The Pope's visit and our potential for religious tourism

The East African region has been in a very pious mood this past week. The very popular and much loved Pope Francis visited Kenya and then Uganda before concluding his trip to this continent with Central Africa Republic. The region has hosted other Heads of State but the Pope always remains a bigger attraction. I was young but I still clearly remember the time when Pope John Paul II visited Uganda in 1993. We had to wake up at 4am in order to be at the Namugongo Martyrs Shrine in time for the mass celebrated by the Pope. This time round we saw images of even more people flocking to Namugongo and University of Nairobi. With the Pope in East Africa, global attention was right here with all major media houses running a story or two about his visit and the countries he visited. As expected there was the usual negative coverage by Fox News and CNN who chose to run with the angles on the continent being war torn and the issue of gay rights respectively. Those with some internet data bundles to waste took to the tired #SomeoneTellFoxNews and #SomeoneTellCNN. I have always argued that we should focus on telling our stories better instead of telling CNN or Fox News what to do. We need to invest in the media industry, train our journalists and pay them well so as to raise our standards, that way our people will not have to rely on CNN or Fox News for news about their own societies. It is high time we stopped outsourcing our story telling role to people steeped in bias and sensationalism. Meanwhile did you even know that an estimated 300 to 330 million pilgrims visit the world’s key religious sites every year according to statistics from the World Tourism Organisation. Of course by key religious sites they mean Mecca, Madinah, Karbala, Jerusalem and Varanasi and not Namugongo (Uganda) or Kibeho (Rwanda). In case you did not know, tourism is the real oil for East Africa. The potential is so huge and with the proper conservation and management structures it is a resource we can exploit for so many years to come. Religious tourism is an area that has not been taken as serious as wildlife tourism and yet the potential is enormous. Every year, pilgrims from around the world travel to Namugongo but it is largely seen as a religious event and not viewed with tourism lenses. You never hear of tour operators advertising it the way they do for the trips people make to Jerusalem or Mecca. Different Catholic parishes often bear the burden of organising those who will make the trip. There aren’t that many hotels near the Martyrs shrine to cater for the mass of people who visit annually because again we think it is just a religious event not a tourism one. How myopic. I have seen pilgrims from Rwanda heading to Namugongo on several occasions but I have never heard of any of the bus operators putting aside a bus to take people there. As the Pope visited Namugongo to commemorate its 50th anniversary, in Rwanda, it was the 34th anniversary of the Virgin Mary apparitions in Kibeho, a town found south of Rwanda, which is also a key religious site in East Africa. I first heard about Kibeho from a devout Catholic auntie of mine. Again this site is not marketed the way Jerusalem or Mecca is marketed to us. When we do not market our key religious sites we miss out on so much. Even in Uganda, it is just occurring to some that places like Munyonyo also have sites where the famous Uganda Martyrs were killed because the little publicity is often saved for Namugongo. The good thing is that Uganda and Rwanda are waking up to the need to market religious tourism with Namugongo and Kibeho in mind. If Namugongo can be an attraction that sees three Popes visiting Uganda then why not market it fully. People should be able to visit this place not just for the Martyrs day in June. The people near these sites should also think of home stays if the hotels are not ready. We need to diversify our tourism sector and market it in all angles possible. We have more to offer than gorillas or lions. And this is the kind of story we should be telling instead of shouting at CNN or Fox News. The onus is on our media houses to give more space to tourism stories.

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The Pope's visit and our potential for religious tourism