il­las is where 90% of vis­it­ors to Uganda head. But UP! is a bit dif­fer­ent. We head in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion to the north of Uganda, bor­der­ing Congo, now recov­er­ing from the civil war which took out a gen­er­a­tion of people. It’s hot, dry and wild in North­ern Uganda, with the River Nile provid­ing a cru­cial artery of water for wild­life and farm­ers. OK, we cer­tainly take time to vis­it the anim­al filled (and people empty!) savan­nah at Murch­is­on Falls Nation­al Park where the Nile is forced into a 20 foot crack in the rock before drop­ping thun­der­ously 400 feet. And even though some of us go raft­ing over exhil­ar­at­ing (read ‘ter­ri­fy­ing’) Grade 5 rap­ids, it’s the inspir­a­tion­al young people who are rebuild­ing their shattered lives through hard work and enter­prise, that will leave their mark on us. 

Then we head north east, right into the heart of wild savan­nah Africa close to the bor­der with South Sudan. Voted in the top three of Africa’s nation­al parks, Kidepo Val­ley is where UP! guests get their dose of the splend­our of the con­tin­ent with anim­als everywhere. 

This sets us up well to then vis­it the wild Kara­moja region and then the foot­hills of Mount Elgon, both bor­der­ing Kenya. Isol­a­tion and con­flict made the Kara­moja region of Uganda unthink­able as a destination. 

Until now. 

We have a very pre­cious oppor­tun­ity to meet the loc­al Kara­mo­jong people who are known for their love of cattle and their res­ist­ance to the trap­pings of mod­ern civil­isa­tion. Due to dec­ades of isol­a­tion and their strong beliefs, the Kara­mo­jong people have been able to main­tain their ances­tral her­it­age with cul­tur­al cus­toms dat­ing back to thou­sands of years. But our focus here is on food, and in par­tic­u­lar, food secur­ity. It might be a stun­ning land­scape of time­less plains peppered with tall jagged peaks, but life in this arid area is hard and prone to hunger. 

Inspired by their vis­it, for some years UP! vis­it­ors to East­ern Uganda have inves­ted in sup­port­ing com­munity groups to bet­ter store their har­vest crops using spe­cial air­tight bags. Being able to save between a third and half of the har­vest nor­mally lost to rats and rot is the dif­fer­ence between life and death here. And we find that with food to spare, com­munity groups go on to sell their excess crop some months later for a profit, or even go on to buy a small mill to sell maize flour for even more profit. 

The impact we have seen over three years is stag­ger­ing. Thanks to UP! trav­el­lers vis­it­ing, every child in the com­munit­ies we part­ner with is now going to school and get­ting medi­cines when they need them. People are no longer sub­sist­ing, but are plan­ning for a bet­ter future. UP! tours have set over 4,000 house­holds on a road out of hun­ger and poverty. All it takes is part­ner­ship and enter­prise, not char­ity and pity.

Tan­ner: Tell us about Jesca and her pig.

Iain: In the pan­de­moni­um of Gulu town mar­ket we met a young Mum called Jesca. She now works for a small devel­op­ment char­ity, but we are sur­prised to hear that her suc­cess in life is down to a pig! Jesca intro­duced us to Peter who runs Lay­ibi Mixed Farm on the edge of Gulu. Turns out that when Jesca was a young orphan, Peter gave her a pig which was just about to give birth to pig­lets. The deal was that she would give two pig­lets to oth­er young orphans and sell the rest to gen­er­ate an income for her­self. Fast for­ward 10 years and Jesca has used pig power to pay her way through school and then uni­ver­sity! Every UP! tour now meets Peter and Jesca (and vari­ous pigs) and sees first hand the power of enter­prise. Uganda’s future is in the hands of its inspir­a­tion­al people like Jesca and Peter. 

Tan­ner: How is UP! dif­fer­ent from oth­er tour companies? 

Iain: UP! has cre­ated a power­ful con­nec­tion between enter­pris­ing Ugandan com­munit­ies and people who want to vis­it and under­stand Africa. There is no lim­it to the innov­a­tion and enter­prise of Uganda’s rur­al people. After only three years of UP! Tours, we have estab­lished part­ner­ships with five com­munity organ­isa­tions all over beau­ti­ful Uganda. These focus on youth busi­ness train­ing, estab­lish­ing farm trad­ing cooper­at­ives, set­ting up har­vest stor­age pro­grams, a scheme to help rur­al women share tra­di­tion­al know­ledge, and of course using pigs for enterprise.

Sus­tain­able tour­ism is great. Enlight­en­ing west­ern minds to a hope­ful Africa is also great. But to com­bine it to empower and fund young entre­pren­eurs in Africa at the same time is transformational! 

UP! is so much more than a usu­al Afric­an safari. It’s a unique and trans­form­a­tion­al oppor­tun­ity to get to know innov­at­ive and enter­pris­ing Ugandans who are solv­ing poverty and hun­ger. UP! is a win-win-win approach to trav­el­ling in Africa, chal­len­ging trav­el­ler expect­a­tions and under­stand­ing, while at the same time, fund­ing com­munity-led enter­prise in the com­munit­ies we vis­it. Plus, of course, we give our guests an intim­ate, sub­mers­ive, well-off-the-beaten-track exper­i­ence which is fant­ast­ic, fun, and unique! 

Tan­ner: What are the top two chal­lenges you encountered when devel­op­ing the strategy for UP! and how did those chal­lenges cause you to design UP!’s tac­tic­al implementation? 

Iain:

1. It’s Africa’s devel­op­ment, not ours: I start every tour with these words to my west­ern guests: “We have two eyes, two ears but only one mouth. Use them accord­ingly.” It is so tempt­ing for our west­ern minds to jump in with advice and a solu­tion which makes sense for us. Recog­nising there is much we don’t under­stand in Africa (and nev­er will!) and just hold­ing back and look­ing and listen­ing for longer will bene­fit all parties. Solu­tions com­ing from the com­munit­ies we meet turn out to be the suc­cess­ful ones.

2. Part­ner­ship and enter­prise, not pity and char­ity: It might make us feel good to throw money at a prob­lem and, yes, it might ini­tially help. But, long term, char­ity can under­mine people’s pride and con­fid­ence in solv­ing their own prob­lems. Most of UP! funds are giv­en as revolving loans, to be inves­ted and repaid for the group to use again and again. This approach gen­er­ates a power­ful sense of pride and determ­in­a­tion to make things work. For UP! it’s about hand-ups, not hand-outs!

It’s quite a chal­lenge to expose a tour party to the needs of a Ugandan vil­lage and then coun­sel them to hold back and look and listen for longer. UP! tours are not break-neck speed dashes from sight to sight. Instead we make time to linger and get to know the groups we vis­it. We mingle with the people, some join in with the cook­ing, play with the chil­dren, go on farm­stead tours, and on our most recent tours one of our group intro­duced many of the young people in the vil­lages we vis­ited to the game of rugby with hil­ari­ous res­ults. And soon, the sense of being over­whelmed by need is replaced by awe and respect for the strength, resi­li­ence and grat­it­ude of people for what they do have. It takes time to get to this point, but it’s a much bet­ter place to start a con­ver­sa­tion about how we might be able to help. From this found­a­tion of respect and under­stand­ing, many of our tour mem­bers feel inspired and con­fid­ent to make often long-term com­mit­ments to donat­ing towards com­munity enterprise.

Tan­ner: How do you see UP! chan­ging and grow­ing out of COVID-19 and into the future? 

Iain: To date in Uganda the biggest impact of COVID-19 has not been the vir­us itself, but the Government’s strin­gent approach to lock­down; without the fund­ing and sup­port many west­ern gov­ern­ments have been able to put in place. This just points to the need for more enter­prise invest­ment. Tra­di­tion­ally the west­ern rela­tion­ship with Africa has been one of char­ity, but UP! tours show the power of enter­prise to build resi­li­ence and inde­pend­ence. And it is all powered by people com­ing on our tours. 

Tan­ner: What else should we know about UP!? 

Iain: UP! organ­ises small group tours in the drier months of Janu­ary, Feb­ru­ary and August each year, but we also organ­ise private tours on request. Group size is no more than 10 people. To add to the fun and free­dom we drive ourselves and we stay in safe and clean, gen­er­ally mod­est hotels and lodges. This way, almost any­one can afford to see Africa and meet first-hand, its inspir­a­tion­al and enter­pris­ing people. 

Get in touch with UP!

Web­site: www.ugandapartnership.net
Face­book: www.facebook.com/UgandaPartnershipTours
Email: ugandapartnership@yahoo.com

Fea­tured image (top of post): Wake UP! to the trans­form­at­ive power of part­ner­ship and enter­prise. (Image sup­plied by Iain Pat­ton & UP!)