UGANDA 2025: MURCHISON FALLS NATIONAL PARK, WOMEN'S CO-OP

 July 21, 2025

After our safari drive, we took Bob to a dock area where he would catch a boat to take him to the bottom of Murchison Falls.  We left him at 9:15 and it left at 10:55, so he had to sit and wait for a long time!

William took Ella and me back through the entrance to the park and about a block further to a women's cooperative for single moms called "The Boomu Women's Group." The word boomu means "together." This co-op was formed in 1999 with the goal of reducing malnutrition and poverty levels and to enable children to go to school through income made at the co-op by their mothers. 

There were four women waiting for us who were ready to do some demonstrations. The leader was a woman who started to co-op in the 1990s (I think). She had a lypoma the size of a small orange growing on her jaw, but in didn't seem to bother her and in a picture next to an award dated 2007 that was hanging in the gift shop, it looked exactly the same as it did when we visited. I think she is beautiful, and her confidence made her even more beautiful.

UCOTA is the acronym for Uganda Community Tourism Association, a group that empowers local communities in sustainable development through small-scale tourism and handcraft enterprises. There are 42 member-groups in Uganda, representing 2,121 people of whom 64% are women. This group uses the money they make to help single mothers raise their children and keep them in school (which is not free in Uganda).

Here we are, waiting for our first demonstration on basket weaving. Note the looms behind us that they use to weave their own cloth. They use reeds, fiber from banana plants, and purchased raffia for the baskets. They dye the material themselves and then cut it into thin strands.