Category: ML Personally
The quarterly newsletter (you can subscribe to it on the homepage) and other personal thoughts by ML Rwebandira, formerly known as Miha Logar. An adventure/cultural tourism expert and a multimedia producer, ML co-founded Gorilla Highlands Experts and now resides in the unofficial capital of the region, Rwanda’s Musanze. Formal education: MA in Development Studies (Uganda Martryrs University) and BA in Journalism (University of Ljubljana).
Our Stories:
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Too Good
Amused, bewildered or annoyed, this morning Uganda woke up to the new reality of social media taxes. Figuring out a way to pay those ridiculous daily 200 shillings (or circumvent the system) had to take priority over choosing a Sunday service outfit that your pastor may notice… This white Ugandan (OK, birders would probably call…
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Bullets & Love
“Does the morning gunfire help define the parameters of the Gorilla Highlands? Marcus’ audio on his post was impressive. I hope it all ends with a colourful memory,” Jon messaged me from California last Sunday. We were truly ending our Congo experience with a bang, unable to leave the country because of an armed conflict.…
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30,000 Chinese
It all happened very quickly—and was rather personal.
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Thanks, 2016!
Here in the Gorilla Highlands we respect the old. No Omugurusi, Umusaza or Mzee should be mistreated, no newborn could possibly be more important than those who have seen it all. So the way everybody seems to be eager to beat 2016 off the stage to clear space for 2017 feels profoundly wrong. Secondly, as a…
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Blasio’s Flower
I don’t enjoy weddings. They take too much time and they are almost the same, wherever you go in Uganda. But when Blasio, Edirisa’s co-director, asked me to come to his first-born’s kwanjula, I felt I couldn’t say no. Also known as the introduction, this is the central part of the traditional wedding procedures. Busy…
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Missing Hippos
Out of the blue, three hippos appeared. They became the talk of Lake Bunyonyi, the lake so casually described as super-safe for swimming, with no bilharzia (more about that here), no crocodiles … and no hippos. Well, in 2013 they were very much there. For several days, until locals got tired of hippos eating their…
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Difficult Ugandan
Enya’s experience with the police made me think… Why do I behave like that really? 1. Because I feel Ugandan. When you are just a visitor, you tend to keep your head down and let locals do their things the local way. This is my country and I want it to be a great country.…
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Teddy Bear
“Too good to be true,” recently said Barrett Nash when we discussed a fascinating woman. He meant it literally; he had been shaken up by the realities of life one too many times. Paradoxically, Nash* is the very definition of too good to be true in its more common, less fatalist version. It is hard to…
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Vegetarian Bonanza
I know people who love keeping secrets. It gives them a feeling of security or, in some other cases, perhaps some perverted sense of power. “I know what you don’t know. He he he,” their smirks seem to communicate. As another writer on the Gorilla Highlands blog once humorously revealed, local African cultures value tight-lipped…
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