As Americans driving across Uganda for the previous week, we had gotten used to groups of children screaming and waving at our car. But nowhere were the children as excited to see us as on the road from Kasese to Ibanda and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) headquarters for Rwenzori Mountains National Park. Many chased after our car with exuberance as we drove past.

Tourists used to come up this road frequently to climb the mountains, and they left behind hundreds of dollars in park fees, porters' and guides' salaries, and payment for food, equipment, and lodging. However, the activities of Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels in and around the park forced UWA to close the mountains to the public in July 1997. Since then, only a handful of tourists had driven past the villages on this road. And their absence had devastated the local economy, by depriving 1,000 people who worked as porters and guides of their employment and depriving other businesses of their best customers.

The children were indeed on to something; now the tourists were returning. We were accompanying UWA officials and other journalists on a preliminary two-day trek up the mountains on June 20-21. UPDF Chief of Staff Brig. James Kazini had told us the mountains were now safe; we were trekking ourselves to evaluate this claim, as well as the conditions of the trails and huts. Should UWA's and the journalists' reports be positive, the park would reopen July 2, and, presumably, hordes of mountain climbers would eagerly descend on Uganda once more.

We were in Uganda to write about the rebirth of tourism in the aftermath of the Bwindi massacre of 1999, and we envisioned our trek as the basis for a travel story for a U.S. magazine about the wonders and dangers of climbing the Rwenzoris. Probably the UWA officials anticipated the same. And indeed, the park was breathtaking, the most beautiful place we had ever seen. Dr. Colleen Hogg, experienced Kenyan mountain climber and managing director of Travel Review Ltd., who continued beyond our two-day trek and climbed up Mt. Speke, told us after her return from the park, "It's stunning. The word is pathetic, it's not good enough."

The park's reopening had the makings of a wonderful, upbeat story: the beautiful and challenging Mountains of the Moon reopen as security in the park is ensured, thrilling mountain climbers, rejuvenating the moribund local economy, and giving Uganda's tourism industry a needed boost. And we were prepared to write that story -- if it was true.

The truth that we discovered, however, is more complicated. The Rwenzori Mountaineering Services (RMS) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) to which the porters and guides belong, and to which UWA, in 1993, gave a 30-year concession to provide exclusive mountaineering services for climbers of the Rwenzoris. While the porters and guides of Ibanda and the surrounding areas will again be paid to lead tourists up the mountains, a new system is supposed to take effect starting on August 1. RMS will be turned into a company and will merge with the companies AfrikAlpine and Top Trekk to form ARTMC.

During the first years of their concession, RMS executives had misappropriated funds that USAID donated to renovate the mountains' huts and they had failed to pay UWA the park fees they had collected from climbers. A clause in the contract RMS had signed with UWA stated that if RMS was performing below par, UWA could cancel the concession. Though UWA officials had not taken any action against RMS during the first few years the park was closed due to insecurity, they began to reconsider as the park prepared to open.

According to Zahid Alam, a member of the Board of Trustees of UWA, chairman of the Alam Group, and director of the Inns of Uganda (IOU), he was given a mandate by board chairman Reverend Yeko Ongora-Atwai last year to look into RMS's operations. In the course of his research, Alam visited Kasese, the location of RMS headquarters, where he found RMS Chairman Teddy Desiderio. "When he saw me, he was happy," said Desiderio. "He knew we were not the old RMS." Desiderio served on the UWA Board with Alam in 1996 and 1997.

After the visit, Alam recommended to the UWA Board that RMS should keep its concession, arguing that the large majority of RMS members should not be blamed for the corruption of a few individuals, who were no longer with the organization.

Then Alam contacted Desiderio again to introduce AfrikAlpine and Top Trekk, two companies which, he told Desiderio, would increase the capacity of RMS's operation and modernize their guide training and their accommodations. Paul Tremmel, the director of AfrikAlpine and owner of half its shares, is a friend of Alam's. Alam told us he has known Tremmel for five or six years.

RMS signed the initial consortium agreement with the two companies in January. "There were no other alternatives," said Desiderio. "We were down on our knees begging for the park to be open, but UWA was refusing to reopen the park with RMS as the sole concessionaire."

However, as we reported yesterday (See Scandal brews over Rwenzori tour firms, The Monitor, July 16) there are questions about the validity of the agreement. RMS executives violated the organization's constitution by attempting to convert RMS from an NGO to a limited company without notifying-let alone seeking approval from-its membership. "I'm shocked at what's taking place," said Johnson Bwambale, one of the drafters of RMS's constitution in 1987 and a current RMS member. "The merger has come in the form of compromising the indigenous people of the area."

In addition, when the companies of AfrikAlpine and Top Trekk were officially formed as limited companies, both on March 13, 2001, the same person apparently signed for both company's co-owners in each company's memorandum and articles of association, as provided to us by the Registrar of Companies. According to a Kampala commercial lawyer, the signatures were clearly made by the same person, and if they were, the companies should be struck from the Register. He added that the forgery of the signatures is a criminal offense.

Our attempts to reach Charles Majoli, the advocate who drew up the memoranda for both companies, were unsuccessful. When we visited the address given for his firm on the memoranda, we could not locate him.

There are other irregularities in the formation of the consortium. Jesper Fiedler, who has represented Top Trekk in negotiations and owns 50 percent of the company, is also a close friend of Tremmel, according to AfrikAlpine operations manager Claus Dettelbacher. However, in meetings with RMS to form the consortium, Tremmel represented both AfrikAlpine and Top Trekk until RMS executives demanded that Top Trekk be represented by one of its owners, an attendee of the meetings told us. On the initial consortium agreement signed in January, which we have seen, Paul Tremmel signed for both AfrikAlpine and Top Trekk.

Gerald Kakuba, who originally put up 1,000,000 USh to purchase 50 percent of AfrikAlpine, is an advocate of the courts and counsel to Alam. Kakuba told us that Alam approached him and asked him to help float AfrikAlpine because they needed a local contact. Kakuba claims that he has since sold his shares to Dettelbacher. Dettelbacher told us the sale has not yet occurred.

Alam and Kakuba did not wish to comment for this article.

AfrikAlpine was described to us by UWA tourism development manager Lilly Ajarova as having an international network and a marketing system in place. However, Tremmel has no experience in tourism nor has he worked professionally in mountaineering. AfrikAlpine's marketing plan, which is supposed to reach all of Europe, currently consists of using its connections to a medium-sized Austrian Alpine company called No Limit, and AfrikAlpine's bare-bones website.

Top Trekk, meanwhile, is charged with marketing the Rwenzoris to North America, Africa, and Asia, but we could not locate either of its two owners to talk about their plans. Representatives of RMS and AfrikAlpine were stumped when we asked them how we could contact Top Trekk. Fiedler frequently takes clients on safaris, and one such trip precluded him from attending the official opening of the park on July 2, in a press conference at the Kampala Sheraton. We have been told he will return in late July. We have also been told that Craddock Williams, co-owner of Top Trekk, is out of the country.

The two companies' inexperience was in evidence at the press conference. The consortium had originally planned to charge the same $US900 to clients who booked directly or through tour operators, rather than paying commissions to the tour operators. This infuriated a number of the operators, who loudly objected to the arrangement and disrupted what UWA intended to be a celebration of the park's reopening. ARTMC later negotiated a 10 percent commission. Tour operators have also complained to us and to The Monitor (July 10) that raising the price of trekking from $350 before the park's closing to $900 will make the mountains difficult to sell.

After the press conference, a number of tour operators questioned why two companies with limited experience were sharing in the concession. Some claimed that Alam pushed the deal through the UWA Board for his personal interests.

In a July 4 conversation, Alam told us he had no conflict of interest in the Rwenzoris concession. And many, including Ongora-Atwai and fellow UWA Board member Zak Kaheru defend him. "I don't think any of us would do anything disadvantageous to Uganda," UWA Board member Francis D. R. Gureme said. "I can guarantee the good names of all members of the board of trustees." Desiderio insists that Alam brought forward Top Trekk and AfrikAlpine in his private capacity and in good faith.

Still, Alam is co-owner of Jacana Safari Lodge in Queen Elizabeth National Park, a short drive from the Rwenzoris, which makes his deep involvement in the consortium deal highly questionable. He encouraged the UWA Board to approve the contract with the consortium, whose major financial backer is his friend Tremmel.

AfrikAlpine's website includes plans for the company to offer trip packages around Uganda. It also links to only two local tourism companies, one of which is Alam's IOU. Alam told us that the board discussed reopening the Rwenzoris with a two-pronged approach, "to bring more people up the Rwenzoris, and at the same time to visit protected areas and stay in lodges."

Even if Alam was sincerely acting in the interest of Uganda, he has an interest in who was awarded the concession to the park. That the sole provider of permits and all services for trekking the Rwenzoris has as its main financial backer a good friend of Alam's reeks of an inside job and casts a pall on what should be a triumphant moment for UWA. The shady nature of the formation of Top Trekk and AfrikAlpine and the questionable legality of RMS's participation in the consortium are also highly troubling.

The presence on the UWA Board of a representative of the tourism industry presents too many potential conflicts of interest to be justifiable, no matter how morally upstanding that representative. Alam confirmed this when we asked him if he would excuse himself from a board meeting discussing insecurity in Queen Elizabeth Park, where his Jacana Lodge is located. "No, look, I would come and shout to the board and say, 'Look, I have zero-percent occupancy!'"

Jonathan Wright, co-owner of Semliki Lodge and Semliki Safaris, admires Alam for his willingness to invest in Uganda's national parks when others wouldn't. However, he told us, "Whether you like it or not, there's a conflict of interest, even if Zahid is as honest and straight as they come." Wright added, "It's always dangerous to have someone who's a developer pushing their own cause."

When we tell tour operators and UWA officials that we are reporting on tourism in Uganda, they invariably entreat us to give Uganda good publicity. "Right now we really can't have any negative publicity," Alam told us July 4. "Uganda needs all the blessings from wherever it can get them."

The breathtaking Rwenzoris and the destitute local community deserve positive publicity. But we cannot overlook the suspicious handling of this concession.

We hope that mountain climbers throng to the breathtaking Rwenzoris and move on to Uganda's other, undervisited destinations, and that the exuberant screams of the children we met are justified with an influx of money to the destitute Kasese district. But the nature in which the concession was awarded makes us question whether this will be possible.

Carl Bialik and David Goldenberg are freelance journalists from the USA.