Uganda's Nyege Nyege Festival kicks off to a muddy, controversial start

Uganda's Nyege Nyege Festival kicks off to a muddy, controversial start

Some of the sleeping quarters at the Nyege Nyege Festival. Photo by @danx_tusiime

The much-anticipated for Nyege Nyege Festival has run into trouble after disgruntled fans went online to decry the sorry state of affairs at the Itanda Falls, Uganda.

Thousands of fans booked en masse, hoping to retire into swanky wooden cottages - that from the online advertising looked like cute little spaces - after a wild night of uproarious partying and heavy drinking.

The 'wooden cottages' however, turned out to be far from the real thing as people trooped to Twitter to share photos of ridiculously shambolic cardboard shacks, with tiny beds, creaky doors, mabati roofing, thin walls and barely-there grass carpet.

A Twitter user going by the username @danx_tusiime kicked off the online tirade claiming that, after paying a staggering UGX 3 million (Ksh.95,000) for the falsely-advertised wooden cottages, the rooms she retired to were a far cry from the chocolate-box images they'd seen on the website.

"This is the cottage. No power! No water! No toilet! No shower! No lock on the doors! These cottages sold out! Wow @NyegenyegeFest #Scam! Imagine people are flying in to find this!" she tweeted with a photo of a tiny, dilapidated village bush hut with two pocket-sized beds arranged randomly.

https://twitter.com/danx_tusiime/status/1570494625638645760?t=rNx-X9PI61P4XRyyeejNeQ&s=19

The disappointed Twitter user also said that some revellers from South Africa were forced to leave as they waited for rooms for hours.

Kenyan Influencer @Lencer_B also jumped on Twitter to share photos of the poorly-structured 'bathrooms' which featured no doors and no floor, with patches of grass sticking out of the wet earth.

https://twitter.com/lencer_b/status/1570668941223297024?s=48&t=u8OBnKF8wsUX_DoTxbLvhg

The toilets, too, were a comical display of insipid incompetence and appaling carelessness, with a movable wooden stair placed in front of the tastelessly-done bathroom shanties.

The Nyege Nyege Festival, going down at Itanda Falls, Jinja, will be on for the next three days.

Party-lovers from all over the world have trooped to Uganda to attend the now-infamous percussion-filled fest with a hodgepodge of over 300 artists drawn from across the world set to play and entertain revellers.

While some people have commiserated with the unfortunate fun-lovers, others have seen no problem with the accommodation set up since the event is being held in the muddy bush and it's a non-permanent situation anyway.

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Uganda Citizen Digital nyege nyege festival Jinja cardboard shacks

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