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DAY 9 – KOTIDO

The start to another lazy day in Kotido, I wake up at noon and saunter down to the Botanic Hotel where the staff now call me Jesus, for a breakfast of bananas, beef, sauce, a pancake and some coca cola. Once again it’s absolutely roasting, so I try stick to the shade – the bar is usually your best bet. I head to a bar that I haven’t tried – something “wine cellar”. I didn’t expect them to have wine, as there is no advertising standards authority in uganda (Luxury toilet paper is made out of granite, orange juice is not orange juice it’s diluted ribena, fresh dairy milk is actually UHT , every internet cafe says “fastest connection” – the list goes on….) but yes, they did sell wine. In Kotido! But I settled for the usual Nile beer.

Afterwards, I called over to the UWA office to hand in the things I bought for Christine the day before. A UWA truck had come into town again today, and the office was full of rangers who were absolutely pissed out if their heads. One ranger who was sitting on the couch with his AK47 was so drunk and his eyes were so battered that I thought he was crying. He shtumbled up out of the chair to shake my hand and welcome me. Judith came in and I gave her the radio and playing cards and I asked her to deliver them to Christine. “No problem, these rangers will take it to the park for you.” So I had to entrust the gifts to these rangers, pissed out of their heads on Waragi probably, but it was my only choice, as these random vehicles that come through town are as close to a postal service this region has.

I went to a craft shop that I spotted the day before, but it was closed. I asked somebody outside if it was going to open today and they told me that the owners friend was shot last night here in town, she took the day off. Hmm, ok. I was in Kaabong the day before and somebody was shot, now I’m in Kotido and there’s been another shooting. Maybe the travel advice about Karamoja was correct… but I haven’t really felt any danger yet except for hearing the lions roar that morning I was walking through Kidepo Park. So as usual, I sauntered off to another pub, this time the bar in my lodge with the local paper.

I’m sitting down in the bar reading the paper away and two young girls who are walking past the door spot me and come running in with big pretty smiles. They shake my hand and do a little bow, as all children in Uganda do to show respect for adults. They didn’t seem to be able to speak English, they were just giggling and talking to eachother for a while and laughing. I started making faces and they started imitating me. I’d push my nose up like a pig and stick my tongue out and they’d do the same, then I’d make a farting sounds with my tongue while crossing my eyes and they’d do the same. Even though we didn’t speak the same language we were having the craic. Anyways all of a sudden the sweetness went away and they said “Give me one thousand!!!” with their hands out. Ah!!! I told them to skidaddle, and off they went.

Later as I was reading the paper a young-ish guy walked in and asked for a Waragi – Ugandan gin. I said “isn’t it a bit early for that stuff?” and he said some Swahili word, which after he explained to me I understood to mean “would you go away out of it!” His name was Andy, about 30, and the reason he was hitting the gin so early was that his colleague and good friend was shot and killed the night before. I said “ah, the girl who owned the craft shop is closed up for the day because of that shooting right? I just called in there today…” “No” he said, “that’s a different incident, there were two seperate murders here last night. My friend was ambushed at the bridge just out of town and shot dead. That craft shop girl didn’t know him.”

Jaysus. Welcome to Kotido.

I asked him about the murder. He said it was politics. Andy and his recently murdered friend are town councilors, I suppose something like “local T.D.s”. He didn’t know why his friend was murdered, but it was no accident, it was planned. They waited for him at the bridge out of town. They knew what vehicle he was driving. They assassinated him and got the hell out of there, without stealing anything. There was a definite motive. Andy was sure to find out the full story soon, as Kotido is a small enough town, and the police and military had begun to arrive in droves for investigations. I had seen the police jeeps earlier on but I thought it was just normal Karamoja every day carry-on. Maybe it is???…

I decided to join him and have a drink for his friend – an early wake – and got myself a gin. I promised never to drink this Uganda Waragi Gin ever again after a mental night in Kampala which involved me nearly getting Aids Cancer and Malaria from the the hangover, but feck, the guy was pretty depressed and he needed a drinking buddy. I checked the time – about 1.30pm. Session.

After a few gins Andy relaxed a bit and we started a long talk about absolutely everything and anything. Evolution, Aids, Religion, Female Genital Mutilation, the state of Karamoja, Corruption, nights out in Kampala, Women, Poverty, Racism – an interesting fact he told me about the Karamojong was that the area, for many many years, used to be rich in alluvial gold ie panning and sieving of riverbeds. The bulk of the gold that Karamoja once had was given to the Kenyans, Sudanese and Somalis in exchange for cattle. They would give so much gold for the smallest amount of cattle, a total rip-off for the Ka’jong, but they didn’t care. All they wanted were cows. As I mentioned at the start of this story – cattle is king.

After a few more gins the conversation descended into shite and we started having proper craic. I tell him about the legendary Buckfast, and say I wouldn’t mind a bottle of wine. So we get one each and drink it straight from the bottle. It’s 4pm in the day and we’re both in bits, customers from the lodge passing through the bar looking at these two lads falling around the place. We decide to head out for some fresh air and a cigarette. I know, fresh air, cigarette – whatever. So as we’re standing outside the door smoking, straight across the road we see two guys building a coffin. It could be for either one of the two people murdered the night before, but it still sobers Andy up a bit. A silent minute or two passes…. “I need more beer” he finally says.

We head back in and finish the wine, and get some beers. Andy got a deck of cards from behind the bar. He asked me if I knew some card game with a strange name, can’t remember what name he told me… I said “Never heard of it, but what is it? Explain it.” So he started explaining and after about half way through it suddenly clicked, he was explaining how to play take two, the card game I used to play at lunchtime in school! So we played a few rounds with some more beer. After a few more rounds of take two, he called his friend and told him to bring some sugarcane. After about ten minutes, his mate arrived, another well educated chap who knew about the whole situation in Ireland, including Sinn Fein, Fianna Fail and Gerry Adams. He had a bag of sugarcane with him. It looks like really thick bamboo, and you chop it into pieces and peel off the tough outer skin.You chew the pieces until all the juice is gone, then spit out the fiber that remains. I couldn’t eat much as it was just way too sweet, but it was a nice snack all the same.

By this stage it was getting dark. I asked Andy if there was anywhere we could go play some pool, he said there was one place in town, so off we went. On the way we called into a restaurant to order some chicken and chips. I go to take a seat and Andy says “hey, she’s gonna bring it to the pub! Let’s go!” Awesome. Imagine calling into a restaurant back home and telling them, while langers, to “bring that shit to Dannos!!!” …You’d get a smack in the head.

We finally got to the pub, our chicken and chips arriving shortly after, and sessioned away and played pool for the rest of the evening. Afterwards they showed the African Cup of Nations game Cameroon vs. Egypt – it was 1-1 in case you’re interested. My bus was leaving at 4am in the morning, and it was already about 10.30pm. I needed to get some sleep, so I said my goodbyes to Andy and the folks in the pub and headed off into the night. After about 30 seconds of walking through the pitch black, I realized that I didn’t have the slightest clue where I was, so I went back to the bar. “Eh, Andy… where the feck is my lodge??” So he brought me back to Caves Inn safe and sound. He went back to the pub to finish off the session, and I packed my bag in the most drunken way possible, set my alarm for 3.30am, then fell into a deep drunken sleep.

DAY 10 – KOTIDO TO MOROTO

The Inn manager was nice enough to wake me up for the bus at 3.30am, the exact same time as my alarm. Luckily enough my hangover wasn’t that bad, since I was still drunk. I stumbled out of bed. In the distance I could hear the bus blasting it’s horn out into the night. This is a way of saying “OK I’M ABOUT TO GO, GET THE FECK OUT OF BED RIGHT NOW IF YOU WANNA GET ON THIS BUS!!!” Well it worked.

I followed the beeping of the horn until I got to the roundabout in the center of town where the bus was parked. I thought to myself that it’s kind of silly to have a roundabout in a town with almost zero traffic. I was heading to the next town, Moroto, four hours away. This bus was also continuing to Kampala, but it would take about 15 hours and there was no way I was sitting on the banger of a bus for that length of time, full of chickens and cabbages and bags of spuds and people coughing and spluttering typhoid and meningitis all over the place, on the worst roads in Uganda. I hopped on the bus, it pulled off, and I fell back into a deep sleep….

Poke.

Poke.

Poke….

Sir!

Poke.

Excuse me sir!

Hey!

“Whaa?”

“We are in Moroto. Is this your stop?”

The sun was up. I looked out the window and recognized the place. Yes, I was in Moroto, and “Yes, thank you! This is my stop!” The mysterious good Samaritan said goodbye and exited the bus, I don’t even remember what he looks like. Well, ok he was black.

I got off the bus like a zombie, now truly hungover from the night before, and fell onto a boda boda. “Mount Moroto Hotel!” I told him, and off we sped. Moroto Hotel is in the outskirts of town, just at the foot of Mount Moroto itself. It’s nice, quiet, and relaxed, no traffic except for the odd UN jeep leaving their nearby base.

You remember I was in Moroto before? Well so did the staff at Mt. Moroto Hotel, and when they saw me arrive at 8am they gave me a free “welcome back” breakfast – omelette, tea and bread. After breakfast I got a room and went straight to sleep again. I still owed my body another few hours of recovery time from the night before in Kotido.

I woke up in the afternoon, hangover finally gone. Sauntered out to the lobby. I tend to saunter a lot in Africa, but then again so does everybody. Nobody is ever in a rush. It’s probably the most relaxed place you could ever be.

“I thought you’d never wake up” Rita the receptionist said to me. She asked if I wanted some lunch, but I said no, I’m going to town to use the internet. I hadn’t seen the internet in so long at this stage I felt as if I was living in 2000BC.

As I was sipping the coca cola outside the front door, Sarah the supervisor came over to have a chat. How was Kidepo? did you see the animals? etc etc. I told her I was going to town. I asked her if there was any place that I could get some socks, as all the socks I possessed had turned into the finest of cheese. She told me that she didn’t know. She never goes to town. “I fear town. It’s too dangerous.” But she wasn’t from Karamoja, she was from Jinja, down near Kampala. A “city girl”. She just stayed around the hotel as a supervisor. Whatever she needed from town was brought via boda bodas. After being through the thick of Karamoja and back, the town of Moroto – still in Karamoja territory, but only slightly – was nothing to me. I finished the coca cola and made my way into town.

Since we were on the outskirts, by the UN bases, there was barely any traffic. I had to walk about 20 minutes until I found a passing boda boda, but he was carrying a passenger in the opposite direction. I asked him if he was coming back this way towards town. “Yes, first you wait, I am coming!”

So I waited around outside a local Ka’jong settlement. Mud-huts and fences made of sticks. Kids running around. Staring at the mzungu. A perfectly constructed NGO base belonging to “Relief Emergency Group” or something along those lines was just a few meters up the road.

As usual, you stand around rural folks, they come over to stare. But it genuinely was kind of strange of me to be standing outside a Ka’jong settlement doing nothing. “What are you doing here?” one kid asked me. A perfectly normal question given the circumstances – a white lad arsing around kicking stones outside a load of mudhuts. “Waiting for a boda” I replied. He explained my answer to his friends which seemed to satisfy their curiosity. This was my second time in Moroto, and the only mzungus I had ever seen were those flying around in NGO or UN jeeps. I guess I was seeming like a bit of a wierdo alright. The boda boda finally arrived and I hopped on.

After I did my internet business, I went in search of socks. I had to pass gauntlets of beggers on my way through town. Kids, middle aged people, old drunkards. I bought two kids some rolex ( “roll eggs” – an omelette laid over a pancake and rolled into a burrito – savage. Costs 20cent) as they looked genuinely hungry, but didn’t give anything to the adults. I asked around what time there was a bus going towards Soroti, the next town down south. 6am they told me. For feck sake! Is there any bus in Karamoja that leaves at a normal time??!

I eventually found some socks in a pretty well stocked shop. I got two pairs, and a coca cola. As I was standing outside sipping the coca cola, I saw some tribal Ka’jong people moving through town. No 2pac tshirts, no Man Utd caps, no Nike Shoes – nothing. Just traditional clothing, scar markings on their faces and all. They were all staring at me as they walked past. I took out my camera and went to take a photo, pretending I was just talking a photo of the street, but secretly aiming at the Ka’jong folk as it was a wide enough lens, but some guy beside me shouted “NO PHOTO NO PHOTO!!!” He was an old wrinkly fecker, probably Ka’jong himself. He looked pretty angry so I put the camera back in the bag and began to walk up the road in search of a boda. Suddenly a kid with a bundle of twigs tried to sell me one single stick. He was holding it out and saying “yes? Yes?” I stared at him like a rural villager would stare at a mzungu…. “what the hell is going on? Why would I want to buy a random twig off this lad??”

“It’s a toothbrush!” a guy in the shop behind me shouted. “You brush your teeth with the top of the stick, it works!” I already had a toothbrush back in the hotel, but I really would have liked to try this unique “Toothtwig”, but at the same time I really didn’t want to stick a filthy twig into my mouth, picked from the African bush with dirty hands, possibly covered in rat piss and baboon shit. I politely declined, and grabbed a boda boda back to the hotel.

Back at Moroto Hotel, I walked around the grounds for a while, enjoying the view of Mt. Moroto. There were a few foothills around that looked climbable…

I turned a corner to find Sarah, the supervisor, relaxing on a chair. I asked her if I could climb any of the hills dotted around the place, and she told me “No! There are warriors on those hills!” Then I said “what about that one?” pointing at the most boring looking one, right beside the hotel. It looked like it would take only ten minutes to climb. “Ok” Sarah said, “but I’m going to get somebody to escort you.”

I think this lady was way too paranoid. She told me she never goes into town as it’s too dangerous, but I went downtown and all I saw were some drunken feckers and people begging. There was no actual danger or violence. So now she tells the hills are too dangerous to climb except for a crappy little one by the hotel…. but I obey her, just in case. They have police in town but there’s nobody up in the hills.

Sarah called for a staff member, only a younglad of about 17, to bring me up the hill. Out he burst from a shed and up the hill he ran like a mountain goat. His name was Nelson, and he was a black version of Kyle Warnock, jumping around the place and acting the Rambo.

Anyways, I followed him uphill for about ten minutes, then he stopped. “Are we here?” I asked. “Yes”. Ah this was useless, we were surrounded by huge hills, but we were only allowed to climb the smallest, closest one. I looked down by a dry riverbed, where there was a gaggle of mud huts and smoky charcoal fires. “What is that place? Is that a Ka’jong village?” I asked Nelson. He laughed and replied “No, that’s the barracks!!!”

“Barracks? You mean Military Barracks?” I asked. “Yes.” Feck. The Ugandan Army, sworn in to protect the citizens of the country until death…. living in “barracks” made out of mud

I looked up at the really interesting tall foothills…. “Are there really warriors up on those hills? Is it dangerous?” I asked him.

“Yeah, there are warriors, it is dangerous.”

Ok, I didn’t really believe Sarah, the fat lazy hotel supervisor, when she told me about the security situation on the hills, but I did believe the active younglad who loved running up hills like Chuck Norris in Missing in Action III.

I settled down and realized that there was no chance of me ever getting to see the real rural Karamoja. It’s allegedly too dangerous to venture outside of the towns. But they wouldn’t really kill a mzungu would they? Why would they kill a mzungu? I’m not gonna steal their cows, and that’s basically the only thing they care about. They’re not gonna mug me for my camera, phone, laptop or any electronics, because first of all they wouldn’t even know how to use them, and secondly, if they did know how to use them, they’d have nowhere to charge them! What are they gonna do, plug it into a rock?

One day I will return to Karamoja and hire an indigenous guide to drive me around the no mans land between the towns and villages. I don’t care how much they ask for, as it wont be a lot. A years income for them is about a weeks wages for me back home. Crazy isn’t it?

The sun is starting to set. Moroto is the last Ka’jong town I’ll stay in, south of here is Teso Region – “normal”. As I stand on the hill with Nelson I spot some plumes of dust rising from the earth far in the distance – two vehicles are coming to town.

All the roads in Karamoja are sand. Look at a map of Uganda, every road north of the town of Soroti is muck, sand or dust. The presidents wife has been appointed to the unique post of “Minister for Development of Karamoja” – a bloody tough job I’d say. But it doesn’t really seem like she’s doing anything. There is no electricity bar the rare generator or solar power cell, no reliable water supply due to constant drought – I can’t remember how many dry riverbeds I drove over – not a scrap of tarmac, no internet, UN and NGO bases act as scaffolding for the region…. if they pull out the Ka’jong are fucked. But I ever come back in the future, I’d still prefer to ride to the next town in the back of a pickup with 50 other Ugandans and their chickens than to have to take a comfy bus on a tarmacked road.

I head back inside and buy young Nelson a coke and myself a beer and watch some rubbish Nigerian movies for the rest of the night in the staff room.

The next day I stayed in Soroti just to check it out but nothing really exciting happened. Soroti isn’t in Karamoja so it didn’t have that rickety edge. It didn’t even have any crazy street people. On day 12 I finally got back to Kampala, burnt to a crisp and famished to bits, and ordered a cooooold coke and some proper mzungu food, cheeseburger, chips and some lovely coleslaw. I rang Christine to see if she got my gifts yet – “no” she said. Fecking drunk rangers probably stole them! Or crashed into an elephant on the way back. She told me that she was now in her outpost, stationed there for the next two months, bored as hell, and wanted me to tell her what the gifts were – she was like a kid at Christmas – but I wanted to keep it a surprise, maybe it would make her day just the teeniest bit more exciting. I told her to call me when she got the gifts if they weren’t stolen or “lost” en route… I never got that call. Lousy.