Turning Right on Red: Up North

On a recent business trip up North, two things happened in one time that made my day particulary memorable. The first going through a small village seeing a completely naked man hand and foot cuffed waddling around in no particular direction. The more surprising thing perhaps was the fact that no one even turned their heads as he walked around (like the same nonchalance I saw in Rwanda when no one really reacted to the vomit in the bus scene going to Bujumbura). I actually later realized that he was probably mentally ill and the town people had done that to him, which really isn't so funny and it reflects how poor services are for people with mental disabilities.

Later in the day I was on a bus that broke down several times. We would start-up and go some short distant and then the engine would fail. We were stopped for about an hour trying to fix it when a passenger lost patience. He somehow got a boda boda taxi to come find him (we were in the middle of nowhere so I’m not sure how he managed this) but as soon as he left the bus and jumped on the boda the engine failed. He started rolling backwards down the hill on the moto and it was just too hilarious to not burst out laughing.

Acholiland, as some people call it up here, is the home of the Acholi people. It’s not a place most or really any tourists go but it has its own particular charms. Like for example, the abundance of pork roasting joints or the way it can almost sound like singing when people greet each other with their common call and response. Or how for some reason people think when I say my name that it’s “Henry.”

The North has a distinctly different feel from the rest of Uganda. People don’t really eat the normal ever-so-popular banana based dish matoke. The roads are even worse and dustier. The Acholi’s don’t seem to be huge fans of the Buganda, the Kampala based dominant people. Sometimes I see something that I don’t see anywhere else in Uganda: NEW cars, even wrapped in the plastic still. I recently had the chance to ride in one and can elaborate a bit more.

I was actually in a very uncomfortable matato (bus taxi) on my way back up North recently on what should have been leg 1 of 3 with transfers and 8 hours of no leg room and three babies, chickens, and whatever else usually gets thrown onto your lap in a matato. We were several hours from any border but these new cars are so recognizable and really are only going to a few places; mostly South Sudan for government officials there. 1 hour into my trip, somehow our matato driver knowing my final destination, he was able to flag a driver down of one of these new cars and get him to agree to take me up North. There’s really only a few roads which go that way and again no cars that look like this so it makes some sense but is still pretty amazing. Mike, the driver, is a transporter, driving the +20 hours every week from Mombasa, a port city in Kenya, to Juba in landlocked South Sudan. Besides the interesting conversations with such a person, air conditioning, and ridiculous leg room comfort, one other bonus from the trip was a funny story. Mike pulled up beside another nice car blasting African music with a dancing--alone-driver and got him to pull over and literally trade the CD’s from each other’s stereos on the spot. The exchange made me smile.

I’ve also included some recent pics. from Acholiland here