It is time for Karamoja

Last week, a motorist rammed into my car and messed it up significantly, robbing me of two hours from my busy day.

So, it is only fair that he forms part of my storytelling. His car was a huge Toyota Hilux pickup with bull bars, compared to my Subaru Outback, so you can only imagine the damage.

When we pulled off the main road to wait for our mechanics to arrive and do the assessments, we surprisingly got talking cordially, because it took more than an hour for my mechanic to arrive at the scene; enough time for any smoke coming out of one’s ears to fizzle out.

The other motorist told me they were on their way to Karamoja, working for a certain NGO whose name is not important for this story.

I asked: “What are you going to do in Karamoja? Gold?” He replied: “No! If I were to get any minerals, I would go for limestone. Gold can cost you your life these days, and now it has been discovered in more districts of Karamoja.”

That is when we started comparing notes about how much Karamoja has changed, agreeing that it is probably the one region of Uganda (outside Western) that can truly credit President Yoweri Museveni’s 40-year rule for its remembrance and transformation.

THE KARAMOJA I KNEW

I first visited Karamoja in 2005 when The Observer was still a baby, and the region left my hair standing on end. It was everything we had heard about it and worse.

See, in school, “we will not wait for Karamoja to develop” was my tired teacher’s way of saying he was giving up on pupils who showed no signs of academic improvement. And when I got to Kidepo Valley National Park that year, I had never been to a place more remote, in my life.

There was no mobile phone signal, newspapers arrived at the old Apoka Lodge days late (there is a swankier, more expensive Apoka Lodge now), and the animals were the definition of ‘really wild’, because of how little tourist traffic the park saw.

The Karimojong men were still crazy about guns and car tyres – we were told rubber tyres were the sole reason why they ambushed motorists and caused numerous deaths over the years: they wanted the rubber tyres to make their beloved sandals (lugabire).

This was too much of a challenge then that I remember flying to the park, but on the return leg by road, we had to depart the hotel at 3 am when the warriors were still asleep, in order to clear the most notorious sections before daybreak.

I have never experienced another nailbitingly arduous road trip in my life. We found rudimentary roadblocks/ traps in the middle of the road, and at one point the driver had to drive around one through a garden, with us holding our breaths, expecting gunshots to ring out from the surrounding trees or from under the huge culverts in the road, where the Uganda Wildlife Authority driver said the ‘snipers’ usually hid.

By daybreak, we were driving through Kotido town. The image of elderly men sitting on tiny stools on shop verandas, their long penises grazing the floor because they wore just a small suuka over their shoulders, will forever traumatise me.

Young men stood in the fields, guns held across their shoulders with little else covering their bodies, as they grazed cattle. I still curse the thugs that broke into The Observer on numerous occasions, because I lost most of those photographs to them.

In Kotido and Nakapiripirit markets, I saw women walking with breasts swinging in the air like they don’t care, as they walked past vendors selling real bullets displayed in heaps comparable to those of matooke that you may see at Kalerwe market.

That Karamoja left me scarred, and grounded in my stereotypes about the region and its people. In 2017, I returned to Karamoja, and the change was already astonishing then. The disarmament exercise had been largely successful, and it was safer to travel by road.

Kidepo Valley National Park was seeing a bigger volume of tourists, and I did not see any herders with guns, nor did I see any genitals on display.

The Karimojong were already singing praises of First Lady Janet Museveni, who in 2011 had been appointed Minister for Karamoja Affairs and had overseen a successful disarmament exercise, poverty reduction initiatives, youth and women empowerment, as well as extension of education and health services.

Five years earlier, Tom Butime had rejected the same ministerial appointment – that should tell you everything you need to know about Karamoja back then. 2017 is the time I truly appreciated Karamoja as a beautiful place, even when the eight-plus hours of travel remained grueling, especially since the tarmacked road stopped in Gulu district, then.

It has since extended to Kitgum. The community visits were surreal as were the game drives this time round, with the animal population bigger and the experience truly wild, unlike other Ugandan national parks I have been to, which seem too commercialized and in some cases, overcrowded at peak season. Kidepo is absolutely gorgeous and peaceful.

FAST-FORWARD TO TODAY

While I have not been back to Karamoja since 2017, I have followed it keenly in the news and it is hard to reconcile the Karamoja of 2005 with the mineral-rich region experimenting with farming that I see in the news today.

My motorist friend-by-accident, agreed that the region may still be one of Uganda’s most disadvantaged in terms of poverty, food insecurity, etc, but it is a huge departure from what our teachers casually joked about in the past.

Government’s investment in education, in particular – especially the school feeding programs that are seeing more pupils enroll – is proving a life-changer as the exposure challenges cultural practices such as early marriages, public nudity and cattle rustling, as I witnessed in 2017.

Also, an experiment championed by Miracle Centre Cathedral’s Pastor Robert Kayanja and his congregation, has shown that Karamoja’s land can be successfully cultivated using smart agricultural practices, irrigation and rainwater harvesting.

The biggest game changer, however, should be the abundant mineral deposits, including marble, limestone, gold and several industrial minerals. If government ensures that the districts where these natural resources are found share in the bounty the way it has done with national parks, then we should just wait for Karamoja’s dominance of all development indicators, not so far from now.

Remember, Kidepo airport in Karenga district is being upgraded to an international airport, major hotels and safari lodges have already opened, and gold is now Uganda’s main foreign exchange earner, ahead of coffee and tourism.

According to Uganda Wildlife Act, hosting districts for all Uganda’s ten national parks are entitled to a 20 per cent revenue share, and Kaabong district, which hosts Kidepo, is already enjoying these benefits in the hundreds of millions.

In a similar arrangement under the Mining and Minerals Act 2022, local governments are entitled to 15 percent of revenue from the minerals mined in their areas.

According to a UBC story, it is estimated that Karamoja sits on about 30 million tonnes of gold reserves, confirmed in the districts of Moroto, Napak, Kotido, Abim, Amudat, and Kaabong.

Karamoja also has prospects for oil and other natural resources; so, watch out for this sub-region. Overlooked and disregarded for generations, the next major migration could be to the northeast.

caronakazibwe@gmail.com

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