The much-anticipated Nyege Nyege Festival has been derailed after disgruntled fans took to social media to lament the sorry state of affairs at Itanda Falls, Uganda.
Thousands of fans booked in advance, hoping to retire into swanky wooden cottages – which appeared to be cute little spaces in the online advertising – after a wild night of uproarious partying and heavy drinking.
People took to Twitter to share photos of ridiculously shambolic cardboard shacks with tiny beds, creaky doors, mabati roofing, thin walls, and barely-there grass carpet, which turned out to be far from the real thing.
The online rant was started by a Twitter user going by the handle @danx tusiime, who claimed that after paying a whopping UGX 3 million (Ksh.95,000) for the falsely advertised wooden cottages, the rooms she retired to were nothing like 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.
The disgruntled Twitter user also stated that some South African revellers were forced to leave after waiting for hours for rooms.
Kenyan influencer @Lencer B also took to Twitter to share photos of the ill-conceived ‘bathrooms,’ which lacked doors and a floor, with patches of grass sticking out of the wet earth.
According to organisers of the festival, there is on-site and off-site accommodation.
Those who wish to camp at the site have several options including; Purple Pine Camp, Khapela South African Village, Rapids View Camp, Bring Your Own Forest Camp and Nyege Nyege Wooden Cottages.
The Purple Pine is a private camp in a shaded pine forest overlooking the river and a tent here can comfortably accommodate two adults. It also comes with two mattresses but revellers are expected to carry their bedding. It goes for roughly Sh8000.
The toilets were also a comical display of insipid incompetence and appalling carelessness, with a movable wooden stair in front of the tastelessly-done bathroom shanties.
The Nyege Nyege Festival will be held at Itanda Falls in Jinja for the next three days.
Partygoers from all over the world have descended on Uganda to attend the now-famous percussion-filled festival, which will feature over 300 artists from around the world performing and entertaining revelers.
While some have expressed sympathy for the unfortunate fun-lovers, others have seen no problem with the accommodation arrangement because the event is being held in the muddy bush and it is a temporary situation anyway.
