First of all, I finally made a map of my tour using the Track My Tour app. Some people have been wondering where the heck these places are in Uganda and rightly so as many places I've been are hard to find on Google Maps. So here you go: http://trackmytour.com/PjJ7r.
Jan 30th to Feb 19th
Feb 20th to March 1st.
It's a shame I can't post the complete map here and I have to post in two parts, or at least I can't figure out how to make it work. Perhaps something Track My Tour needs to work on? Or maybe it's one of many things Blogger needs to work on.
Riding in a truck seemed like a novel experience and reminded me how lucky I am to be traveling by bike. I mean, I couldn't even take a picture in that bumpy chunk of metal! Nor did I feel I could ask the driver to stop anytime I wanted to take a picture since he and the other passengers were members of ZOA and doing me a favour by giving me and my Surly Troll a ride to the tarmac. Nonetheless, they took me to a part of Uganda I would never be able to see by bicycle, the roads are absolutely horrendus. I got to see some Pocot people building a new school for their people, a collection of huts in the middle of the land of thorns far from any civilization -no hospital, no school, no water, no nothing, oh except a solar panel! What?! Yes, a SOLAR PANEL. They are EVERYWHERE in Uganda, in fact I see them more so in the more impovershed the area (i.e. more in the north). Apparently the Chinese provide a cheap product at least relative to the solar panels we might find in North America. Each solar panel has fewer cells, therefore produce less energy, but it's sufficient for what the people need (e.g. sometimes this is how we get cold beer!).
Solar panel in the middle of nowhere on a thatched-roofed mud-hut.
While driving to these rural areas, we traveled by the south face of Mt. Kadam, therefore I circumnavigated Mt. Kadam half by bike and half by pick-up. It was amazing to see Mt. Kadam up close! There are cliffs amongst the vegetation that look very climbable! I asked if anyone has ever ventured up the mountain for fun and the answer was "No, Ugandan's aren't very adventurous. But there are apparently people that live on top of Mt. Kadam that have never come down." OK. Wow. That's incredible. I mean the mountain is large, but not large enough that I could see a whole lot of people or resources up there. I'm curious as to what their genetics look like...sure enough we saw a kid hurding goats up top. Not sure if he dwells at that elevation or just brings his goats up there during the day, but at least I saw some "adventurousness" in a Ugandan.
I also got to see a subsurface damn! Adam, the male half of the dutch couple from ZOA (see previous post: http://ecosystemsfornomads.blogspot.com/2014/02/sipi-to-amudat-land-of-thorns.html), had told me about these projects. They're exactly how they sound, a damn below the ground's surface. They are much larger than I had pictured in my mind and seem like they do a lot of damage or at least change the river ecosystem quite a bit, but apparently ZOA has tested the effects of the damns down river and have found minimal effects. Always a challenge to find a balance between ecosystem needs and the needs of the people. These damns provide water to rural areas without access to water in the dry season. As you can see, the river is bone dry as we are at the height and end of the dry season. The only reason you see water in the dug-out area is because of one rain they had two days prior to this photo.
Subsurface damn organized by ZOA.
The bone-dry river, hence lack of water in the area.
Once back on the bike I ended up staying in Kumi, a cute little town that was much quieter than most towns/villages I've stayed in in Uganda. I tried staying in a school, but it was Sunday and the headmaster and all other members of authority were not there to give me permission to stay. One of the students then came forth and said I will likely be allowed to stay at her parents' house since they have many Canadians stay with them. "Really?" I asked. Apparently there are many many NGOs in Kumi, where the number of NGO's noticably starts to increase as you go north in Uganda. Sure enough, I'm welcomed whole heartedly, given tea and bread, a bed to sleep in, drinking water, water to bathe and dinner. Dinner was not served until 10pm, as is the norm it seems for many house holds. I ate only with the man of the house, which also seems to be the norm when a guest is invited into the home even though all the women in the house did all the cooking...It was very nice and I was very thankful for a free bed and free food. I was also very thankful for the company. The young girls, in their teens and maybe early twenties, were great to talk to and I found out a lot about their culture. For example, I asked why I don't see many women driving bicycles. The girls responded saying it's because women think it's too hard, that they don't want to put in that much effort to get somewhere and they would rather walk. hmmmm, that's interesting. You will see below when I talk to a girl in a village around Gulu about a bicycle she received from BAP, a bicycle promoting organization, that this is not a universal opinion in Uganda. I also asked the girls in Kumi why I don't see women driving the boda-bodas here (the motorcycle taxis) and they replied saying women would never get business because everyone thinks they're weak drivers, that they wouldn't be able to handle the motorcycle. I think I was more astonished by how uneffected the girls were by this sad truth (or is it the truth? I don't know, I have to investigate further as to whether people actually think this way about women driving bodas). I told them that the women here are obviously very strong, look at the weight they carry in their arms, on their heads and all the while carrying a baby on their back. They'll carry a baby on their back when working the land. Their pipes (biceps) are huge! I wouldn't want to get in a fight with these women. So how on Earth can anyone describe them as weak? The girls just shrug their shoulders and say this is how everyone thinks and there's no way to change it. That wouldn't fly where I come from. I hope this changes soon, but I have my doubts given Uganda's poor decision making based on sex, gender and sexuality. I'm sure you all read the news.
So the next morning I was served tea, bread and jam in the morning and escorted to the road that lead me to Soroti where one of the girls gave me a little parting gift: a keychain with the Ugandan flag. Such thoughtful people. They don't even have electricity, but they fed me, gave me water, a free bed and now a gift. Unbelievable.
In Soroti I stayed at Amecet, an orphanage run by a dutch women over the last 17 years. Annemieke, the female half of the couple in ZOA, set me up with a bed to sleep in as she had volunteered in Amecet before. There must have been around 40 or 50 kids at this orphanage, most of them babies and some of them between the ages of 2 and 6 maybe. It was overwhelming. Many of the caretakers are local women, but there are quite a few dutch volunteers that come for a couple of months at a time as well. It was an interesting environment to live in temporarily, and again I was thankful for a bed. Soroti was a fairly nice town with nice shops and the largest market I've seen in Uganda so far! There were tons and tons of stands bursting with tomatoes, cabbage, onions, dodo (their spinach), bags and bags of spices, beans, avocados, bananas, etc. It was so colourful and maze-like all semi-contained in a kind of courtyard. I wished I could have taken a picture, but my camera has decided only to work in the mornings when it's not so hot...bummer. I met some great people at Amecet and went to dinner with them at Hotel Soroti where they go for dinner every Tuesday to have something other than the rice and meat they're served every single day in Amecet.
The road to Soroti from Kumi was pretty bad since it is mostly unconstruction, which makes it doubly terrible because the road itself is a bunch of dirt and bumps while the construction dudes are, well, stereotypical construction dudes. However, I'm always comparing the road I'm on to the road on the way to Amudat and nothing will ever be *that* bad, so I was content cycling to Soroti regardless of the dust and bumps and cat calls. Leaving Soroti toward Lira, however, was a different story. The road was a dream! Best road so far in Uganda! No pot holes, slight ups and downs, not very busy with traffic, and mostly vast swamp and trees with the occasional small village. Fantastic. Unfortunately this stretch of good road only lasted about 100km, and quite frankly I don't understand why that particular stretch is the best I've seen in Uganda. The general trend I've seen is the more north I go the worst the roads are because there is less infrastructure. Whatever, I'm not going to analyze the reason behind it beign so good, I'm just going to accept it and hope there's more in the west of Uganda. Although I hear the Chinese build some roads here...I'm not sure what their motive is exactly.
Good road complete with actual signs stating distances between towns...first I've seen in Uganda!
It took me three days to get to Gulu on the *main highway*. Yes, when you look at a map the highway looks very *main* indeed, but really it's a piece of crap dirt road that barely has two lanes! Again, not as bad as that to Amudat, but still, the difference between the north and south is like night and day. Althought the highway is shit, large transport trucks find a way to carry their heavy loads headed for South Sudan. Many of them carrying a freight container full of supplies like building materials and food. This was the only real evidence I saw that indicated something was going on in South Sudan. Otherwise, northern Uganda is safe from any of the conflict north of them.
I stayed in Agwata and Icheme, two very small villages, along the way to Gulu. I set up my tent in a mud/brick "house" in a school in Agwata where they were so fascinated by my presence I received visitors every 10 minutes. It was difficult to get anything done. The headmaster and teachers just let the children crowd around my every move. They were, as usual, particularly fascinated with my stove. They watch the entire process of cooking my dinner from setting up the stove to boiling the water to finishing and eating the food. Apparently mzungus washing dishes is much more interesting than when they wash dishes as well. The next school I stayed in had headmasters and teachers that really GOT IT. They told the kids not to crowd me and follow me everywhere. I mean, it's fun to an extent, but it's really hard to get certain things done like go to the bathroom and wash when you have hundreds of curious children creeping closer and closer to you with your every move. I'm especially sensitive with them around my tent just because they're not familiar with tents and don't realise that if you run around tent pegs you're liable to trip and either rip the tent or take the peg out. Luckily no one has fallen and my tent hasn't ripped yet, but pegs have certainly been pulled out by running children. Makes me nervous. Perhaps the difference between the headmaster in Icheme and that in Agwata was the fact that a single dutch woman had cycled through Icheme in 2011 and stayed at the very school I stayed in in Icheme! What are the chances? Icheme is one of many tiny villages on the way to Gulu. It was especially funny because apparently us mzungus all look the same and the headmaster asumed I was the very same girl he had met in 2011!! hahaha. No, sir, never been here in my life and I'm from Canada, not the Netherlands. One of the teachers from Agwata actually thought Canada was a STATE in the US! What?!!! NO!!! We are a totally different country! Wow. Later he had me greet his grade 7 class and I made sure to ask the class where they think Canada is, since they clearly aren't going to learn that particular fact from their teacher. The teacher redeemed himself by scribbling a couple of blobs on the black board, the souther blob representing the USA and the northern blog representing Canada. Good, education served. I think I mentioned in a previous post that many people often think Canada and the USA are the same place or that Canada is in Europe. I think I also mentioned that I will be traveling with a world map next time round....
Market in Icheme. Only on a couple times a week.
Women always sell food goods, men maybe sell clothing or random things like soap and cigarettes. The vendors are mostly women.
Bags and bags of beans, lentils and spices -mainly curry.
Some must bare the brunt of the sun while others are privy to the shade.
Bad road, not as bad as Amudat
Getting into Gulu the road became "paved" again. I say paved in quotations because half the road is paved and the other half is...well...broken, full of pot holes or just straight up dirt. The locals don't call out "mzungu" as much here, instead they call out "mono", which, if you know Spanish, is absolutely hilarious, "mono" means monkey! hahaha.
Gulu: This is where my direction North ends and I start cycling down the west side of Uganda next. A big landmark in my tour. Any further north and I'd be in South Sudan! I think my parents suffer from enough stress as it is...
One of the main reasons I wanted to make it all the way to Gulu was because of BAP, Bicycles Against Poverty, an organization that provides bicycles to those who need them for transport in the Gulu municipality and surrounding villages. I heard about them on National Geographic's 2013 Year in Review: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/year-in-review-2013/#/travel. You know that if an organization has caught NG's attention, they must be good. Check out BAP's website here: http://www.bicyclesagainstpoverty.org/. Also check out their interview from NG as they were chosen as NG's Travelers of the Year! http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/travelers-of-the-year-2013/muyambi-muyambi-and-molly-burke/. BAP distributes these bicycles in and around Gulu because this part of Uganda suffered a decade-long war and has always been underprivileged compared to the south of Uganda. This is a result of both British colonization as well as Ugandan government and the LRA (Lord's Resistance Army, known by many because of Kony 2000. Kony was the leader of the LRA). As mentioned in a previous post, http://ecosystemsfornomads.blogspot.com/2014/02/first-few-days.html, Uganda is, as is much of Eastern Africa, divited into two -the southern Bantus and the northern Nilotics (however, I've been told that Luo -sometimes calling themselves Acholis- are different from Nilotic people and are found in Gulu and further north) with Bantus having had the most resources and power historically. This is why I've seen increasingly more poverty, poorer infrastructure, including less pavement, the further north I've traveled. So I'm here in Gulu, spending too much money on non-local food like sandwiches and pizza because I have little self control when calories are being burned by the 1000's (cycle touring is ridiculously comparable to tree planting, minus the fact that I'm seeing new things and meeting new people by the kilometer and spending money rather than making it :) ).
I had the privaledge of going into a neighbouring community to Gulu where a few of BAP's bike have been changing peoples' lives for the better. A local BAP staff member walked me from the city of Gulu through a maze of dirt paths that lead to what seemed like a secret magical place full of shade-providing trees, small agricultural patches, rivers complete with walking bridges made out of branches and peace and quite. You would never think a place like that existed just a walk away from the hustle and bustle of the bodas and large trucks honking and spewing dust everywhere. What a walk. We reached the village market where I got to ask (essentially interview) a BAP beneficiary as many questions I wanted. I found out the young lady's buisiness is now flurrishing because she is able to transport her goods from the fields to the market in large quantities by bicycle (in a long skirt no less, because all women wear skirts in Uganda, except for maybe Kampala area). She feels she is more fit because of the bicycle, which is great because many young people do not have time for excercise beyond working the fields in these areas. She tells all her friends, family, neighbours about BAP and that they should apply to get a bicycle of their own. There was not a negative aspect of the bicycle in her life that she could express. One downfall I found was that she did not know how to fix a flat tire or maintain the bike in any way despite the efforts put forth by BAP to teach their clients how to do simple bike maintenance including changing a tire. Confidence is most certainly lacking in the area of bicycle maintenance throughout Uganda. For instance, I am asked the same handful of questions everytime I stop to take a sip of water, eat a snack, catch my breath or take a picture and one of those questions is: "What do you do when you get a flat?" When I respond saying "I fix it" the gasps and awe coming from my interviewer suggest I've done something equivalent to saving 10 babies from a rabid elephant. It's unheard of for people to travel long distance by bicycle in Uganda, it's even less likely to see a mzungu travel by such means, less likely still to see a woman do it and next to no one in the country seems to know how to change a tire on a bike. They take the bike to a mechanic they say...well, the majority of riders I see are no where near a bike mechanic as I've only seen bike shops in large cities, which are few and far between -hence why these people are on a bike in the first place. It seems odd to me that the need for a bicycle mainly stems from the fact that people are living far away from basic ammenities like hospitals, markets, etc, yet they rely on city centres for bike maintenance...hmmmm. Logic is not the strongest of suites at times. Changing a flat on a bike could not be easier, especially when you compare it to the ulternative method of transporting goods around these parts: head loading. Why is it that most Ugandan women can lift an insanely heavy bundle of goods on to the TOP OF HER HEAD and balance it there for km's and km's, but men and women alike can't wrap their head around changing a flat? I'm blaming it on confidence. Something has shot it. I could name a few things that might have...
Anyways, point is: BAP is doing amazing things in the Gulu area and I commend them for it. If any of you young folk out there are looking for a place to do some good work inbetween uni and a career, as a break from uni or just because you're awesome, choose BAP, you will actually SEE the benefits of your work -a rare trait when it comes to a lot of volunteer work I've seen, heard of and participated in in Africa.
One of a few markets in Gulu, complete with edible insects!! I can't seem to be able to ID them, but the locals call them some kind of fly...I'm guessing they're fireflies. I should try some.
Learning about culture has been fun, and I value it hugely, but boy am I ready to see some wildlife! I can't wait to get to the southwest! I imagine it will take me about 4 days to get to Fort Portal. From there I will visit Kibale, Queen Elizabeth, Bwindi, Lake Mbura and maybe Lake Buniyonyi! We'll see if there's time for Rwanda. I might get sucked into the awesome wild rainforests!
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