Mabamba begins long before the first tourist boat enters the swamp.
By 6:00 in the morning, women are already arriving at the landing site. Some carry flasks and cups; others are preparing breakfast in the small restaurants that line the shore. Tea is being poured. Katogo is cooking.
Beneath a tree, women sit chatting, their eyes occasionally drifting towards the water, waiting for the fishing boats to return with the day’s catch.
The birds have been awake even longer. The frivolous black-and-white-casqued hornbills. We hear their loud, raucous, laughing calls, and their heavy wings’ rhythmic “woosh” sound as they crash through branches of fruit trees.
Then comes the crowing of a cock.
CBS trading centre awakens.
There is a catch to the name. The trading centre is named after Central Broadcasting Service (CBS FM), a highly popular radio station owned by the Buganda Kingdom.
Before it became a fully-fledged trading centre, the location served as a prominent public transport stop (CBS stage) where locals gathered to listen to the radio station or coordinate community activities tied to the station.
As shops, kiosks, and market stalls clustered around this active spot, the entire trading centre formally adopted the name “CBS”.
Life here does not wait for the sun to become generous.
It starts early.
The centre awakens with the greeting of women beginning their chores, the sound of motorcycles starting, and the occasional music drifting across the settlement.
A woman leads her cow along the road. Two men load dogs into a wooden crate and ride away on a motorcycle.
Children with school bags make their way to school. A mother holds her baby by the hand as they walk towards a kindergarten.
Mabamba is awake.
And it is busy.
This is the first surprise.
The place that many visitors know because of one of Africa’s most remarkable birds is not some silent wilderness separated from ordinary life.
It is a working landscape: fishermen, boda boda riders, school children, shopkeepers, restaurant owners, boat operators, guides and farmers all moving around the wetland.
The Shoebill is the attraction.
Mabamba is the life around it.
Crossing the lake
Our journey to Mabamba began the previous day in Kampala, where we boarded Fly Express taxis from Nasser Road, opposite the Uganda Railways Corporation gate.
We used the old Entebbe Road up to Kajjansi, where we joined the Entebbe-Kampala Expressway. Then we went straight to Kitooro in Entebbe town.
In Kitooro, we jumped onto boda bodas to Nakiwogo Landing Site. We then boarded the government ferry to Kasanje sub-county in Wakiso district.
Boarding the ferry has its own routine. Passengers go first. Then motorcycles and vehicles are loaded behind them.
The ferry crossed Lake Victoria without charging passengers, carrying people and their belongings towards the other side.
Minutes later, the ferry docked at Buwaya landing site. Cars got out first, followed by motorcycles and then passengers.
We climbed onto boda bodas again.
The road to Mabamba took us through a changing landscape. Vehicles raised clouds of dust on the murram road; roadside workshops displayed welded windows and doors; timber was being cut and stacked in piles.
A boy carried a curved chainsaw towards a lumber yard. Chapatti makers were already at work. A woman burned dry leaves by the roadside.
Two cows stood tethered beneath a tree outside a family home. A man pushed a bicycle carrying empty water jerrycans. At a water point, others waited in line to fill theirs.
Then the road became more crowded.
Children returned from school in uniform. A boda boda rider carried three school children. At the borehole, children still wearing their uniforms gathered to fetch water.
Mabamba was beginning to reveal itself not as a destination but as a series of destinations within a destination.
Where the boats wait
We arrived at Mabamba landing site around 4:30 pm.
We went straight to the office of Mabamba Wetland Eco-Tourism Association (MWETA), a community-rooted support group that brings together local stakeholders—including bird guides, fishermen, boatmen, craftsmen, and farmers—to manage and protect the fragile ecosystem of the Mabamba Bay Wetland.
At the landing site, the water becomes the road.
Boat operators call out to customers. Some boats use engines; others move by paddle. Passenger boats prepare to carry people and merchandise towards Bussi Island. Fishing boats come and go. Old wooden boats rest along the papyrus shore beside abandoned fishing nets.
Women cook.
Others run shops and restaurants.
Some sit beneath trees watching the landing site, waiting for the fishermen to arrive with fish.
When a vehicle carrying potential passengers appears, the boat operators rush towards it, competing for the customer.
Tourism has created another economy here.
A boda boda stage has grown near the Shoebill Park, waiting for visitors emerging from the wetland.
Guesthouses and eco-tourism facilities are appearing around the area. Shops are sprouting near the landing site.
The bird has become part of the local economy.
But so has everything else.
A boat operator takes an old plastic bottle, cuts it into a scoop and uses it to empty water from his wooden boat. He wipes the inside with an old piece of cloth before passengers climb aboard.
Nothing is wasted easily here.
Even a discarded bottle can become a tool.
Into the papyrus
Inside the MWETA office, we met the young office attendant who put us in touch with the association’s chairperson and founder of Mabamba Shoebill Park, Hannington Kasasa. He took us through the dos and don’ts before handing us over to Francis Odwori, a tour guide.
Towards evening, we boarded a boat for the Shoebill experience.
The engine started.
I sat behind the guide, the boat operator behind me, and the cameraman at the front, his camera pointed towards the channels ahead.
The noise of the landing site slowly disappeared.
Papyrus rose on either side of us. Water weeds floated between the narrow channels. Birds appeared in the reeds and disappeared again. Fishermen paddled through the wetland. Cargo boats returning from Bussi Island moved across the water.
Other tourist boats passed us, their guides pointing out birds to visitors.
Then our guide, Odwori, suddenly pointed ahead.
“There is the Shoebill.”
The boat turned.
Slowly.
Then the engine went off.
We drifted.
Our eyes searched the edge of the swamp.
And there it was.
Still.
Not simply standing; almost suspended in time.
The Shoebill stood at the water’s edge like a statue, its enormous bill pointed towards the water and its eyes fixed on something invisible to us.
Nobody needed to be told to be quiet.
We stared.
We photographed it.
We filmed it.
The guide explained its hunting behaviour, but for a moment the explanations seemed unnecessary. The bird itself had become the story.
We left it there and continued towards its nest.
The chick
After navigating another channel, we reached the nest.
A young Shoebill was there.
The guide estimated that the chick was about three and a half months old.
It watched us.
Occasionally, it stood and wobbled on its legs. Then it stretched its wings and folded them again before lowering itself back down.
There was something almost comical about the awkwardness of a young bird that will eventually grow into one of Africa’s most imposing wetland predators.
We took photographs.
Then we turned back.
The evening light was beginning to change.
We had left its mother standing in one place.
Would she still be there?
She was.
Only a few steps from where we had left her.
Still waiting.
The hunt
Then the Shoebill moved.
Its body lowered slightly.
Its head came closer to the water.
And suddenly the enormous shoe-shaped bill disappeared beneath the surface.
Seconds later it emerged carrying a large lungfish.
The fish fought violently.
It wiggled.
Its tail swung from side to side.
The Shoebill did not release it.
Nearby fishermen stopped paddling to watch.
Their boats became still.
For a few moments, we were all watching the same thing.
A bird hunting in the wetland.
A fish fighting for its life.
The Shoebill finally swallowed it.
Slowly.
The fish disappeared inch by inch down the bird’s throat.
Then the Shoebill dipped its head into the water and scooped a little water into its bill.
Another swallow.
Then another.
And once again it stood still.
As if nothing had happened.
That is perhaps the strange genius of the Shoebill.
It can turn stillness into suspense.
You wait for it to move.
Then, when it finally does, the entire wetland seems to move with it.
This bird has a name
It was after the hunt that Odwori told us something we had not known.
This particular Shoebill was called Sazzi.
The name belonged to a fisherman.
In 2018, according to the guide, the bird had swallowed a large fish that became lodged in its throat. The fisherman noticed that the Shoebill remained in one place for an unusually long time.
He went about his fishing.
But when he returned and found the bird still there, something seemed wrong.
He alerted the guides.
The guides contacted wildlife officials.
The bird was taken to the Uganda Wildlife Conservation Education Centre in Entebbe, where it was treated before being returned to Mabamba.
When it came back, the community celebrated.
They named it after the fisherman who had noticed that something was wrong.
Sazzi.
The Shoebill now wears a ring on its left leg.
We had come looking for a bird.
We had found a story about a bird, a fisherman and a community that had decided that this particular bird was worth remembering.
Back at CBS trading centre, the mood became livelier as darkness approached. Chapatti stalls opened. Chicken was roasted. Chips were fried. Shops stayed open. Music began spilling into the night.
Mabamba after the tourists leave
Day two.
Back at the landing site, the day was changing again.
Boats were parked along the shore. Operators and guides waited for their next customers. Two women sat in the Shoebill Park, their eyes fixed on the landing site, waiting for the next catch.
Fishermen paddled back through the wetland.
Children played football nearby.
A boda boda rider told us that Kasanje had changed.
“Big people are coming here and buying land,” he said.
Entebbe Airport is across the lake.
From parts of Mabamba, he said, you can see it.
His passenger offered another measure of the change: land prices are rising, gardens are disappearing, and houses are spreading into spaces that were once cultivated.
The wetland is not standing still.
Neither is the community around it.
The price of a beautiful bird
This is where the Shoebill becomes more than a tourist attraction.
People come to Mabamba to see it.
Fishermen depend on the same water.
Boat operators earn from taking visitors to it.
Guides make a living explaining it.
Women sell food to people who come looking for it.
Boda boda riders transport those visitors.
Lodges and guesthouses are emerging to accommodate them.
The bird has created an economy around its existence.
But the same landscape is also changing.
We saw plastic bottles floating among the vegetation. Half-cut jerrycans and sacks had found their way into the wetland. We were told fishermen use plastic bottles to float fishing nets.
At the Shoebill Park, however, the local association maintains dustbins and says it cleans the site regularly.
This is the contradiction at the heart of Mabamba.
The wetland feeds people.
The Shoebill attracts visitors.
Visitors bring money.
Development brings houses, roads and businesses.
And all of these things depend, in different ways, on the same landscape.
The question is not simply whether people love the Shoebill.
It is whether the wetland can continue supporting both the bird and the people who depend on it.
The forest above Mabamba
Away from the swamp, Nkima Forest offers another glimpse of the landscape.
From the forest we watched monkeys move between trees. Hornbills appeared. The great blue turacos called from somewhere among the foliage. And then they chased each other from tree to tree. Eagles circled above. Small birds moved through the canopy. Frogs called from below.
Then came a light drizzle.
For a moment the landscape seemed to exhale.
From above, Mabamba looked different.
The wetland, the settlement, the roads and the lake were no longer separate things. They were pieces of one landscape.
The Shoebill was only one resident.
Humans were another.
Evening across the water
We left Mabamba at about 6 pm.
By 6:30, we were back near the ferry landing.
On our way in, the road had been dusty enough for the air to taste of murrum. On the way back, rain had fallen, settling the dust and smoothing the road.
The government ferry had already stopped operating for the day. It was docked at Buwaya landing site.
So we paid Shs3,000 each for a private boat to take us back towards Nakiwogo.
Darkness settled over Lake Victoria.
Across the water, lights from Entebbe Airport reflected on the surface.
For a moment, they looked like a line of lamps leading somewhere through the darkness.
Behind us was Mabamba.
The restaurants.
The fishermen.
The children.
The boda bodas.
The boats.
The papyrus.
The forest.
And somewhere inside that wetland was Sazzi.
The Shoebill that once nearly died after swallowing a fish.
The Shoebill whose rescue became a community story.
The Shoebill that can stand motionless for minutes, while everything around it keeps moving.
Perhaps that is the best way to understand Mabamba.
You arrive looking for a bird.
You leave having met a place.
