life in kitgum...

November 15^th, 2010 

First, I want to apologize for the delay in posting this - I have had this blog written for more than a week now but I have been spending a few days trying to upload the pictures, but it doesn't seem to be working and I don't know why. I have tried three browsers, and still no luck. Suggestions welcome.

I finally made the trip from Kampala to the north, but instead of heading to Pader as originally thought, I have come to Kitgum, another northern district, some 40 or 50km from the Sudanese border. To travel the 300km, it took nearly six hours. The road from Kampala to Gulu was quite nice, paved and free of traffic, but from Gulu the road was unpaved and it slowed us down quite a bit.

As many people had told me before I left, this part of the country is much different than the south. And not just in the sense of it being a much smaller urban centre. In fact, it is hardly urban at all. The town here is roughly the size of three city blocks by three city blocks. There are small shops, selling basic groceries as well as a fish/fruit market, combined with a few clothing shops and small local restaurants. Beyond this, there are only a couple roads in and out of Kitgum, unpaved and in rough shape, with villages made up of thatched huts lining both sides of the road.

The north is much warmer and flatter than it is in Kampala – and it is a dry heat, not as humid as the south. I keep being told that we are coming into the dry season, which is only going to make it warmer here – upwards of 40 degrees during the day - but everyday it continues to rain at some point. The rain cools things off which is nice, but with it comes a bit of wind, and this inevitably knocks out the power – and when it goes out, you don’t know when it is coming back on. Very erratic, and quite frustrating if you are working on something. (The rain has stopped since I wrote this, and I feel the dry season is underway!) Water is another commodity I have had to learn to live without these past couple weeks, as it out more often than the power is. I have went maybe a few too many days without a shower, but finally managed to jump in the neighbour's shower yesterday, so I am feeling a little more refreshed.

Acholi , the local language is entirely different than what is spoken in Kampala (Luganda). English is the official language in Uganda, so most people speak it well enough to get by, but the small amount of Luganda I know is no good up here.

I have fallen into the guest room of another Aussie, who is working for a borehole drilling company here in the north. AMREF is one of his clients, and he is drilling water holes all around the north. He has shown me around Kitgum and I have been going around with him a bit to see the sites. I made it to Lamwo, which is another district, a bit farther north, and we were just outside Sudan. It has been interesting to see the for profit business perspective of a company working with NGOs towards the same objectives.

The north is only a few years removed from conflict, and there are very obvious lasting effects. The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a guerrilla rebel group, led by an evangelical Joseph Kony terrorized the people here for roughly 20 years. He and his rebel group would attack villages at night, slaughtering men, and women and often abduct the children, and recruit them as child soldiers. Children would be forced to torture and murder their families. These attacks were happening every night, and eventually there were safe houses set up for children to walk to at night, most notably in Gulu. IDP (Internally Displace Persons) camps were established by organizations for families to seek refuge. The Ugandan military has since forced the LRA out of Uganda and into Sudan, the DRC and Central African Republic, where they are currently still on the run and being pursued. People have begun to move back to their villages, and a sense of normality has been restored, but effects are lingering.  In the compound where I am staying for example, there are bullet shells lying around from the conflict. 

This past weekend I traveled east, to the Karamoja district to Kidepo National Park. I will share some stories from that weekend in my next blog, and I will try to get a few pictures up because the place is incredibly beautiful and I had a fantastic weekend out there. For now, I am trying to get back to Kampala tomorrow as I am close to wrapping up my work here I think (also, there is what they think an Ebola outbreak in Pader, some 80km away from Kitgum, where people are coughing up blood, bleeding from their eyes, and I think a few people have died). 

Stay tuned for some stories from Kidepo!