Vacation is the one thing that has failed to grow on us, Ugandans. People take leave from work only to spend their entire leave at home or for some at the farm doing physical labour, or pushing their side hustle for 16 hours a day.
Truth is everyone deserves a vacation. A time far away from home to really rest, unwind and clear one’s mind of the burden of hustling, even if it is just two weeks. I do not mean staying home in dusty Najeera, sleeping and texting all day. That is what you do on the weekends and public holidays.
A vacation is not a vacation until you find yourself hundreds of miles away, where everything is novel. From the food you are eating, to the people you are meeting, to the breath you are breathing.
So, picture yourself walking down the beaches of Zanzibar. You are sweating like a marathoner in the sweltering Zanzibar heat. You are eating shokishoki, an exotic fruit that you just bought from two little boys at Ngome Kongwe, so you could clear your mouth of the spiced kalamari you had for lunch that you did not like very much.
Or closer to home, you are rushing into the wide hallway of a tourist lodge in Bwindi. It just started raining again, the 8th time today. You are freezing in the 8-degree-centigrade coldness even when you are putting on three sweaters, a thick head sock, are you are wraped in one of those blankets that the hotel provides for outdoor use. The silver lining is that you are nibbling at a tiny citrus pawpaw that can only be found in these tundra regions of Uganda.
Such exotic conditions are what make a true vacation. They are so unlike your daily life that they force you to come out of your shell on a spiritual level. Hard to explain. In such exotic environments, especially surrounded by nature, your mind starts accessing parts of your brain, giving you insights and new ideas. A vacation restarts your system and gets you psyched to start over.
But that is only one part of vacationing. The other part consists of laying back, relaxing and enjoying the off time. Which is where alcohol becomes a real temptation. You casually crack open a bottle of wine to share with someone at the fireplace, only to end up drinking not just several other bottles of wine, but all tribes of liquors the whole night. The whole night unravels out of your control. You end up losing several precious hours of vacation because of a wild hangover that you did not plan for.
What makes matters worse is that some of the more serious tourist lodges give you unlimited free alcohol when you pay the hefty sum to stay there. All alcohol you can drink. They make you pay so much money that no amount of alcohol can dip into their profit.
This is precisely what happened to me when I visited Kiho Gorilla Safari Lodge recently. After over-imbibing two nights in a row because of lack of what to do, an older lodge resident advised that, for a change, we should stroll to the nearest trading centre and hangout with the locals instead of drinking nonstop. We all agreed unanimously that spending this preciously time drunk wouldn’t be the best use of time. It is counterproductive.
So off we went to Bugarama Trading Centre just outside the forest, not very far from the lodge. These guys have the best view of the forest, it is envy-inducing. As soon as we arrived, we were given chairs in the warmest manner possible.
It was clear that they received tourists from the lodge on a regular basis. All the shops here sell Eagle Extra at the cheapest prices possible. They also proved to be some of the friendliest people you will ever meet.
It became clear very fast that these people have their own beer drinking etiquette. A beer is shared by as many people as possible. Because, you know, today you have money for an Eagle Extra, but tomorrow you may not. So it is wise that you share you beer today as insurance for your tomorrow.
And it is not like each one brings their own glass to pour and go. They all drink from the same bottle, swapping fluids and all. These are old school people, whose communal drinking traditions have not been tainted by modernity. It is he kind of novelty that only a true vacation affords you.
And by the end of the evening, you will have barely drunk a pint of beer, which is exactly what you want. You will have meant truly interesting people whose lives are opposite yours. Anything that makes you drink less on your vacation is something to seriously consider. But first, please go take an actual vacation. Reboot.
