TRAVEL: A Karamoja journey

By Kalungi Kabuye

To many Ugandans, Karamoja is still very much a foreign and hostile land, where the natives generally want everybody to leave them alone to their ways, and the outside world has for a long time reluctantly accepted.

But not anymore, as a group of journalists from the Vision Group travelling to Karamoja with officials of the German NGO GIZ, found out. Our journey would take us through the districts of Nakapiripit, Moroto, Kotido and Abim. Unfortunately we did not go to Kidepo, although we came within 100km of it.

The first thing we think about when one mentions Karamoja is guns, and people walking around naked like they don’t care.

In the four days we were there I didn’t see a single Karamojong with a gun. In fact the only gun I saw was with a policeman guarding the Napak district headquarters.

The gun is a much maligned item in the region, and the elders we spoke to cursed it as the instrument that has destroyed their land. The Karimojong are a proud people, and all they have ever wanted was to be left alone to live with their cattle, and follow traditions they have had for generations.

But the gun changed all that, the elders say. All of a sudden with the gun they had the means to gather more wealth in cattle than they had ever dreamed about, and what used to be inter-tribal raids for cows to pay dowry became regional war fare, and often times downright banditry.

That brought on the recent forced disarmament, and the only guns remaining in Karamoja now are well hidden.

And of course the young guys (known as karachunas) now had the power, stopped listening to the elders (deemed to have divine authority), and the Karamoja that had existed for generations effectively came to an end.

Before the journey I was warned about the naked people, and men who appeared to have ‘three legs’, but apart from very young children running around when a car drove past, and a few men found bathing in the numerous rivers, we did not encounter any naked people.

Many of us take Karamoja to be a semi-desert, and indeed it is an arid land with harsh dry seasons. What I didn’t know is that there is a green belt running through the region, and that modern farming methods are alive and well. But when the rains fail, as happened three years ago, it can become a dust bowl.

It was the rainy season when we travelled, and all we could see was green everywhere. But the rains often play havoc on the road network, and we had to change our plans to travel through Soroti, as that road was blocked by an overflowing river.

So we took the Kapchorwa route, along which we knew we had entered Karamoja when a sign came up warning that the  tarmac ends after 200 metres.

First stop was Namalu in Nakapiripit district, but along the way we often had to give way to huge trucks ferrying limestone and marble to the Tororo Cement factory (Karimojong leaders understandably have beef with that, accusing the company of taking precious minerals out and ruining the roads at the same time.)

The roads are much better after Namalu, all through to Moroto, Napak and Kotido, although we spent 2 hours in Abim after two trucks got stuck while trying to pass each other. Of course the four wheel drives helped, although I doubt if that Ipsum we passed near Namalu really made it to anywhere.

It was after Moroto that we encountered some ‘real’ Karamojong herding cattle, but with sticks and bows and arrows; and in Napak we heard tales of how great it used to be, and how hopeless life is now. We also heard demands for Government to establish grand irrigation schemes to change the land.

In Kotido, land of the Jie, we heard of tales of life without cattle, and how the disarmament exercise, together with the drought of 2008, had diminished the herds.

Ex-rustlers treated us to tales of valour, but bemoaned the difficulty in getting bride price, and how educated girls are way too expensive, while just a few years ago a girl who went to school was shunned and treated as an outcast, and nobody would pay cows for her.

But mostly we saw a changing Karamoja, with ex-warriors having to resort to farming to make ends meet, and establishing settlements. Because they never stayed long at one place, no latrines were built, or needed, but now they know the first thing to build is a place of convenience.

Where it used to be mostly sorghum and sim sim, we saw plenty of maize, beans and groundnuts. And efforts are underway to reduce the use of firewood, as even the few trees of Karamoja are soon running out.

At the end what we saw was a Karamoja which, although largely left alone in the past, is learning how to cope with the rest of the world, which is fast catching up with it.