OUR COUNTRY HOME ON FIRE

"By the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire." My wife Doreen said! We had gone for a holiday with my wife at our country home. It was a summer holiday and this time we preferred having it away from the noisy town. Our country home was sorounded by a small beautiful forest that we planted before building there a house, during summer, some trees would have their leaves dried up and some even shaded off.

One morning we had 4 unexpected visitors who introduced themselves as college students on a holiday camp, they all had back packs and really looked like they had liked our place , we talked to them and a one Jason who looked older than the rest said to us, " you have a beautiful environment, can we please camp at the extreme of your forest for a day and night," we said it's fine and told them to take care. I entered the house with my wife since we had come for a holiday too and needed sometime by ourselves. Outside a real picnic was going on by Jason and group till late, we thought they were mature so we didn't mind them after they told us it's just a picnic and that they just had barbecue and drinks with a little loud music.

The night reached and with my wife we had to rest, at around 3am I was up when I had noise outside, my wife was not in the house, I ran outside while calling her name, I found her trying to stop a big fire that had destroyed the biggest part of our forest. I asked why she didn't come back to first wake me up for help, she replied, I smelt smoke while asleep and "by the time I stepped outside, the leaves were on fire." We tried as much to stop the fire but it was just getting big. The group of holiday makers was no where to be seen, probably they had left before the fire, we had called a fire fighting team earlier but they reached when there's only a quarter of the forest left while the other part was burnt already. The place was gazetted by police and we were told to first vacate it for investigation. After a few days a report came out that the fire was caused by multiple cigarettes that were earlier dumped allover. Our home never looked beautiful anymore and we felt like if my wife didn't wake up we would have died in the house either chocked by smoke or burnt by fire. A month later we made a decision and sold our home coz we were only left with its beautiful memory and regrets of allowing the careless group to camp at our place. Since we always wanted a place designed by us, we contacted our agent who got us land else where and we planted another forest. After a few years we had a new beautiful place where we decided to build another house. This time it wasn't very far from town so we decided to shift and stay there permanently. We got several people who always came by our home asking if it was a leisure park or hotel, we were always surprised and appreciated them for recognising it in that category yet it was only our home. One day my wife got an idea about turning our home into a leisure park, we talked about it in details and since many people had for a long time thought it was a park, we decided that we should turn it to one. We reorganised the house and partitioned rooms for a reception, mini bar and a few guest rooms. The compound was already big, with green grass and surrounded by a beautiful forest. We contacted a few friends about different ideas. From our names, Doreen and Vianney we came up with a name of the place as D&V country home. We made several advertisements by making signposts, putting our flyers on the internet and even paying for some adverts on local TVs and radios. The place started attracting many groups of people. The income was really pleasing and we really felt so proud of eachother. We started hosting wedding receptions, birthday parties, reunion parties and many other functions because of the beauty of the place and it's location that was close to the city. People always asked us where we got the inspiration for such a venture and yes, we always gave them the whole story from our first burnt home. We decided to expand the idea and started searching for developing areas in different parts of the country where we bought land close to major cities and then started the same type of ventures with slightly different designs. With my wife Doreen we decided to resign from our jobs and took on management of our ventures because they now needed full attention since so many people had really found interest in them. We used to engage our selves so much in the management so that we get to know what we really needed to adjust regarding our business. One time as we were at one of the branches a group of 3 people walked in to the reception where my wife and I were seated, they said they needed to organise their reunion to meet with their old and new friends. Their faces looked familiar to both of us. My wife abruptly asked one of them if he was Jason. "Yes that's my name" the gentleman replied, he asked how Doreen knew his name. At this moment we were clearing payments and they had already handed over the cash to us. It was the group that caused tragedy at our first country home. We sat with them down and narrated the whole story of the fire to them. They were really guilty and probably thought the next step was us calling police. We forgave them and told them it was a blessing in disguise, if they had not caused the fire, we wouldn't have opted for another place which turned into the foundation of our venture. They booked the place for the next weekend and they came with all their friends who were with them at the first picnic. This time we were part of the reunion and decided to celebrate with them instead of recalling the case since it was still in police records. Their group was now even bigger and they had taken on events management as their group business. Doreen and I decided to withdraw the case from police. We had a series of talks with the group and agreed to become business partners. They started organising several functions using the different branches of D&V country home as the venue. We made so much income and really had very good business with the group. The venture expanded and became attractive to many people on holiday especially tourists, whenever they came to Uganda they booked D&V country home.