Last week I wrote about how the East African Community has great potential for religious tourism and how this can help to diversify the sector away from the story of typical lions and gorilla tales. The article is still part of my tourism series because of late I am giving tourism a lot more space in my mind than the politics in the region.

A few days after my article had appeared here, I got a sweet surprise. As I was moving around Kigali minding my own business, my eyes caught a familiar sight, a school bus. Not just any school bus but one that belongs to one of the schools I attended for my primary education – St Savio Junior School, Kisubi.

I stopped and walked to where the bus was and it got more interesting, two more buses were now in sight, belonging to Mugwanya Preparatory School, Kabojja and Uganda Martyrs Primary School, Lubaga. These three schools in Uganda are run by the Brothers of Christian Instruction who also run other Catholic-based schools in Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania.

As I was walking around the buses I noticed the driver of the St Savio Junior School bus, a gentleman called Musisi, because he was a driver when I was also a pupil at the same school more than 20 years ago. He was shocked that I could still pick him out from the crowd and for my photographic memory of the school in the late 80s and early 90s.

Anyway so we sat for a chat with Musisi and he told me they had brought primary school pupils for a pilgrimage to the site of the Virgin Mary apparitions in Kibeho, Rwanda. Three buses full of school children from Uganda to a religious site in Rwanda. I couldn’t have asked for more.

These little ones now know that when it comes to religious sites worth a pilgrimage, there is more to it than just Namugongo in Uganda. When I was at the school, the idea of school trips was never more than a visit to the zoo in Entebbe, the then industrial town of Jinja or the Uganda Martyrs’ Shrine in Namugongo. I bet these little ones now want to visit other East African countries as well.

A day after bumping into the young Kibeho pilgrims from Uganda, I got on a bus to Kampala to attend Uganda’s second Social Media Summit, an event that brings together those willing to learn, teach or share experiences on how the best practices when it comes to social media usage.

If you can excuse my vanity here, as one the people who put the summit together, it was a great success and more importantly it touched on the tourism aspect of social media. It cannot be emphasised enough that indeed, tourism is East Africa’s oil and we have to find ways of marketing it better and enhancing people’s experiences.

Two of the key speakers at the summit, Simon Kaheru and Amos Wekesa, a PR guru and a tourism expert respectively, called on everyone to populate social media with nice photos of their country because destination marketing on social media is almost free. As long as you are on the internet you can show the rest of the world that your country is beautiful and others should visit it.

Before the days of social media destination marketing was mainly on the big TV channels like CNN and we know that costs more than an arm and a leg. But today individuals on social media can influence people’s perspectives about a country simply through what they share on social media.

We have all seen the pictures of Magical Kenya on Twitter; lots of nice pictures of Rwanda and Tanzania, Ugandans now have different campaigns like #Ondaba #KoiKoi where beautiful pictures are shared online.

Burundi too has not been left out and some Burundians on Twitter (often referred to as #Abatwip) share amazing pictures of their country to show that it is not all about conflict. Most of the pictures are so beautiful they make you want to run and chill by the shores of Lake Tanganyika and devour some Mukeke fish and wash it down with a cold drink.  

Well the festive season is now here and it would be great to share images of the wonderful places we shall be relaxing at with friends and family so the rest of the world can see why they too should drop by.