“Give me your camera or I’m taking you to jail,” the UPDF soldier demanded. His eyes, sunken deep into their sockets, were glacial blue at their centers, clouded over with cataracts. His green uniform, stitched for a man twice his size, hung on his slender frame. An old rifle with a scuffed barrel hung over his shoulder.
I didn’t know what to do. For 10 minutes I had tried to explain to him that I did nothing wrong by taking a picture of the Nile. And for 10 minutes he insisted that he was under strict orders to confiscate the camera of anyone caught snapping images of the river.
No one was around. We were standing by a bridge over the swollen Nile, foamy rapids roaring in the background.
“I don’t understand,” I pleaded, “I don’t see any signs around here that say people can’t take pictures of the river.”
“There is a sign. It’s over there,” the soldier countered, pointing to the opposite side of the river, just across the bridge.
“Really? Good. Then, with your permission, I’d like to walk my bike over there and take a look at it. I want to see what it says,” I said.
“You don’t need to do that. I know what it says. It’s my job to know what it says,” the soldier snapped, visibly frustrated. “Trust me–it says no pictures allowed.”
A car came down the hill and approached the bridge. I debated flagging it down for help, for witnesses. Just as I was about to wave, the soldier reached for my camera.
“Give me the camera. I told you the rules. No pictures allowed, give it to me,” he said, grabbing at the camera around my neck.
I pulled it to my side, out of his reach.
“Wait, wait a minute. Look, I don’t mind giving you my camera,” I said. “It’s no problem. But before I do, I need you to show me the law you’re talking about. Show me something on paper. Or show me that sign across the river. Just show me something in writing. Once you do, I’ll give you my camera.”
The soldier stared at me.
“If you don’t give me that camera, I’m taking you to jail. Do you want to be arrested? Do you want to go to jail?” he asked.
“No, no of course not. But I can’t just give you my camera without seeing some sort of official document that says I broke a law.”
The soldier looked up the road. He stared off into the distance and said nothing. The midday sun was warming the sweat-soaked shirt clinging to my back. Straddling my bike, I waited for him to say something.
“You, get out of here. Go,” he said, finally, disappointment smeared across his face. “Leave, now.”
I didn’t say anything. I pedaled away and didn’t look back.
Of all the people I met and greeted during my ride, that UPDF soldier was the only one who was anything but kind.
*****
The sky was so vibrantly blue, so checkered with wispy, bone-white clouds, and the fields of grasses and shrubs that stretched out to the horizon so blindingly green, so visibly pulsing with life, that the ephemeral brilliance of the place was impossible to ignore. Northern Uganda at the start of the rainy season is a landscape awash with fresh color. Rust-colored roads that blow dust up into the skies during the dry season turn deep caramel and copper once soaked with rain. Grass awakens and, chameleon-like, changes its hues before you realize what has happened, morphing from golden tan to lime green overnight. When the afternoon thunderheads bloom and billow at sunset, their purplish gunpowder gray faces bruise with pinks and yellows. Most nights, lightning fires in the clouds, scattering color across the skies long after the light of the sun has faded.
Above: Dusk, near Agung IDP Camp
Riding through such a place on a bicycle unpeels it for you. When the scenery stuns you, paralyzes you with awe, you can stop and look at it more closely. When the kids run to the side of the road to wave wildly at you, you can stop to say hello. And when the rains turn the roads into puddle-pocked slicks of soft mud, you, soaked to the bone, can push your bike up the hills and know what the old man on the bike next to you is feeling; empathy has a way of reaching down to your marrow when the air is white with sheets of rain and your teeth are chattering.
*****
I waited too long to find a camp spot–the sun was slipping and stars were on their way. I approached the Agung IDP Camp, a cluster of a few hundred mud and grass huts crowded together atop a gentle ridge in the land. As I stopped my bike by the side of the road, kids and adults, smiling and waving, walked up to me to gawk. In minutes, a crowd of 30 encircled me.
I asked one man if he knew of anywhere I could set up my tent for the night. I told him, as I always do when trying to find a camp spot, that I needed nothing more than a flat piece of ground for my tent, that I had food and water and needed only a safe area to rest for the night. He waved to a path across the street.
“Follow that path to the camp health center. They will have a place for you, I think,” he said.
Above: Church in Agung IDP Camp
I pushed my bike into a grassy gated area. At the center of the clearing were two strange looking concrete structures; amidst so many mud huts, anything concrete seems out of place. A tall young man came out to greet me. Ronald. We introduced ourselves, I told him about how I was looking for a place to sleep, and he quickly invited me to spend the night.
I set up my tent behind the main clinic building. As I did, more than 20 children, all wide-eyed, all wearing clothing stained and holed by the stresses of poverty, watched in total amazement at the oddities I pulled from my bag–a stove that burns on petrol, a tent, a multi-tool that I used to cut vegetables, a 10 liter water bag. As each piece of gear revealed its function–as the tent took shape around its pole, as the stove blazed to life–the children yelled and pointed. They laughed and whispered to one another inAcholi . The older kids passed around small bags of hydration powder to the younger ones, bags they get for free at the clinic. The kids poured the white powder into their hands and licked it off their fingers.
Above: Kids I met at the health clinic
Looking at the children, seeing some with bellies so distended and round that the skin of their mid-sections was pulled thin and taut, I couldn’t help but feel gluttonous about my meal of vegetables and noodles. I was chopping carrots, onions, and potatoes, about to eat a meal bright with color, and these children were visibly hungry. Not a single one, though, asked me for food once the meal was ready. Not a single one stopped smiling and laughing with his friends as I set up camp and cooked. Despite their runny noses and bulging bellies–things about them that the health workers at the clinic saw as symptoms of one lurking illness or another–the kids at the camp were just like kids anywhere else: full of the type of creativity that can turn a bottle cap or a plastic bag into a toy, the type of energy that makes running around on a muggy evening not only possible, but fun, as well. Watching Ronald interact with them, gently guiding them to and fro with his big palm cupped around the backs of their heads, I could see why a young 29-year-old man would choose to live hundreds of kilometers from home, away from the family and friends who know and understand him.
Over the noodle-and-vegetable dinner I prepared, once the children had scattered, Ronald and I talked. A thunderstorm brewed on the horizon. The stars came out in force, and the Milky Way grew into a thick bright belt that seemed to hold the sky in tight and close to Earth. A full moon rose and blazed away. Between the steady flashes of lightning and the light of the moon, an illuminated night enveloped us.
“Have you seen that the camps are not so crowded now?” Ronald asked, blowing on his noodles to cool them down.
“I have,” I said. “Each of the camps I passed today seemed like it was half-filled.”
“Here at Agung we are exactly half-filled right now. We used to have more than 4,000 residents, and now we have close to 2,000 or so,” Ronald said. “There are many good things about people returning to their villages, leaving the camps, but some people are sad about it, I think.”
“What do you mean? Can you explain?” I asked.
“Well, for the most part, it’s good that people leave the camps,” Ronald explained. “Living in the camps is not the best way to live. Because residents live very close together here, it’s very easy for disease to spread. When one child is sick, many get sick. Also, most of the adults have grown used to receiving food and other things from theNGOs . Over time, this has made them expect these things, to wait for these things. The main bad thing about living in the camps, though, I think, is that this lifestyle is unnatural. The people here are not connected to the land the way they used to be. The don’t have space for their family and fields like they used to.”
“But you said some people are sad to leave the camps?” I asked.
“Yes, of course. Some people really enjoy how easy it is to have friends here. Living close to other people, you can socialize easily. If you live deep in the bush, it’s harder.”
We finished our noodles and vegetables and watched the lightning storm swell and approach. Ronald declared, “It will start raining at 10:00 p.m. You will see!”
Ronald’s cousin, Jaclyn, invited us inside to have a snack of millet bread and beans. I told Ronald that I was full, but he insisted I join the health workers for their meal. In the health center’s main living room, a space sparsely furnished and with walls adorned with posters that said things like ‘Relax, Jesus is in Control,’ we ate and talked about Ugandan politics and life. A kerosene lantern flickered and threw shadows up onto the walls.
Half way through the meal, I heard the patter of rain start on the iron roof above us. I checked my watch: 10:05 p.m. I looked at Ronald. He smiled.
Ronald’s co-workers asked me about my impressions of Uganda and how life in Uganda compared to life in the states. They told me about their constant battle against the waves of malaria that seem to never cease washing over the camp. They talked about how the children have trouble shaking respiratory tract infections and bouts ofdiarrhea . Even though I said there were lots of similarities between life in the two countries, even though I talked about how hard it was to earn a living in the states, too, how we struggle with corruption in government and business just like Ugandans do, some differences–contrasts regarding things like waves of malaria and kids who come close to death because ofdiarrhea–make the similarities seem small.
After an hour-and-a-half, I thanked them for the meal and company, said goodnight, and got ready for bed. I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of rain pounding like a million small fists on the walls of my tent.
*****
When I cycled through Alabama, a gray-haired, road-hardened cyclist with thousands upon thousands of miles behind him gave me some advice.
“Take pictures of roadkill,” he said. “You’d be surprised how much roadkill can reveal about a place. Each part of the world has different roadkill.”
He was right. Mexico’s roads were littered with dead, bloated dogs; some days I’d pass 15 or more. In Central America, I spotted iguanas. I saw snakes flattened into long ribbons in Colombia and Ecuador. In central Chile, for just one day, I saw a few hundred dead butterflies brightening up the shoulder of the road with yellows, reds, and greens, but in northern Chile, the driest place on the planet, I saw not a single animal–dead or alive–for almost a week. The pampas of Argentina? Birds. Southern states in the U.S.? Lots of cats, a few deer, and a handful of small snakes. And here in Uganda, near the entrance to Murchison Park, I spotted two things I have never seen before on the side of the road.
Above: A lizard and a monkey
*****
Over the course of three days and 140 miles, I cycled past hundreds of fields. Farmers everywhere around Gulu were taking advantage of the onset of the daily rains and planting crops–cassava, ground nut, millet, and sorghum, among others. With metal hoes and not much else, men and women alike were overturning the earth. As many Ugandans are subsistence farmers, the fields people were tilling were small plots that surround their homes. The harvests they are going to reap are for consumption, first and foremost, with any surplus remaining available for sale. The bicycles that passed me on the road were loaded with bags of cassava root ready for planting, sacks of fertilizer, or bundles of farm tools. The handshakes I shared with folks by the roadside were gritty with fresh dirt. Over and over again in the field, women, some with babies tied to their backs, and men swung hoes down into the ground and then pulled back on their handles to rip apart the ground.
Nearly everyone I passed, though, whether they were working or relaxing, threw me a wave and flashed a smile. My short three day route through the countryside showed me a section of northern Uganda that is steeped in both stunning views and local kindness. I’m thankful that the town I live in is surrounded by such a place.
Above: People I met by the side of the road near Opit
Above: Me with some of the crowd that gathered as I got ready to start riding one morning
