After a long week of classes we finally got to head out on some excursions here in Uganda. I would be lying if I though these excursions were necessary to my learning experience here, but I think they contributed heavily to my life experience. I experienced rough African roads, excessively long car rides with frequent breakdown and we were able to go to the no man’s land between Sudan and Uganda.
BAKER’S FORT
But first, we went to Baker’s Fort. We have been learning a lot about the recent conflict in Uganda and East Africa but this excursion was to make us realize that there has been conflict and suffering in Uganda for much longer than we had really thought about. Every American school child learns about slavery’s impact on America and how hundreds of thousands of slaves were brought from the African continent to work the cotton fields of the South and how they were basically the engines behind the economy of much of the US. We learn incredibly little about the African side of things though. Baker’s Fort today is the remnants of a once flourishing slaving post. It is built upon a beautiful section of exposed rock that over looks the plains of Northern Uganda. From this vantage point, slavers were able to see for miles around and locate any threats that might have troubled them.
The slave trade in this region was begun by Arabs who made their way up the Nile River and realized the potential for acquiring slaves in this section of Africa. They established the post and began to enslave the local tribes. Once the tribes caught on to the fact that their people were being enslaved, the Arabs armed them and had them raid other tribes for slaves. The business proved extremely lucrative to the Arabs who then sold the Africans in Asia. The tribes however were deprived of most of their able-bodied men and women and suffered extremely economically and socially.
In the 1800’s when Britain was beginning its exploration of “British East Africa,” an explorer by the name of Samuel Baker stumbled upon this slave post and assaulted it, running the Arabs out and releasing the slaves, hence the name Baker’s fort. He was later given the title “Sir” by Queen Victoria for his exploits.
As I mentioned before, the boulders at this site are magnificent and were immensely fun to climb on. There were about two rock formations that looked like Pride Rock from “The Lion King” and one giant rock that looked like a largemouth bass. Apparently Joseph Kony, head of the LRA, came here and had “visions” that further encouraged him on his destructive mission, an interesting tie in to the history of this place.
WTU and AWA
The roads in and out of Gulu are abysmal. They are all dirt, full of potholes, and when it rains they turn into swamps. The government in Kampala turns a blind eye to the needs of the people up in the North because of their ethnicity, different from the president’s, and because of their distance from the capital. A huge amount of trade goes through Gulu from Southern Sudan but the condition of the roads severely limits the efficiency of overland transport. The North of the country would benefit immensely if the government paid to pave the roads but as of now Museveni is only focused on building roads out West to the new oil reserves.
Regardless, the roads provide exciting rides to those travelers (my compatriots and I) who aren’t used to such, shall I say, interesting conditions. On the way to Baker’s fort we experience a fair share of jostling but on the way back we just missed a rainstorm. Good news for us we though, but we thought wrong. We may have missed it, but it did some nice work on the road ahead of us. Our group was split between two vehicles, a white matatu, later named “Lucy” for reasons unbeknownst to me, and a school bus yellow euro van. I was in Lucy for this experience and, tenacious as she was, she became stuck in the mud at the start of a 100-200 meter long swampy stretch. We spun our wheels for a good long while but to no avail. This, of course, did not go unnoticed by the local population and a crowd began to gather. They lined the raised embankments of the road and shouted encouragement, and “Muzungu,” in between bouts of laughter. After a few minutes of making faces at them and laughing back, we realized that these folks could be valuable in our quest to extricate ourselves from the mud. Soon enough we had a mass of Ugandan youth pushing the back of Lucy and in a few minutes we were free of the swampy stretch of road. Our matatu roared in appreciation and joy…
But wait, the yellow van was still on the other side. But then, above the din, we heard the roar of an engine being revved. The impossible was about to be attempted. The yellow Euro van (Y.E.V.) flew across the few feet of solid ground it had to work with and hit the mud at an alarming speed, it went straight along the road for a few meters but soon slid into the right embankment only to ricochet off like a bumper car. Using its momentum and total blind luck the YEV kept on its path, narrowly avoiding a bicycle, Lucy, and thirty small African children. It came to what would have been a screeching halt if the road had been paved. Our friends were all in the very back seat with looks of total astonishment on their faces. The driver simply smiled at a job well done.
ATTIACK
The next day we set off to visit the Atticak Memorial Site and the Ugandan/ Sudanese border. I was in the YEV this time and unfortunately we broke down about an hour into the trip. Our driver hopped out at disappeared into the surrounding bush. Fifteen minutes later he emerged with a long length of wire. Where he got it, I have no idea. We asked Rafela, on of our program coordinators, how he had found such a thing in the surrounding bush. Us: “Where did he get that? Did he steal it?” Rafela: “No, he got it.” Us: “So he stole it.” Rafela: “No, he got it.” I guess the bush holds secrets we may never truly understand. Regardless, the driver, who me might as well bestow with the title “Miracle worker,” fixed the YEV with this mysterious piece of wire and we were back on our way.
The town of Attiack appeared no different from any of the small villages we passed by on our three and a half hour trek but we did not know the history of this place. In 1995, the LRA had been around for almost ten years, but most of its exploits had been assaults on government troops, attacks the local population was generally supportive of. But on April 20th, 1995, they changed their tactics. Led by Vincent Otti, himself from Attiack, a group of 200 armed LRA soldiers descended on the town. Over the next few hours the soldiers would kill almost 300 residents in this village of a few thousand. Their stated goal was to show Ugandans that the government had no power to protect them. This assault began almost ten years of extreme violence and abductions in the region.
The monument to the victims was in the middle of a cornfield surrounded by a chain link fence. Due to a lack of funds in the community the memorial had been erected by USAID. For such a horrific and important event, the memorial seemed, I hate to say it, but underwhelming. Maybe after the memorials to the genocide in Rwanda a regular memorial just doesn’t have the same effect. Or maybe it’s just that the people here, since the conflict is over and holds too many bad memories, just want to forget the past. The memorial might not even be meant for outsiders, why do we care where the memorial is or how it is presented if it works for those who actually experienced the event? We only spent five minutes at the monument before we hopped back in the vehicles headed for the border.
NO MAN’S LAND
Borders are interesting things. In America a big deal is made about our borders, especially the southern one. I illegally crossed the border into Canada once. I was leading a pre-orientation trip for Bowdoin and my co-leader, Annabel, and I simply missed the last exit in Maine. We got chewed out by a Canadian border guard (eh?) and we were detained for a few minutes at the US border. They were pretty serious about it, understandably, but we explained our stupidity and they let us on our way. The border itself was well maintained and pretty well guarded. Yesterday, I found myself at the Ugandan border with Sudan. Needless to say, this was a different experience entirely.
The first sign we came across reminded us to “Be aware of landmines,” and illustrated the point with colorful pictures of different explosive devices. On the reverse side it reminded you to not touch or pick up any foreign objects. Things just got real.
The border between the two countries includes a few kilometer wide stretch of land that belongs to both Uganda and Sudan. In this pleasant little corridor reside the armies of both countries. After talking briefly to a border guard who, when asked, had no idea how many trucks crossed the border on average everyday, we walked carefully (landmines!) into No Man’s Land. Amazingly, Southern Sudan looks a heck of a lot like Northern Uganda. After five minutes (just to make sure we really were in both countries at once) we decided to return to Uganda. Some of us went to the moneychangers, a common sight at the border, and, just to prove our proximity to Sudan, exchanged some Ugandan Shillings for Sudanese pounds.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, the other half of the SIT program told us that the men received numerous offers of cattle in exchange for some of the ladies on the program. Their maximum offer was fifty-five cattle. We decided to try our luck and with the right amount of bartering and good salesmanship, the other guys and I were able to negotiate a bride price for Hannah of one hundred cows. She will be missed but I think our sorrows will be drowned in the delicious beef we will enjoy for the remainder of the trip.
Before we left, David and I decided that it would be a good idea to purchase some Muchomo (In Rwanda known as Brochette, and to our group as meat on a stick). I don’t know where we got off thinking that African-border-meat-on-a-stick was a good idea but we went through with it anyway. Lukewarm and tough would be the best two words to describe what we ingested. But my bowels have yet to turn on me so I think I am in the clear. So now I can say I avoided landmines and ate meat on a stick at the Sudanese border with Uganda, I would chalk that down as a grade-A certified life experience.
Before I go any further, I just wanted to make clear that we didn’t actually sell Hannah. I think it is against SIT policy to barter with your fellow students.
On the trip back, the white matatu, Lucy, broke down a number of times. We ended up all piling into the YEV and making it to a town to find some spare parts, but out of nowhere Lucy sped into town and worked fine the rest of the way.
The last hour of the trip we could see a thunderstorm looming in the distance, the lightning illuminating the plains. It was headed right towards Gulu, as were we, so contact was inevitable. Paul Simon’s “Under African Skies” came on my iPod right as we approached the storm. I love coincidences.
WTU and AWA
I realize I titled a section above as WTU and AWA and I did not explain those acronyms that probably led to some confusion (or perhaps not). WTU stands for “Welcome to Uganda,” it is a horribly culturally insensitive phrase that we use when ever something absurd happens e.g. van driver emerging from the bush with wire, or Lucy suddenly finding new life. It’s a way of coping with the things we find strange in Ugandan daily happenings. We also use AWA. This one more relates to the African notion of time. Our program coordinator in Rwanda, Apollon, said one of his European friends would uses this acronym when ever he had a meeting in Africa that started a hour or two past the scheduled time (a common occurrence here). It means, “Africa wins again” as in “Is this meeting really starting at 9 or is it going to be AWA and start at 11?”
Well that does it for me this time around. I hope all is well in your respective part of the world and may the next few days until my next post treat you kindly. I am off to Kitgum until Wednesday, more updates after that!
-Muzungu currently in Gulu, Uganda, packing for an excursion to Kitgum.
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