Ugandan dude -ess

Last Saturday we all went to a party to celebrate 10 years of Red Chilli Hideaway. It's a chain of backpacker hostels run by my friend Debbie. I met Debbie about 9 months ago, queuing to get Emma a new passport in the British High Commission. We hit it off straight away - same height, Brit, likes talking, and as it happened, her kid was due to be in the same class as Emma at school.
Unlike us swan-in, swan-out NGO types, Debbie arrived in Uganda twelve years ago on some post-university travel and never left. (She did go back to the UK for a year, but we'll get to that bit.) She got together with Steve, who was working for the British High Commission at the time. But he was fed up of diplomatic life, and together they decided to start Red Chilli.

They bought some land, with some "derelict buildings" on it, a few kilometres from Kampala city centre and started rennovating. "Derelict buildings" is Debbie's expression, but that's generous: the photos reveal only two out of four brick walls with some grass in the middle.

The tourism business anywhere requires tenacity and nerves of steel, but especially in Uganda where political instability, fraud, unreliable infrastructure, and a tonne of red tape are par for the course. "It was one step forward, two steps back," said Debbie ruefully in her speech. Then in 1999, eight tourists were massacred by Rwandan Hutu rebels in Bwindi forest, home of the mountain gorillas and probably Uganda's biggest tourist attraction. Debbie had met some of them, having passed through Red Chilli en route. (Following their rescue, the survivors turned down a night at the Sheraton and asked to go back to Red Chilli instead.) Tourism to Uganda dried up overnight, but they persevered, and opened a second Red Chilli opened in Murchison Falls National Park.

In November 2005 Steve was in Murchison when he received a distress call from some rafters. On his way to help them, Steve was ambushed by the Lord's Resistance Army. He was shot in the heart, and died instantly. Debbie was in Kampala at the time with their two-year-old son. Two hours after learning of Steve's death, she found out she was pregnant. Grieving, she went back to the UK for a year, to give birth to her daughter. But she didn't stay. "I couldn't allow the dream to die with Steve," she said. So she came back.

Things are far from easy, but on the whole Red Chili does a roaring trade. I bump into Debbie most days at school. When I ask if she's tired, she replies "yeah well I was doing the accounts all night and then Zoe woke up three times..". Running a successful business and mothering toddlers are stressful enough - then I remind myself she is also a widow. Sharp, funny, self-deprecating, down-to-earth too. Impressive woman indeed.