Text and Photos : Paul Lubega
The cultural site is located 5½ km from Kampala city centre. In 1916 it became a tomb following the death of the mother to the late king Mwanga I who martyred Christians and was the first lady to the late king of Buganda kingdom (Mutesa I). This lady is also remembered for she and her husband wrote the letter which was inviting the missionaries to come to Uganda.
The site was opened as a cultural site in 2000 with two major objectives as to conserve and preserve the Buganda heritage and to involve the surrounding community in cultural conservation and since then it has developed into a tourist destination and has hosted visitors worldwide. It boosts of a variety of activities which attract tourists there and these include bark cloth making, pottery, cultural dances, hand craft making, herbal gardens, the tombs, story telling, paper making from waste paper, banana fibres and elephants grass ; traditional food preparation demonstrations and testing and home stead tourism where one participates in the day today home activities.
The community has benefited in gaining employment at the site, selling of their hand made crafts and herbal medicine research.
Contact
Rita Nalubula, Namasole, Ssemwanga.
Uganda Community Tourism Association (UCOTA)
P.O.Box 27159,
Kampala, Uganda
Tél : +256 71 678 411
ou +256 71 876 167
ou +256 71 803 430
Courriel : ucota@africaonline.co.ug
Internet : www.ucota.or.ug
Langue : anglais
Tour opérateur : Mountain Peak Discovery
Courriel : peaktourisminfo@yahoo.com
Pour plus d’information
http://www.ucota.or.ug/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=21&Itemid=9
UCOTA
UCOTA is a national non-profit making organisation. It is an umbrella organization of all community based tourism projects around Uganda including this project supporting them through capacity building, training, marketing lobbying advocating and fundraising for them. UCOTA was started in 1998 by a collection of different community based projects around the country and now has a membership of 50 community based tourism projects around the major tourism and artisan areas of Uganda.
All the community members of UCOTA are owned and run by the communities formed independently with their aims and join UCOTA as a stage of development by taking up tourism as an additional activity to help them develop their community. UCOTA evaluates these groups by looking at the number of visitors coming to their sites, the quality of services given to the visitors, progress of the community development projects supported by these groups, the comments given by the visitors in the questionnaire provided to them, the monthly form presented to ucota and the involvement of the surrounding population in the projects.