Unperturbed by the stares around, women left their flapped breasts dangle out naked, suspending right from their chests to stomachs as if they were paper bags holding water. Only wet see-through –half slips tightly gripped their buttocks and private parts as men in only underpants sat amidst them.

They all kept soaking their feet in warm water as they splashed the same water that seemed to be flowing right from stones all over their bodies.

A way from the spring, goats and cattle graze as a man with most likely his wife and three children weeded a garden of millet a ...

Unperturbed by the stares around, women left their flapped breasts dangle out naked, suspending right from their chests to stomachs as if they were paper bags holding water. Only wet see-through –half slips tightly gripped their buttocks and private parts as men in only underpants sat amidst them.

They all kept soaking their feet in warm water as they splashed the same water that seemed to be flowing right from stones all over their bodies.

A way from the spring, goats and cattle graze as a man with most likely his wife and three children weeded a garden of millet a few meters away unbothered. “Kitagata hot spring, the spring we studied about in high school,” I recalled.

We had originally traveled to Kitagata Sub County in the southwestern district of Bushenyi to attend a burial ceremony of one of our friend’s kid. Thanks to the teacher who taught “summary” to the reverend who led the burial ceremony. The ceremony was as brief as the word sounds. Since we had hired the taxi driver for eight hours, we had at least two hours to fritter away after burial before our eight hours are completed.

“Kitagata hot spring now,” I guess is what came onto most of our hearts exactly after the reverend pronounced the burial ceremony closed. There was no negotiation on this deal. The five males and seven females, that comprised our delegation, of course including the driver of the minibus we had hired left for the much-talked about Kitagata hot spring.

As we drove to the spring, our driver whose appearance manifested a person in the evening hours of his life narrated to us stories of how Ankole kingdom’s kings used to bathe in this hot spring naked during the colonial times, as their subjects watched.

Muddy road

Initially I had no interest in this gray bearded driver apart from him driving us safely on the muddy and pothole filled road from Kabwohe town to Kitagata Sub County. However, when he started narrating stories surrounding Kitagata hot spring, I had to inquire what his name was. “Farook,” the woman who helped to hire the minibus for us told me.

Farook narrated to us how several people he knows had drunk water from this hot spring and got cured of several diseases. What amused me is the story told by one of the women we traveled with. Jennifer as she is known said women fetch hot water from this hot spring to drink it not just because they are sick rather to help them be watery while in bed. She narrated how several women she knows drank water from this spring and stopped complaining of any dryness in their private parts while in bed with their husbands. Hardly had she stopped than I saw some of the women in the minibus looking keenly at their empty mineral water bottles. “They probably want to fetch some water too for this propose,” I thought.

With all these tells, what I wanted to see next was nothing other than Kitagata Hot spring. After about 45 minutes, we arrived at the spring. The naked children, the half naked women and men, no one seemed bothered with our arrival!

Yohana Niwewenka, a man aged about 40 volunteered to take us around the spring. I stood aside watching in amazement as an old woman probably in her 70s ask an old man also in his 70s to scrub her back before splashing warm water there.

28 naked female and male children, old women and men sat contentedly on stones within the spring which seemed hot by the way. Some happily splashed the warm water around their bodies. Others bathed in the spring unbothered.

According to Yohana’s narration, the persons who were in the spring were suffering from different diseases.

Even though they claimed to be sick, their facial expression was probably a manifestation of satisfied human beings. “They perhaps think that Kitagata hot spring water is going to cure them of their ailments,” I thought.

I pulled out my hands from the pockets of my jeans. Seconds later, I was folding my long sleeves as something urged me to dip my hands in the warm water. The guys I had looked at me in amusement. I felt the urge growing. I folded my trousers seconds before removing my open shows.

I clearly remember the sweetness of the warm water I felt in my right hand as I folded my fingers right inside the water to fetch it to wash my feet. I was standing on a stone with my flat shoes next to me. “Just warmth,” I remember asking my self. May be I had expected a lot.

Enunciation

I remembered Yohana’s tales that while in the water, people enunciate quietly their diseases to get healed. “Ulcers,” I said quietly. Four month alter I washed my feet in Uganda’s magic water, I still suffer from ulcers! May be the magic water didn’t work on me because I washed the wrong apart of my body which actually was not sick. But certainly the magic water helped me to get rid of one thing that was on my feet. The dust! We had acquired this dust during the burial ceremony. Nothing remained.

As I continued to wash my feet enthusiastically, the impression I got was that the water was just warm. However what scared me was not the warmness of the water. It was the wounds and skin rashes I observed on the skins of some of the men and women that had their bodies soaked in the water.

This took away my wonderful feelings. “May be the magic water which people think cures diseases, spreads them instead,” I thought. Away from this point of the spring, two women we travelled with fetched secretly water from the hottest point of the spring into their empty mineral water bottles.

As we returned to our minibus ready to return to Kampala, we asked the two ladies where they were taking the hot water they had fetched in their mineral water bottles. The answer we got was just a simple laugh.

Located about 370 kilometers from Uganda’s capital Kampala, in the south western region, Kitagata hot spring in Bushenyi district still leaves both local and foreigners in awe after 102 years when it was discovered by a hunter.