Into Africa: Karamoja and bust!

Having recovered from the Mbarara trip I was now up for more. My dear friend Pastor Benson, aged 30, who had been living with us for the last month or so following a number of shameful actions by a Christian NGO against him (whose corruption and abuse I was trying to expose) - who had previously been employing him - had decided that he really should go back to his three churches that he had planted in Abim District of Karamoja. His reason for being so far away in Kampala (about 270 miles) was that the pastors he had trained up to run the churches took no salary and were so poor that he worked in Kampala to send their salaries back, whilst he virtually ran ‘on air’ it seemed. At least living with us he had enjoyed free accommodation and cooked meals every night, and he was looking much more healthy!

Anyway, it was an opportunity for him to move all his worldly possessions, plus Barry the cockerel, legs tied together; all were packed into the back of our Toyota Hilux single cab truck, and off we set at 5am for Karamoja. You need to understand that Karamoja is feared by Ugandans. They perceive it to be a place where men and women walk around totally naked, steal cattle, and kill wantonly - a generally nasty sort of place. Telling people that I, a mzungu, was driving there alone with a Karamojan brought reactions of blood-drained faces and sharp intakes of breath. I might as well have been sailing off the edge of the world.

In fact it was a pretty daft thing to do because the floods (which had been on the international news) had blocked the best route there and instead I had to travel the long way around, via Lira, with no guarantee that the way was open that route either.

But the truth about Karamoja, that I knew before leaving, was that there are two tribes of Karamojan, and that it is the pastoralist tribal group to the extreme NE that are indeed very warlike, naked and dangerous. Furthermore it is a poorly reported fact that the Government has been systematically trying to wipe out the Karamojan people and isolate them from any help and aid. So the propaganda machine is well oiled against them. Because the life of the Karamojan people is so dangerous, with government helicopter gunships and troops periodically attacking villages, most Karamojan families have a number of Kalashnikovs tucked away under their huts. The government is currently using this as a reason to seriously erode their freedoms.

Anyway, we travelled up the infamous Bomba Road towards the Lowero Triangle. This is described as the most major highway to the north, but in fact it is a series of huge potholes all joined up by bits of tarmac; to start off with it is an amusing challenge to find a route through at anything above 20 mph, but after a time one is so worn out that the road seems to perform a war dance before one’s eyes. The route is literally lined with broken down lorries, such is the war of attrition that the road exacts. Huge signs proudly advertise the government’s road improvement programme, and one then hits mile after mile of mud track with Everest-like speed humps every 100 metres. What they are trying to slow us down for is hard to work out since no-one is working on the road. Instead all that happens is that the mpg is halved for everyone, the vehicles’ suspension systems and chasses are slowly smashed to smithereens and the economy of Uganda spirals further downwards. It is good for the mechanics of Uganda of course.

Lowero and the triangle of land to the west is where most of the worst excesses took place during the Amin years and then during the Mbote II reign afterwards. Thousands of people disappeared. From there we turned off the Gulu road for Lira, a major town in the north. There we had a traditional Ugandan lunch. This entails being scowled at and ignored by the waiters, who try and do all they can to avoid giving customer service, and then having a choice of one meal. There is no real need for choice because it will be the same wherever you go: pocho and beans, some meat with ‘sauce’ (anything that is not meat or pure starch/carbohydrate), matoke, rice, potatoes and perhaps a vegetable. All eaten with the hands. Trying to eat sauce with the hands is a real skill and the pocho is essentially designed to be formed into a little cup between fingers and thumb on order to soak up and hold as much as possible. There are no puddings.

And then we turn off onto the main highway east to Kamaroja. See the pics. Imagine the sort of mud track that leads to broken down rented garages on a run-down British council estate, and you would be twice as good as this highway. The truck was piled high with chairs, table, and 3-piece suite, and we got stuck in mud about 2’ deep. I have learnt a rocking backwards and forward technique – aided by as many people as one can muster on a country road 100 miles from anywhere - which fortunately, and after much prayer, did get us out, since the 4-wheel drive decided to pack in. We crossed a few bridges where there was no bridge to be seen as it was covered by river, but made it through.

Karamoja appears as a line of distant hills. It is a truly magical and wonderful place. I say magical but one should probably say ‘supernatural’. The stories of witchcraft are quite extraordinary and few people reading this will believe them, so I will save them for personal encounters with you! After 10 hours travel we arrived in his village of Kiru, nestled snugly between the same long range of hills to the west and a series of huge ‘volcanic plug’ rock hills. The entire village was a series of family circles of ‘bandas’ or thatched round houses, carved into the surrounding grassland. No power, no phones, no roads, no cars, no hospitals, no Post Office, no banks, hardly even any boda boda’s!! When it gets dark, that’s it. As we drove through the long grass and entered the family circle we were greeted by the entire family doing the traditional African whooping, piercing cry with the tongue. Such excitement and celebration! The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. There were about 30 people of all ages but 19 of them were aged under 10. Very dark-skinned and thin; there is no fat. The clothes of the children hung in tatters, and the buttons had mostly disappeared. None of the kids had underwear. But they were happy and able to celebrate virtually anything. Life is a series of opportunities to break from a weary and grinding poverty. When the harvest goes then everything goes. There are no real reserves. Life is lived on the edge. I handed over ‘Barry’ to the elder, and he was thrilled; apparently I did something right! He is alive and well and breeding furiously.

I was proudly ushered into Benson’s hut. He had built it himself and it was superb. I love vernacular buildings - they are perfectly designed for their environments. This was no exception. Such buildings cost nothing to build: the structure is made of bamboo poles, branches and trunks of trees all tied together with bark from a special tree, and covered with grass thatch - all harvested off the mountains. From the inside looking up is a beautiful radiating pattern of bamboo, circular ties, and thatch. A mud brick wall appears to hold the roof up, but closer inspection reveals that the whole thing is carried on the (naturally termite resistant) tree trunks on the perimeter and that the wall just fails to meet the roof at the eaves; instead there is a small gap which induces a draft of air all round the perimeter, cooling the interior. Benson explained that it also stops the termites climbing up the wall into the roof. The whole house is built on a raised brick plinth; the thatch roof throws water outside this plinth, thus preventing the houses flooding. Although it looked quite small outside, from the inside it was Tardis-like and quite expansive, with a beautiful hanging screen separating the sleeping area from the living area. All cooking is done centrally (by the women!) over a few stones and bundle of branches. To get in to the hut one has to bend virtually double and stoop low under the thatched eaves. I really struggled.

I was the centre of attention wherever I went. Few mzungus ever go to Karamoja and if they do they certainly don’t stay in a family hut circle and eat the local food!! But I was not only doing all that but also driving a truck everywhere with 32 people in the back of it, all singing their hearts out! This was part of the congregation of the three churches, who all came together for a glorious festive weekend with mzungu interest or affection for kids here, and they revel in it. So ‘Pastor Stephen’. I spent much of the weekend picking up and dropping off the folk from the three churches along the valley: Katabok, Abim, and Otalabar. Otalabar was a gold mining village, and the church there were wonderful people, led by the village chief, Ben, who was only about 35. But then that is ‘mature’ here, where life expectancy for men in the whole of Uganda is 49, and there it will be well below the norm. The rest of the time I had about 25 children following me around; I do love being wit African kids and men rarely show any much so that a drunk policeman came to see me one evening and asked me to pray for him to become a Christian because he had “just seen Jesus coming down he mountain (me) surrounded by children”!! HIV/AIDS is a serious problem here as there is absolutely no treatment/hospitals etc. and alcoholism is on the increase especially amongst teenagers, with the obvious ‘unsafe sex’, ‘fumble behind the bushes’ (also called rape – women have almost no rights) consequences.

Yes I did mean 34 in the truck (including inside the cab), and them all sitting on top of a mass of very knobbly firewood for the church feast, and all the cooking utensils, pots and pans etc.

Karamoja’s beauty was inspiring. Because of the rains it was lush and green, and everything looked great. The hills are spectacular due to their volcanic origins. At the end of the valley is ‘Devils Mountain’ (see photo) which is so imposing and ominous that it sent shivers down my spine. It is completely overrun, so the locals will tell you, by spirits, and anyone that goes up there goes mad or never returns. To give you a feel of the supernatural, there was a large group of ancient trees nearby it that we drove past. They are still there (most trees get cut down) because the locals have dedicated them to a snake god that lives there. They regularly go in there with goat’s meat and other oblations which are left there for the enormous snake, and various blood sacrifices are made.

The Sunday service was an extension of the rest of the weekend which consisted of almost continuous singing and dancing, led mostly by a miniscule young fellow who appeared to be double jointed and have a built in microphone in his larynx! The church they had built was a massive version of Benson’s hut, but lozenge shaped. I was the preacher, and I enjoyed the atmosphere of total acceptance and friendship. They loved the fact that I was jiving along with them and trying to sing the songs in their language. At one stage I thought that I was learning a local hymn but slowly realised that it was in English but with an extremely strong accent: ”Ay em a weeena; ay em ay weeena; or the deble no ees ay em ay weeena” (I am a winner, I am a winner, all the devil know is I am a winner).

Lunch after was under the shade of a massive mango tree: yes you’ve guessed the menu!! It was a taste of heaven to sit surrounded by such beauty and to know that I was one with these amazing, resolute and ancient people; they accepted me and wanted to share their lives with me.

The rest of the weekend I spent cooped up in Benson’s hut being grilled by the village and church elders on a range of touchy theological issues but mostly pumping me for how they could generate income and Development projects that would get the whole local economy moving. For them there was no doubt that the church had to be the catalyst for economic improvement; no-one else was going to do anything. The reason for this was that there was no other mobilised group around, because everyone had their lives totally occupied by farming and unless organised in a larger whole in this way had no time left to do anything except in December and January (dry, hot season). As always, in Uganda, it was the lack of capital that was the problem (or so they felt) and I was being asked to find someone to give them money to do this and that. I, on the other hand was trying desperately to show them that being given money was totally unsustainable and failed to deal with the real issues, which are the lack of markets, lack of co-operation and organisation, lack of education (most have never completed senior school or even junior school, although a fat lot of good either would do them in Uganda on the whole) and lack of business entrepreneurship. I am going to tell you the outcome (positive) of these discussions some time in the future.

It came time to leave. I was pretty humbled that, despite losing their g-nut (peanut if British) harvest to the rains, they gave me a huge sack of g-nuts, and a black, male goat as a farewell gift. As I drove off I was hailed and told that I was taking a woman and her baby back with me to Kampala. It turned out to be Mark’s sister (our ‘boy’ and now Cherish Uganda security guard)! So off the four of us (including goat) set. I had foolishly run out of money, and although the tank was full of diesel I knew it wouldn’t get us back. So at the first village I picked up about 15 people at a 30% fare compared with the taxi-buses as far as Lira (75 miles for about £1.50), which raised enough money to get me home and made a whole lot of people going to market very happy! So actually I had twice as much baggage as 12 people since each had about three huge sacks of maize or g-nut or sunflower seeds. Oh, and a few babies each!

It had rained solidly the previous day, on top of the already heavy flooding. I had a bad feeling about the trip, knowing as I did the track’s previous state. Over the weekend Benson had accidentally poured scalding water all over my bare foot and without any clean water or dressings and treatment it was looking very mean. I had put my boots on and hoped for the best. We got very, very badly stuck; this time the mud was up to 4’ deep! A line of lorries and trucks had been bogged down all night, and because each one normally has myriads of people on board over a hundred people had slept outside in the rain all night and were pretty fed up and very muddy. At this stage I had not yet picked up any passengers. I had 10,000UGX (£3) in my pocket and needed this as payment to get about 40 men to help push me and I wasn’t sure how many more times I was going to get stuck. The 4-wheel drive still wasn’t working. One man was being really helpful (unique) and it turned out to be a pastor and close friend of Pastor Benson. He was like a angel of mercy and , after we had all dug out a route through the mud for all the other lorries, managed to persuade the others to push me. After about a 2-hour delay we were moving again. Progress was very slow, as I soon had my 15 (or so) passengers, and I stopped before about 30 subsequent boggy patches to work out a very careful route through before even thinking of trying it. The Waldron technique, learnt from Ugandans, is to get up to maximum speed and hit the mud with everything you’ve got, hoping that pure momentum and weight will take one through. Screaming and shouting helps part the muddy waters.

After 11 hours of travel and several at standstill we arrived. My foot was in a terrible state, and it took 6 weeks to heal, using the classic ‘honey bandage’ technique……. I as told I was lucky not to be in serious trouble with my foot. But it was a great trip; it opened my eyes to so much, and to get life truly into some sort of perspective. To see what dignity there can be even with virtually nothing, and how hospitality is the number one virtue on God’s earth. Just for starters. If your soul is barren, go to Karamoja.

Pictures, from top: the main highway from Lira to Karamoja; same, a typical bridge!; first viw of Karamoja - magic; arriving in Benson's famly encampment; Benson's aunt, shelling nuts; Benson proudly showing me around!; the inside of Benson's hut; 32'nd person climbing in ...; church family; church building - free construction; Devil's mountain; being Jesus!; memorable moments - I; memroable moments - II - dancers cspecially turned out form me; memrobale moments III - life with the granary; memroable moments IV - late evening - blowing away the chaff.