MISSION IN SOCIETY
Vol. XVIII x No. 7
AUGUST 2006
A trip to Northern Uganda
By José António M. Rebelo
Comboni Missionary
After being compressed for endless hours on a narrow bus seat, stung by mosquitoes and harassed by chickens, I arrived at one of the most dangerous zones of Africa. The biggest risk of the adventure was the bus on which I travelled!
An employee of the Comboni Mission dropped me in the town center of Kampala at the care of three “travel agents.” (The policeman on duty didn’t allow us to park the car there, perhaps as an attempt to get some shillings for a cool drink!) With the leader of the trio carrying my suitcase on his head and the other two escorting me, we crossed to the bus terminal which was teeming with people and I got on the bus destined for Gulu, the appearance of which leaves much to be desired.
As soon as my suitcase was squeezed on top of a spare tyre in a tight luggage compartment, the main canvasser claimed the fare money – 15,000 Ugandese shillings. Lacking change, I gave him 20,000. The ticket collector gave me a receipt, but not the change. I sat down and waited. As the change seemingly would never come, I decided to ask for it before setting out. The ticket collector called the canvasser who had kept the remaining 5,000 shillings. When asked about it, the canvasser retorted: “I carried the suitcase. This matter is over, over!” I asked if a tip equivalent to a third of the trip was not exccessive. He repeated: “It’s over!” and left. I laughed at his straightforwardness and so did my co-passengers, for his cleverness.
The bus, which looked more than 30 years old, resembled those imported “flying coffins” – worn out by time and deplorable roads – found in the Philippines. It had broken glasses and other pieces were held by bitumen and adhesive. The ceiling looked like a dirty carpet. It had three seats on one side and two on the other in a row.
When nearby buses started their engines, a cloud of thick smoke invaded ours. During the long wait, peddlers got in and out – offering their goods such as food, drinks, hygienic products and, amazingly, different sizes of radios and golden watches! One of the vendors, perhaps to attract my attention, said rudely to one who was looking at his items: “If you don’t have money, don’t waste my time!” A permanent noise on the bus was the chirping of chicks – perhaps one of the passengers was planning to put up a small poultry in his village!
Mosquitoes, squeezes and jumps
The bus was supposed to leave at midday but left only when it was overcrowded half an hour later; many were already seated on the narrow aisle – on wooden stools and on the floor. A quarter of an hour later we made our first stop in a petrol station, in the heart of the capital (I imagined they needed the fare money to fill the tank!). Many passengers took the opportunity to get out of the “oven” to stretch their legs and, for some, to relieve themselves behind the shrubs, knowing that they wouldn’t have another opportunity like this in the next five hours! The bus started moving slowly while waiting for the passengers to return. It was already 1 p.m. when the bus returned to what seemed to be a “gymkhana” between the potholes of the city’s roads – not at all recommendable for those who have a weak vertebral column.
Before leaving the capital, I saw this sign in front of a Protestant temple: “In God’s judgment, there’s no appeal.” Going to a risky area, where a conflict has been destroying the lives of so many people for the last 20 years, I was quite confident that I shouldn’t be too worried about that definitive divine judgment. But then, we never know.
Since the tiny racks above our heads were already packed with bags (among them were plastic bags hanging with loaves of bread which, now and then, slipped and disturbed me) and the spaces under the seats were also all taken up, I had to travel with my knapsack, containing my camera, at my feet and my computer on my lap. Compressed by my seatmates, (I was seated between a Sudanese, who was on his way home, and a Ugandese carrying a child of around 9 years of age on his lap so as not to pay for her fare) and my knees, pressed against the wooden front bench, aching, I found it impossible to move or to doze off.
On top of all these, there were the trepidations, the leaps and bounces, the swervings, the creaky noise of the bus seats and the salient seat screws to reckon with. Besides, not having a place where to lay one’s head, made it impossible to rest or to reflect. But then, I would rather be awake and alert to the falling parcels from the overhead rack, particularly during brisk overtakes, and to the sting of the fiery mosquitoes (malaria carriers) which liked me so much.
Later on, when I was talking about this trip experience, I was told by my colleagues that, due to their high speed, these buses, with their extreme deficient conditions of maintenance, can become a sarcophagus to 30/40 passengers in a road accident!
Barbecue and chicken
After a few hours, not knowing our exact geographical position, I guessed we must be coming close to Gulu now – considering the announced arrival time when they sold the ticket. I was praying that we would arrive soon. At the same time, I was wondering when these people of Central Africa would have the right to a more dignified and comfortable transportation, comparable to those in operation in South Africa where I had just been to.
Unfortunately, we had done only half way of the trip. The bus stopped in a place called Kigumba. The street vendors surrounded us with provisions, especially soft drinks (it is forbidden to take alcoholic drinks publicly) and barbecues in long sticks. Those who were by the window had the task to mediate business for the others. With only 500 shillings, the passengers were able to satisfy their stomachs. Some took advantage to buy cocks and hens, certainly unafraid of the avian flu, and thinking of future meals.
The bus left more animated, with the driver still engaged with his barbecue! The music was louder. With pieces of the barbecue stick, which could reach half a meter (to get to the passengers more easily), some picked their teeth with them. The rest were thrown out of the window. Two hens were by my feet and I had to give them a few subtle kicks so as not to be disturbed. Meanwhile, the collector passed twice to ensure that everybody had paid the fare. Respecting the musungu (means white in Kiswahili), they trusted my word and they didn’t oblige me to present the receipt.
In another trip (Kampala-Kitgum) a few days later, the conditions were even more precarious. The narrow aisle was full of mothers carrying babies, whose cries were not always soothed by breastfeeding. Even the flies had difficulty flying in such a crammed bus; we were like sardines in a tin! In spite of this, the collector never gave up jumping over the people just to control the tickets. Often, passengers going out or coming in stepped on our toes or knocked us with their parcels.
It was impossible to move because everybody had pieces of luggage at one’s feet and on one’s lap. For instance, the guy in front of me was carrying an enormous Ugandan-made Pensonic (sic) radio and cassette recorder in a box – probably to musically animate the tough life in the North. The most tourist-like passenger was my neighbor seated by the window. He was wearing a nut-brown striped suit (rather untidy and dirty), a pair of blue sun-glasses, a tie matching the sunglasses and an extra large shirt (a few sizes bigger than what he needed); he was holding a Nokia mobile phone which he used often to receive and make short calls about his trip.
But I didn’t slash the grass!
The pressure was coming also from the poor people sitting or standing on the aisle. They were leaning on us and on our seats or simply tickling us unmindfully with their clothes; the children were dirtying us, too. After several hours, with feet asleep, this thought occurred to me: What if someone would have a pressing physiological need (there was no toilet around). I prayed hard that I would be spared of such urgency!
From Gulu to Kitgum, things got worse. The tar road ended and we had a 70-kilometer constant swing, eating the dust of the dry season. The number of fowls aboard increased considerably as they made their presence felt. Some were roaming around so freely that their owners almost lost them. The crampness on the bus was also more felt as the heat became more intense. Some passengers kept on eating and drinking; getting wet with the juice was not at all remote.
One of the ladies who, up to then, was seated on the floor with her two children, managed to get a seat and started feeding them with more solid food: cakes and peanuts. The nut shells were thrown down to the floor. In a short time, next to me was seemingly a pigsty: there were peanut shells, egg shells, bread and cake crumbs, empty bottles, plastic bags and newspaper sheets.
The stops became more frequent; passengers were allowed to get in before those who were finishing their trip could get out. That created a lot of confusion and a waste of time. The collector came leaping over the people and their belongings on the aisle to ask for the new passengers’ fares – an example of African rationality? In one of the stops, the bundle of an outgoing passenger was dropping something liquid – some drops fell on me which I dared not smell!
The bus trip, besides being cheap, may have spared us from the work of slashing the grass on the side of the road, compelled by the soldiers, just like what happened a few days before, between Kitgum and Gulu, to a Spanish colleague of ours, José Carlos Rodríguez, and to his guests – and as I have seen others doing days later. The reason invoked by the soldiers: to prevent the LRA rebels from hiding in the tall grass and perpetrate their ambushes!
A humanitarian drama
In Acholiland – after crossing Karuma bridge – we could see the numerous and overpopulated displaced people’s camps. The UN estimates that they are inhabited by 1.6 million people in extreme precarious conditions, due to a conflict that the government, it seems, is not interested in resolving. It is a tragedy that is comparable with that of Darfur (Sudan) but with much less international attention. The reason, according to the active Archbishop of Gulu, John Baptist Odama, is that “this conflict has taken place in an area with no significant economic, commercial or geostrategic interests, together with the Government’s insistence for years that this was a small internal conflict about to be finished.”
What I have seen and heard in war-torn Northern Uganda made me quickly forget the “risks” and the “inconveniences” of the trip. <WM
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