So I last left off having just finished our exciting romp about in the forest (and spread out villages) around Sipi Falls. After our day of adventure, we checked into a mountaintop hotel known as Noah’s Ark. We were originally supposed to stay in The Crow’s Nest, an inn overhanging a cliff that looks down upon the falls, but unfortunately it burned down. When we arrived there all Muna exclaimed “Something is wrong” when we asked what, he replied “The hotel is gone”. In talking with our tour guide Moses, who works for Crow’s Nest we learned that they had concluded that the fire was the work of arsonists. They said they suspected competing hotels in the area as the culprits. We took note that in this small mountain village Noah’s Ark was likely the only competition and so burning the building down had worked, though we were slightly worried about a retaliatory attack while we were staying there. Anyway the landscape around Noah’s Ark was incredible. It reminded me very much of farm and grazing land in the Rocky Mountains, except more ...African. Also the hotel had good food (including fried chicken), and the setup, individual rooms surrounding a courtyard I thought created a nice feel. I am apparently the only person in my group who like this hotel. Others on the trip will tell you that I only liked it because I managed to take a shower before the water turned off. However, this is untrue as the water actually quit while I was in the shower fully lathered in soap, I had to run around under the dribble coming from the faucet to get it all off. That night, the mountain air was actually cold. By cold I mean absolutely temperate but this is the first climate that has been anywhere close to cold in all of Africa. While it was still probably warm enough for the usual outfit of jeans and a t-shirt (it is inappropriate men beyond schoolboy age to wear shorts), everyone was so excited for the cold that we all busted out our hoodies and long sleeves. That night there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. They say that there is no other night sky like the African sky. I had not realized the truth to this statement until that night. Stars I didn’t even know existed appeared bright as any other, and familiar stars, those in Orion, the Big Dipper, etc, were so bright you almost couldn’t look directly at them. The sky was incredible. Perhaps it was this more than anything that biased my opinion in favor of this particular stop on our trip.
The next day we set off for Soroti. Whereas Mbale and Sipi Falls were in the far east of Uganda, almost to the Kenyan boarder, Soroti is more centrally located, but much further north. As we progressed toward Soroti the landscape once again began to change. The mountainous terrain slowly became flatter, and all lushness gave way to dry grassy savannah. This savannah was much drier than the savannah around Mbale, and slowly we began to peel off our hoodies, beanies, and long sleeves and the temperate mountain air gave way to blisteringly hot dry heat. This was the Africa you see on TV. The land was characterized by those dry, unending plains lands that emanate waves of heat in the distance. Along the way we pointed out at least ten random rocks amid the savannah that could easily have been pride rock (from the lion king). As we rolled into Soroti, I got the impression that it was a quite old western town (sorry to keep drawing comparisons to the western United States but that was the association I made in my mind, and the best comparison I can think of to help paint the picture). Like Mbale, Soroti is essentially a strip of buildings along dusty the roadside. The central feature of the town is incredibly large rock (mountain-like in scale) that is a backdrop to the whole town. Muna, still excited that he had someone to go exploring with, asked if I would go climb the rock with him. So Muna, about half of the group, and I trekked out around six in the evening with the hope of climbing the rock in time to see the sunset from atop. What none of us knew is that at the base of the rock lay an IDP camp full of those who had been displaced by the fighting in the North. With Muna as our fearless leader we walked around the outskirts and eventually right through the camp. It was incredible seeing just how little these people had. They have been forced to flee their homes, and gather in these camps, in squalid conditions amid literal drifts of garbage. They have next to nothing, with no means of sustainable subsistence (nearly all calorie in-take in such camps is donated and so their diet consists of high carbohydrate food and lacking in sufficient protein, vegetable matter, and anything else a human might need to be healthy) and no land of their own. Muzungus are a sight to behold for children all around Uganda, but in walking directly through this camp, you’d think that these children had never seen a white person (in truth the reason they were so excited is probably because they have only seen whites who come as aid workers, and so were expecting food or small gifts or something along those lines). Anyway by the time we had passed through the camp we had an entire village of children at our heels. It was sort of like the really corny commercials were a few people are walking down the street singing a song or something, and little by little they gain a following until they’ve got all of downtown New York following them dancing and singing and so forth, which is supposed to give you a warm fuzzy feeling as they tell you about the cool refreshing taste diet coke (they love such commercials here btw). Anyway at this point we were totally unsure as to what we should do with this horde of children following us. Naturally, Muna had a plan. He had us circle up and grab hands with the children. At first most of the children were to afraid to touch a white person, the brave ones slapping out extended hands and then running away with a triumphant look on their faces. Eventually, however, they got used to the idea and consented to join the circle. Once we were all organized, Muna began to sing a song in Swahili that none of us knew but tried to sing along. Once this ordeal was done both the children and random onlookers seemed as thoroughly confused as we were. Nonetheless this gesture seemed to do the trick breaking the stigma around our presence and from then on there was always a group of younguns at our feet as we began to climb the rock. It should be noted that these younguns (who were nearly all barefoot) were usually busy running ahead of us and then waiting up as we trekked up in step by step of the nearly vertical climb (on which someone had been nice enough to build rock steps) all completely out of breath. When we finally reached the top the view was (as usual) breathtaking. You could see for miles along the flat un-featured plains. Slightly further down the rocks were some monkeys hanging out and enjoying the view. Monkey’s always make things a little bit cooler. We wanted to have a look from the other side of the rock, but the locals told us that that was a military watch-post, and so unless we wanted to be shot at, we should simply stick to this side. Naturally Muna ran off to see if we could bribe the military men to let us have a look. The soldiers said that under normal circumstances they would have been glad to take our money in return for a look at their rock, but that since the sun had nearly gone they could not allow it. I didn’t quite get the rationale behind this, but they had the guns, so I didn’t argue. In looking at the sun, we saw that we had at least half an hour of sunlight left. This combined with the realization that we’d rather not shimmy back down the hill and then walk through the IDP camp in the darkness of night, convinced us not to wait for the sunset. Back down the hill there seemed to be a party coming from somewhere. I had earlier expressed to Muna my desire to try marua, the local brew of Soroti made from millet, which was served warm and had the consistency of a thick stew. My home-stay brother Joseph had told me about the brew and said he thought it was quite delicious. Furthermore, Professor Stone who taught my Africa: Peoples and Cultures class, had spoken extensively about his time among the Kofyar of Nigeria, who based much of their subsistence strategy around work parties, in which a days work on someone’s farm was exchanged for a party at the end of the day in which the workers would drink such millet beer. These work parties were called mar-muos, which I thought bore stark resemblance to the name for the beer they had here in Soroti. Anyway, he advised all of his students to try it if they ever got the chance, and so I was on a mission to find the stuff. Muna said we should check out the party, and naturally when we got there, there was a group sitting in a small circular hut sipping on some freshly brewed marua. Muna told the group we would like to have a taste, and they, excited by their foreign visitors welcomed the few brave souls willing to try the strange concoction. The room was full of people sitting around a pot placed on the floor in which the marua was poured. Everyone was given a bamboo straw about four feet long so we could relax and sip our marua. The locals all got a kick out of seeing our faces as the first drop of that bitter, warm, vaguely alcoholic liquid touched our tongues. The taste wasn’t awful, but it was enough that I was happy to be able to say I had tried it after a few sips (I believe that an uncertainty about the sanitation level involved in preparing the brew also prevented us all from taking much more than that). Anyway, upon emerging from the hut we found a crowd gathered around a few from our group who had begun to dance with the children to African music we had heard upon coming down the hill. The whole town seemed to be enjoying our presence. As we began to leave some walked locking arms with the children, when we reached the end of the camp the children had to be escorted back so as to keep from following us all the way back to the hotel. Though we hadn’t actually done anything to help these people I think we all walked away feeling both disturbed at witnessing how these people live, but also content that we our presence seemed to have brighten up their evening on that particular day.
The next day we visited the Ugandan Red Cross for Lira. The Red Cross took us back to the camp to show us one of their community initiatives. It was a woman’s empowerment group who took women from the community, and gave them jobs. When we got there, however, we learned that their work consisted of taking the rock we had climb the other day, breaking it into gravel of different sizes and then selling it. In the hot sun (in Soroti the sky is so large if feels like there is no place to hide from the blistering heat) these women (and some of their children) would work all day burning tires underneath large rocks in order to break them into chunks that could then be attacked with a sledge hammer. They had no advanced equipment, no method of effectively storing their gravel, and were consumed in doing work normally reserved for prison work gangs, in order to sell their product at a marginal profit. Though one woman said she had earned enough money to send her daughter to school, it was apparent that they were all still living in wretched poverty. The grime scene despairingly reminded me of the myth of Sisyphus.
Later that day we visited Christian Children’s Fund. This is one of those groups you see on TV, preaching that for just one dollar a day you can support a child in Africa. What surprised me is that when you sponsor a child, the money you give actually goes to that one child. I had always assumed they pooled the money in order to help many children and just sent you a picture of one of the many you were helping. What is unfortunately about this system is that, should a donor decide to discontinue funding for any reason, that donor’s child loses sponsorship, and is cut off from support. Aside from this minor draw back, they generally seem to help children quite a lot. Often they will invest in a child’s school funding programs to build proper lavatories, purchase proper supplies, and so on.
That night we had a panel discussion, in which the LC5 (Ugandan equivalent of a state governor) of Soroti district was a member. Afterwards we invited the panel to stay and eat dinner with us. For no other reason than to feel important, I struck up a nuanced discussion about the Land Amendment Bill on which I had just completed a research bill. Over dinner, my theory that Ugandan’s can’t resist questioning Muzungu’s about gay tolerance held true, and even the “governor” of Soroti felt compelled to ask about it. However, the discussion did not progress very far as the man couldn’t stop laughing. He said that the mental image of two men together was too comical to handle. He did say that he believed it was wrong because if everyone was gay no one would make babies. Several of the girls on the trip brought up the idea of artificial insemination. This was a classic Ugandan moment, only here could a bunch of Muzungu’s sit with the head of a district to argue the finer points of test tube babies.
Alright that’s all for tonight folks. Mama is calling me to come to her political club meeting. Tune in next time for the thrilling conclusion to the three part saga of my adventures in Northern Uganda. I’ll tell of the city of Lira, roadside baboons, eating bugs, and the coming of the rain season. As always kwaheri!
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