KITGUM

00:40HRS: Soldiers sleep on the verandah at the Stanbic Bank ATM; most of them stood the whole day waiting to reach the ATM and now its closed. The soldier’s wives lie draped in bundles at the shop front nearby, shifting uneasily from the midnight cold. They too have had the rough end of the day or two waiting for the dough. They can’t leave because if they did their husbands would withdraw all the money and drink it all. They have to shadow the men get whatever amount they can and expect to tag along to the bars to eat the rest.

Shops are all closed. I have walked from my room near the mosque expecting to find an open shop to buy water. Water is a big issue in this town, its salty water, that’s not a big problem. The bigger problem is that there is a cholera scare and one can’t afford to drink un-boiled water. I started typing my report at 22:00HRS, I needed to do it today because the next day was going to be very hectic. We have to go to Agoro, the farthest distance on our list of destination and I wanted to reduce the workload.

I walk past the Stanbic Bank towards the bus park, my shoes make a lot of scratching noises as I pass on. There is a soft breeze that is playing with the town rubbish, swirling it here and there. Near the bus park there are open bars with rowdy crowds dancing to “Mariam Tinditiine”, the women are rowdier, the men have money, the beer is flowing and the music is blaring noisily from the twin speakers placed at the entrance. The next bar plays “Obsession’s Wekume”, there is “Ragga Dee’s letter O” somewhere. Lady Jadee too. I can’t enter these bars, there is just too much dancing for me to pass through and reach the counter. So I walk past these and go towards Gods Mercy. Here there some calm and a sense of decency. Couples seated out in the terrace setting at ease in this hour, well, I too was this easy in wandegs once. Looking at the hours drag by the bottles of beers continuously replacing each other at the table. I bought two bottles of water and walked drinking one.

01:10HRS: I meet three chaps who recognize me, they want me to go along with them to Blue Moon, the hottest nightclub. I ask them where they are going and they say they were going to Hajji’s place to change the air, pick some girls and then head back to Blue Moon. I am tempted. I tell them to go to Hajji’s and then pick me up on their way back to Blue Moon. Blue Moon is…ENIGMATIC, Programme managers, Boda Boda riders, Scoobies, market vendors, ki-commando specialists and all converge here, the dance floor administers new rules, no rules here, dance away and look not at your neighbour, If you do don’t recognize their day jobs. The music is hop, if you can, touch girls’ butts at every opportunity, and don’t hesitate to enjoy yourself, no one really cares what your social status is out of this place.

01:40HRS: I walk to my room, watch a movie. I didn’t like crash the first time I watched it yet I decided to watch it again. I beep Porklerros and surprise-a real call. What is another person in Uganda doing awake at this time. A Kampala wake is different from Kitgum wake. This friend in Kampala had just completed a supper of Pizza and a 1-litre bottle of coke .So I ask, what are going to do, sleep? “Sleep, nah! I have to watch the complete second season of Friends. I have kind of gotten tired of hearing that kind of phrase. Season of this and that…I catch hard talk a woman prison boss talking of the challenges of 21^st century jail. Fall to sleep at 02:38HRS, or around that time. Kitgum electricity is very stable. 

BUGIRI

Ariaka will want to know that the Jinja-Iganga road is still despicable. I thought I would read Nabakov’s The Gift on the journey but realized there was no way I could, this was a jumpy ride, then also there were many pictures that were bored. So I settled at Brenda face. Spent the most of two hours conversating. I like the speed, she didn’t. She likes Nigerian movies I don’t, we both like swimming and tennis, food! Bring anything fishy or meaty or chickeny-Ah well, leave out the chicken for me. The sky is blue out there-eh? I hadn’t noticed…I don’t have a boyfriend…I also don’t have a girlfriends, so why did you leave your boyfriend…do you like phone calls in the curious hours…this is my phone number, its only available when you call…I stay…BUMP. We have reached.

12:00 -16:00HRS: Dancing women, singing, they are happy to see us. My goodness, the last time I witnessed this was three weeks back when the kids sang for their parents. It had then, this is space for oxymoron, had a somber excited bored resonance, a distracted attentiveness, a naiveté or innocence perhaps, yet also a trueness to the cause. It was stimulating in an uncanny ordinary way. Something to treasure. It had a groovy undertone lost in the shy spirited singing. When they stopped we were lost for words okay I was.

The woman sat resting her chin on her palm, her pupils peering from somewhere in there, the flaps over her eyes too heavy to stay up at their assigned sides, the flaps kept challenging themselves, straining against the will of sinewy and reluctant muscles each drooping to meet. They at times did meet, to stay there for an eternity that was roused with a suspicious glint in there. She didn’t bother to keep the eyes open. No one noticed anyway. Every other eye in that enclosure was on the metallic box in the centre of the circle. The old woman’s face twitched at intervals, the burrows emerging from the different sides of her face flowing to the base of the palm, her thick eye brows standing out to empahise the frown formed the burrows emerging from her forehead. The depression of her fingers to one side of her face creating the source of the westerly burrows and the easterly burrows seemed to rise from the thin gathered lips balled in a pout. She could perhaps have had a migraine boiling within that head somewhere. A big nerve pulsated menacingly at intervals on the left end of her forehead setting her brows twitching. Her uneasy breathing could be seen to sweep through her body.

“27,350”, she shouted, shocking me from my watchfulness.

The other women sat upright, waiting for the chairman to move on, relief showing on their faces. The chairman had put them in a difficult situation. He had asked them to tell him how much money they thought they had collected a week ago. No one knew. They had forgotten. They chairman had threatened to fine them each 50 shillings if they failed to remember. Three people remembered different figures. There was some deadlock as they failed to agree on how much it was. The chairman beckoned the security officer (askari) to stand up and get ready to mete out a fine, for it seemed these people were very unserious on matters concerning their money. It was then that the old woman had saved the day by shouting out her figure. “You see these people, the chairman started, they don’t know how much money they have, this is very shameful especially today when we have visitors.”

Now before we open this box. Let’s agree on how much money is in the box. How many people support…. 26,900…27,350…. 27,500…. 27,250…? It came out the old woman was right. “So… the chairman continues, …we have 27, 350 from last week, who knows how much we collected for welfare fund? Okay, that finished. The chairman called the key keepers to come forward. Three people came forward and one by one they sat near the metallic box and opened a padlock. Three padlocks removed revealed inside the box containing the group’s books of account, and their savings over we moved to usual money collection. The secretary roll called, then started the money collection for that week. One by one they paid 200 shillings. The total figure came to 6000 shillings which was added to the figure they had been collecting for 4 months. We had to go, this is a long process. In this system, the members collect money each week, then lend out the money to whoever needs to invest, there is also a separate fund (social fund) from which members can get money to help especially in times of problems and this they pay back without interest. Well, it’s a system that has uplifted many locals.

MUGALIKE

The trip to Kibale has always been a journey I look forward to making each year. It’s the forests that have the hold on me, and the bad roads. Okay Muzizi is flooded that means I can’t continue to Fort portal, but I can’t wait to leave Kagadi for Mugalike. The electricity poles are waiting for long overdue power. Maybe till the elections next that the whims of some politicians be waked to act. Mugalike, it’s not some place you would remember if you passed through. But it’s a place you will treasure if you stopped to wander about.

Karagi

19:00HRS: I need to run away from this place real fast. It’s been two days of over eating. I know they don’t mean no harm but that kind of eating is way past my style. Its Thursday, I need to go to Mugalike, work Friday and leave for Kampala Saturday.  I can’t sit straight, neither can I lie, what I can do with some effort is walk. I have in me food to cover the next week and there is still more cooking. Here you don’t eat for politeness sake, you eat because there is everything to eat. There is space for everything from mangoes to jackfruit to sugarcane to bananas to heaps of potatoes and matooke and meat and beans and cassava. Whey! My rescue lies two kilometers away in Mugalike. It’s an hour to supper and I don’t feel like eating. I have to go to Mugalike. I refuse early supper and set off. It’s drizzling, its muddy and dark is coming. I think I will walk the journey in an hour.

Village paths are not meant to be scary. There is the usual drunkard with no plot going back home, there are the skirmishes among the animal world in the bushes growing noisier as the challenge grows, there are the large overflowing trees that cast monstrous shadows on the path, there is the slippery undergrowth when the path goes through some thicket, and then there is the expanse of forest brimming with wild hugging the path endlessly both sides. I think this will be adventurous. There is no Mango network here so I turn to MTN, I.Kwani’s phone is off so is HFS’s phone. I thought perhaps they could listen to some wild calling.

19:30 HRS: I am sloping down a valley, stones and undulating ground, there is no way I can walk here at a hurry. So I drag slowly. Each footfall into the soggy, murky walk, my shoes get bulkier with earth. There is an expanse of dough that I am playing with. It’s not shifting, it’s not going to be a good mix to eat, am sloppy at my kneading work. There should be some fluidity to it, but its sticky murky.

At the base of the valley a small river flows noisily. Here reeds grow healthy. The water is a black streak against the paleness of the night, trickling ominously, pure, endlessly. This is a hunting ground. There is a clearing where if you wanted a drink you could kneel and clap some water or dip your mouth into the coldness. There are marks of constant use. The earth is firm here and the water clear, a tree branch hangs over the drinking bank. A little to the left a small rise is covered in dense overgrowth, It’s a nice place to pose to spring on a meal without much fight. I could see all the action here. I am even tempted to take the position of the hunter…then the prey…this is scary. If I were with Kwani maybe we could have assumed some of the positions for best attack. The drizzle increases and the lightening keeps brightening the whole place. I think there are some eyes looking at me from the thicket. Its time I hurried away.  I think it’s an image all made up in my eyes’ brain

Weapons in my pocket; a pencil, a lighter, a metallic sharpener, a pack of PK, and a notebook. Nothing that can effectively fight unless I am MacGyver. I want to be scared, I even feel it itching within me yet I am adamant, like when they asked me whether I wanted an escort and I refused. There was that moment I almost went back, when the bushes burst in a flurry of noises and a civil war in the cat family.  There were three cats. They were cats, weren’t they?  The future then looked bleak, the bushes closed in, the clouds darkened, and road became more slippery, no one bothered to wander around the corner, neither did any one happen to have built a hut here.

The climb was tedious, the mud was heavy on my feet and the rain now more pronounced. Mugalike is just up the climb.

20:20HRS: The solar radio tunes into Kagadi Community radio only. I have to listen inattentively for two hours before they stop talking and play music. I pull out the laptop and listen to some rock even with the battery warning. Mugalike is like Bulaga but quieter.  There is no telephone network but if you wanted to access it you climbed up hill to the church. Anyone who bothers to call gets the message “the number you have called is out of range or does not exist on the network.  You could sit on the main road and wait for an hour or two before a vehicle passed. It feels kind of hopeless seeing a vehicle pass and leave you, with the thought that they will be in Kampala in the next 7 hours. If there was a Shinkansen here, I could ride to Kampala and come back before I even knew it. Ah well, there is an animal that howls rather miserably in the forest it distracts one from sleep. If there was no drizzle I could have gone for a walk.