Comfort and Courage
Today, my phobia for water has given me a wonderful experience! A memorable ride. This ride to Lakeside Escape Hotel, after getting off the Kampala – Mukono highway is mostly through woods on a marram road, aside the occasional homesteads I can see through my dim headlights. The road is narrow and the car severally kisses the undergrowth which protrudes from the woods. I raise my door glasses in case of reptiles as I wheel through the bends that wind their way into the depth of the silent woods.
At every new turn, my mind recites a line or two from Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. My connection with nature is remarkable. I can hear a few birds still chirping. My spirit is elated! “Maybe I have made the right choice to step out of the hyperactive Kampala and take a seldom taken road to a ‘Me’ kind of time”, I muse. I severally catch myself slowing down to enable my eyes gather moments for my memory of the woods even when darkness is already beginning to fall. I make a mental calculation from the readings of the last hotel signpost. I still have over 12 kilometers to ride but I do not tell how fast the car has eaten them up; I am at the hotel gate.
The ways in which this retreat has touched my life are inconceivable!
The Experience at this CivSource-organised retreat is not about to disappoint me! Not with the breathtaking space that the venue is; by the waters of famous Victoria, breezing life into our existence. Not with the green which, from the horizons, seems to connect the skies with the waters below. Not with Penny’s artistic creation that has invented a room so full of colour, light, space, poetry, and feminist fragrance. Not with close to 30 women willing to share selflessly and courageously of experiences only their hearts have fathomed. It is not about to let me down with Hope C’s unstinted sessions on Chakra’s, and the “Me” moments to self-discovery, redefinition which the sessions have ignited. Not with the revitalization of our leadership energies, and ability to feel that as women in leadership, we are “healing” together.
The team from CivSource punctuate the peculiarly beautiful happenings in this place with more extraordinary love, care and attention to participants’ detail. I will share one anecdote;
On many occasions, I see Jackie Asiimwe, the CEO of CivSource take a baby out of the arms of one of the participants, take him out and soothe him to comfort to lessen his distractions to the mother. She focuses on the Chakras more, and I can tell she is more at ease. I am beaten by this level of humility! Perhaps feminism is not only about the big and hard stuff that we do for women.
The ways in which this retreat has touched my life are inconceivable! It has given me absolute comfort and courage that not many things in this world have ever had the power to offer me! I enjoy having taken this road through the woods which less have traveled. I hope that for those who chose to ride on the boat too, the retreat has made all the difference.
By Juliet Kushaba
