Adventures With Amelia

[2/3/2026 – 2/6/2026]

Tuesday night through Friday morning, we stayed at a beautiful hotel in Ntungamo, Ankole Resort and Spa. The hotel was clean and lovely, with a great bar, excellent service, and a good mix of Ugandan and Western food.

This was where I learned about Ugandan rolling blackouts.

The first night, as I unpacked and figured out the electric situation – it involves adapters and converters and constant anxiety about starting a fire – as soon as I plugged in my CPAP, the entire resort lost power. “Oh, no. I blew something up! Do I smell smoke? No, Amy, that’s just in your head. What do I do? Fr. Alfred is gone, so I have no interpreter. They’re going to make me leave. Do they have fire alarms in Ugandan hotels? Are there safety standards at Ugandan hotels so we don’t die?” I envisioned newspaper headlines: “Dumb American with Sleep Apnea Burns Down Resort.” I decided to read by the light of my phone, keep watch for signs of disaster, and let the staff figure it out.

Within 15 minutes, the power came back on. “Whew,” I thought. “They handled my idiocy.” With no obvious signs of fire in my room, I was flooded with immense relief. The relief quickly turned to renewed anxiety when I realized my brand-new CPAP was probably fried along with my power adaptor and the room’s wiring. As I mentally calculated the cost of a new sleep machine, and psychologically prepared to try and navigate the rest of this trip without sleep, I hesitatingly plugged the CPAP back in. It worked!

After all that stress, I needed a drink, so I headed to the hotel bar. Perusing the menu, imagine my shock when the POWER WENT OUT AGAIN. “Oh, no. I left the CPAP plugged in. These people are going to hate me. I’m an embarrassment to Father. If that stupid CPAP machine wasn’t destroyed the first time, it’s certainly burned up now.”

As my heart raced and panic set in, I noticed the hotel staff and other patrons going about their business, continuing conversations, washing dishes, and using their phones for flashlights, as if it were normal to be thrust into total darkness on a Tuesday night during dinner. “Huh. That’s interesting. Nobody is reacting to the power going out,” I thought.

When the server came over via cell phone flashlight, I asked him, “Does this happen often?” He responded in his best English, “Yes. Every day. Much times.” Flooded by the realization that I had not caused the blackouts and my CPAP was saved, I could have kissed the man. It was later that Father and Cindy told me about Ugandan rolling blackouts. Although I lost a few years off my life worried that I had started not one, but two fires in this resort, ultimately, crisis was averted.

Hotel pictures:

Lesson learned: when one attempts to order wine by the glass in Uganda, one is laughed at and given an entire bottle … to drink alone.

The room I did not burn down:

That is mosquito netting hanging over the bed. Every place we stayed had it. Strangely, though, I only saw a mosquito once and I did not have any mosquito bites throughout the trip.

Whilst staying at the hotel, one evening we returned to find the parking lot full of military vehicles and highly-armed soldiers milling about. By “highly-armed,” I mean that they casually had fully automatic machine guns slung across their backs. My body immediately tried to panic. Instead, I looked at Father and took my queues from him. He did not seem concerned, so I took a deep breath, exited the car and twenty Ugandan men carrying machine guns turned around and stared straight at me. I lit up my best Irish girl smile, threw my shoulders back, made direct eye contact with as many as I could, and sashayed across that parking lot like I owned the place. I wanted to show them I was going to go down with a fight.

Father did some inquiring. It turns out there were high-ranking politicians staying at our hotel, and they had armed guards. I had an internal debate if the presence of heavily guarded politicians was comforting or not. From a hotel perspective, it was a compliment to the hotel that high-ranking ministers were there; but, from a personal standpoint, it was disconcerting, because ARE THAT MANY MACHINE GUNS REALLY NECESSARY? I wanted to be nowhere near whatever trouble they were expecting. Later, I changed my mind, thinking I could have some fun with the situation, so I parked myself with a book and wine on the veranda hoping to meet a politician or two. Alas, it was to no avail. They never left their rooms.