In order to conserve and promote the Island`s rich legacy to other parties of the world, recently a cultural museum that has never existed before has been set up in Kalangala. Kalangala`s legacy spreads from the royal regalia in the Bukasa and Bubembe shrines, the tree species where the royal mace is shaped nature and forest walks in forests and landscape, birding and many more activities.
Among the district`s interests, Mapeera site is included where the first missionaries Amans Delamans and Simeone Loudel built the first Catholic Church in Uganda, Nanziri waterfalls and Wanema shrine on Bukasa Island, several caves, the John Speke site in Lutoboka and the Ssese tree. But majority of the tourism sites and regalia had been left out, covering hundreds of years of history in scrubs and ignorance.
The district local government has now hooked up with the Buganda Kingdom through its culture and tourism ministry with assistance of John Ssempebwa the former Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Uganda Tourism Board to establish a museum which will also work as information centre for locals and tourist visiting the Island district.
Ssempebwa said that the museum will also have a cultural restaurant where visitors will taste the Ssese fineness including fish mixed with matooke, a meal locally known as a kabeero and the edible beetles (Amasiinya) among other activities. He also added that presently the central region gets less than 10% of the total tourism earnings for the country because many of the tourist attractions have been deserted. Uganda gets up to USD 1.5 billion (about 5.5 trillion shillings) from tourism every year.
Willy Lugoloobi the Kalangala district chairperson is confident that the move will enable them to utilise the tourism potential of the Island and greatly improve their local revenues. The district produces 438 million shillings every year in revenues.
Gladys Nabukenya the district tourism officer says that they expect to get up to 100 million shillings from the instituted museum in the first year alone if every tourist who gets to the Island district visit the museum. She also said that their district engineering department is evaluating the artistic impression of the museum. But even in its current state they expect each tourist to pay 10000 shillings to learn about their culture.
The chairperson of the Kalangala Tour Guide Association Thomson Otim says that there is also need to improve on transport and tourism sites in the outlying islands such that people who sight the ability of Kalangala through the museum can easily get to the sites for value addition and further revenue generations.
