ART | MURALS | TRAVEL | UGANDA

Painting the Mubuku Valley

Another mural project has been completed in Uganda.

It was nice to make our way back to Ruboni and the Mubuku Valley. Almost exactly one year ago, we spent 3 weeks up there painting a mural at one of the tourist lodges that sit at the entrance to the Rwenzori Mountains National Park. They had other projects for us to do, but at the time they weren’t ready with the materials that we needed. So we decided to leave for another project that we had lined up, promising to return to finish what we started.

It’s a really long story to explain all that happened in the meantime, but as promised, we finally made it back…….one year later.

The lodge that we painted at before was ready with the materials for signs to be painted, so we did those, plus another project, the Community Visitors Centre.

This centre is located at the entrance to the trading center of the village, on the only road that comes up from the lowlands below. Recently they have opened a small restaurant and a gift shop on site. The aim now is to attract tourists to the property as they also have visitor information and can book guides and tours into the national park.

First on our agenda was to do some brainstorming so that we could come up with a name for the centre, plus create a logo. After much discussion, we decided that Community Visitors Centre was a good catch all because it is already used by locals as a community centre.

Felex, our host, wanted the logo to represent the activities in the area, which is mostly hiking. This is the simple logo that we came up with for that. He didn’t want the name attached to it, just imagery. We decided that this logo would go on a sign that we would place on the road.

We then assessed the building to figure out what would be best thing to do with it. Originally Felex wanted us to just paint the side that faces one of the fields beside the building. But considering that he wanted us to paint a sign on the road, it made sense to also spruce up the side of the building that faces the road. This is what it looked like before:

There are some main themes here that we wanted to carry forward, but the painting is many years old and outdated. I convinced Felex that this side really needed a pick me up. Our original plan was to keep the layout similar and use the same characters doing the things they were doing, but update and modernize them.

It wasn’t until after we started painting, though, that Felex told me that the kids on the left are actually planting trees. We knew that we could definitely improve on that imagery and make it more obvious. I certainly didn’t glean that from what was there.

As we started to paint in the backgrounds, I suddenly had a vision of the mountains that lie at the end of the Mubuku Valley. Because we had plans to put signs on the front of the building, I felt that they would make a good solid background to paint words on. So we painted them in.

One thing led to the other and the hills on the sides started to form into the valley walls that lead up to the mountains. Once I painted them on, I knew that the river had to be put in the center of it all as well. Bit by bit the valley emerged from the wall, and I realized that what we were painting was how we saw the actual valley that we were in.

As we started to paint the details into the hillsides, people started to become interested. However, Felex complained about the river one day saying that people don’t understand what it is because the river isn’t blue. He also said that a man told him that he saw a crocodile in the painting! Yikes! He told us this one evening and it wasn’t until we returned the next day and realized what he had been talking about.

I quickly started painting bushes on the crocodile! We didn’t need more people thinking that! I also, of course, put more detail into the river so that it wasn’t confusing.

For this project, I mostly worked on the central part and Chris worked on the sides. It’s always good when we have our own sections to work on as it leads to less arguing!

As we painted in the details, we could sense more and more excitement behind us. The road looks onto this side of the building, and all day long there are people walking up and down it. We stayed focused and tried not to get to wrapped up in what was going on there. If we stopped to talk to everyone we would have gotten nothing accomplished.

Felex asked me one day if I do a lot of ‘looking up’ as he could now see that I was painting a representation of the valley walls.

“Oh Felex, all I do is look up!” I told him.

And it was true.

The valley is truly stunning and there are little houses and gardens perched on the hillsides up and down both sides. We were both enamoured with the way that people lived, seemingly defying gravity and not only living, but FARMING on the steep slopes. Looking up was truly our constant while we were staying there.

Bit by bit little details got filled in.

And then one day we were almost done! I just needed to paint in the signs on the building, the main sign for the road, and the direction signs for the other lodge, and it was a wrap!

The organization that runs this community centre, plus the lodge we had worked at before, works directly with communities to help integrate the local population with tourism. They train guides, crafters, and any other person who wants to be involved in bringing an economy to the area through tourism. They operate in a sustainable way and make sure to educate people about their impact on the environment, amongst other positive initiatives.

These are the sorts of organizations that we are happy to give our time to because we know that they have a long reach into the communities, and we aren’t just helping to line one person’s pocket with more money.

NOTE: Sacco’s are small scale lending offices whose funding is provided by the government through tourism revenue in the country. These facilities enable farmers to purchase seed for planting, livestock, or any other item they may need to create a viable income for themselves.

All in all it was a very rewarding project and we look forward to hearing about how it changes and shifts the tourism scene in the Mubuku Valley in the future.

Thanks so much for joining me on a tour of our most recent mural project. In case you don’t know, we paint murals for free in exchange for accommodation and sometimes food as we travel around the world.

We spread love through our art!

Hi there, we are 2 Canadians, Jill and Chris from Artistic Voyages. We have been nomadic since 2017 living in numerous different countries, and experiencing the life and diversity of our planet on the ground and firsthand. We have now been on the African continent for over 2 years!

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