The adventure was alive; the days slipping by too quickly: we’d only meant to stop for breakfast, but after the plane ride Rod and Claire persuaded us to stay the night. We took drinks and some food down to the shore for what they call a ‘sundowner’. I could see a hippo in silhouette, the most dangerous animal in Africa. The sun was sinking, the night was cool, and the hippo slipped beneath the surface of the water.
It was our last night – the Kenyan adventure was over and we’d barely a month left on the road. At five the following morning we left for the Ugandan border.
21
Size Does Matter
EWAN: In a way, Uganda reminded me of Britain. It was very green, with rolling hills and grassy verges, and trees that somehow didn’t look African. I was almost homesick. The people at the border were particularly friendly, going out of their way to wish us luck on the road. It was a wonderful introduction. The country felt pretty laid back and gentle, we were gliding along on good tarmac and I was really enjoying the riding.
We stopped at a coffee-sorting house owned by a consortium of over three thousand farmers who supplied Cafédirect with organic beans. I love coffee, and it had been one of the little unexpected pleasures on this trip. In Ethiopia they crush the beans then boil them over a charcoal burner, gradually thinning the consistency. Then they pour it out and pour it back over and over again. By the time it’s served black with a little sugar, it’s wonderfully rich in flavour.
At the coffee-sorting house, we were greeted with the same enthusiasm and affection we’d experienced everywhere on this trip. The women wore bright clothes and head scarves, orange and purple, lime green. The manager greeted us; a tall man, well-built; he introduced us to the head of security who was even taller and more well-built than he was.
Three thousand independent coffee growers – some of whom had five hundred plants, some maybe three hundred, some as few as fifty or even twenty; it didn’t matter. They grew their coffee organically and brought the beans here. As a consortium they had the power to sell in quantity and cut out the middlemen. Good beans fetch a good price and this way the growers didn’t lose out.
Part of the consortium’s role was to persuade the farmers still using pesticides to switch to the organic method. There was a strong incentive because those outside the consortium were still subject to the vagaries of a market over which they had no power. Of course it took time to make the transition – if a grower had been using pesticides for three years it took three years for the soil to be clean enough to be considered organic.
We were taken to the main building, a vast open warehouse where dozens of women and children were sorting coffee beans. Charley and I got stuck in. As the beans passed by on a conveyor belt we had to try to spot the dodgy ones. Each bean had two husks, the outer skin, an inner silver skin and then the bean itself. The good ones were perfect ovals, sandy grey in colour before they were roasted: the poorer quality ones were easy to pick up because they were chipped and flaked, and discoloured where insects had got at them.
A beautiful young woman was in charge of quality control and she led us through the sorting process. Beans were rated according to quality, the highest being AA. These were generally the biggest. So it is true what they say then: size does matter.
CHARLEY: There was a bunch of testers, men and women, who took a little of each coffee on a teaspoon. We didn’t need to be asked twice and, following their lead, supped it up with as much speed and noise as we could manage; the kind of thing your mum tells you off for when you’re a kid. The manager told us the hard suck was important because it spread the coffee around the mouth, hitting all the different taste buds.
‘Your whole mouth is a sensing organ,’ he said. ‘Sweet at the tip of your tongue and salt at the sides.’
Outside the workers gathered to sing some traditional songs. They held up a banner welcoming us to their country and once again I was overwhelmed by the hospitality. The women started up with their wailing; that amazing, vibrating shriek we’d heard so often. They were accompanied by drums and the beat really got to me. Half a dozen guys were hammering away at a massive wooden xylophone, all playing different sections of the keys and yet creating a perfect harmony. Then the dancing started, all hips and bums, and rather erotic; Ewan and I got right into it.
All in all, it had been a fantastic introduction to Uganda.
The following morning we were on the road to Kampala. I’d slept well and was looking forward to some R&R. We’d caught up with the rest of the team, and this was the first time we’d really had the opportunity to do something fun together on our long journey south. We were going rafting on the White Nile, a stretch of water that ranks in the top four worldwide for the quality of rapids. Rapids are graded – the highest they let a punter out on is grade five. The lowest we would see today would be a grade three. It ought to be an interesting day.
Kitted out with life jacket and tight-fitting pink helmet, I felt like a matchstick. All someone had to do was turn me upside down and I’d flare up.
The boat was rubber, of course, and we took up positions along the sides with our river guide at the back to steer. I’d heard there was only one rule in white water rafting: ‘Paddle or die’.
Russ was far too interested in the next boat, which was full of girls hunched along the gunwales, to consider paddling. I watched as he went through the motions, his mind elsewhere and his blade barely touching the water.
The river was wide and flat and looked pretty calm, but as we drifted downstream I could see whitecaps. They weren’t too big and we rode them easily enough, a little spray but nothing to worry about. Then we hit a couple of monsters and were almost tipped out of the boat. We spun round, our guide fighting hard to right us. The next rapid was a waterfall, almost. With water foaming over the prow, we spun broadside and the boat flipped. We were under the water, above the water, scrabbling for the ropes that hung off the boat.
Once we were upright again, Russ still wasn’t paddling. He wasn’t thinking about the girls now, he was just concentrating on staying in the boat. Claudio went overboard, there one minute, gone the next and nearly taking Dave off at the neck in the process. Typical Clouds, nothing less than spectacular. I was still thinking so when we hit a hole, the boat nosed and I was in the water.
We flew north from Kampala for our second UNICEF visit. Despite the ceasefire, it was too dangerous to ride because of banditry and the odd guerrilla incursion. There had been fighting in northern Uganda for twenty years between the Ugandan government forces (UPDF) and the Lords Resistance Army (LRA) led by Joseph Kony. Kony comes from the Gulu region and calls himself a spirit medium. When he was young he was a millennial fighter recruited by Alice Auma who led a rebellion in the mid-1980s after allegedly receiving visions from the Holy Spirit. Kony went his own way, however, and tried to fulfil his ambition of a state based on the Ten Commandments. His interpretation of the commandments seems a little vague, mind you; we were told that one of his edicts stated that you couldn’t ride a bicycle and anyone who did had their legs chopped off. The United States has proclaimed the LRA a terrorist organisation and in 2005 the International Criminal Court indicted Kony in his absence for crimes against humanity. The ceasefire was brokered by the government of Southern Sudan in 2006 and signed by both the LRA and UPDF.
Politics aside, children are the first victims in any war, and in northern Uganda their fate was particularly grim. Over a twenty-year period twenty-five thousand children were snatched from their homes. Families, villages, whole communities were destroyed. Afraid of constant attack, those who weren’t snatched or murdered fled their homes and now one million four hundred thousand live in Internally Displaced People’s camps.
The camp at Amuru seems to go on forever – thousands of little round huts with thatched roofs eating into the grasslands, built so close together their roofs all but interlock, creating a labyrinth of passageways between them. Forty-five thousand people, living far too close to their neighbours w
ith no privacy, little sanitation and inadequate healthcare.
EWAN: We’d come to see Sarah and were invited to the hut she shares with her uncle and nine-month-old son, who was carried in a pouch on her back. Sarah is seventeen and was abducted by the LRA ten years ago. Quietly she told us what had happened to her. She has virtually no memories of life before the war. All she can recall is that she had two sisters who died, and she has two brothers who also live in the camp. Her eldest brother was killed in the fighting.
The LRA came to the village and took Sarah, her brother and lots of other children to train as new recruits: child soldiers. Aged just seven, she had to walk all the way to the border with Sudan, which can take four days by car. It was a forced march, the children not allowed to slow down, and if they did they were punished. Sarah got an infection in her foot and by the time they got to Sudan she was crawling, traumatised, bewildered and forced along by her captors on hands and knees. After a brief period of rest she was forced into military training: guerrilla warfare, guns, mortars, machetes, hand-to-hand combat; unless they were pregnant or had a child the girls were treated exactly the same as the boys. Sarah was taught how to raid a village, how to maim, and how to kill. I repeat: she was seven years old.
The kids were brainwashed. Kony himself came to see new recruits, persuading them he’d rescued them from awful lives in remote villages where there was no hope of anything. He was a powerful and charismatic leader and lots of kids were sucked in. But not Sarah; she just wanted to go home. She didn’t dare try to escape though – one girl who did was brought back and the new recruits were forced to beat her to death.
Watching her die, Sarah vowed she’d never try to escape. She’d take whatever was thrown at her and somehow she’d survive.
She was given to a local commander as a wife and maltreated by his other wives, older women, who starved and beat her. When she was twelve she heard her brother had been killed and she became very, very depressed. She cried for days, refused to eat; she became so desperate that she decided she’d try to flee.
She was shot during her escape attempt and brought back. Having been beaten, she became pregnant in 2005. Unable to keep up when the camp moved, Sarah was released by her commander and after walking for days she arrived at a UPDF camp. From there she was moved to a UNICEF-supported World Vision reception centre where she received counselling and her parents were traced.
At first she suffered terribly – flashbacks, nightmares about killing and combat; what she’d seen, what she’d been forced to do. Gradually, however, with the support around her and the counselling she received, the flashbacks dwindled and the nightmares became less frequent. When she was finally reunited with her parents she was so shocked she couldn’t talk. She had to tell them her brother had been killed and discovered that they’d heard rumours and had already held a funeral for him; even though at that time, unknown to them, he was still alive.
These days Sarah lives with her uncle because although her family accepted her back, her father died shortly afterwards and her mother has only a little piece of ground to grow food and is also looking after orphans. Sarah has missed out on her schooling – she hasn’t been in class since she was seven and with a baby at seventeen it’s too late. She’s learned to use a sewing machine and has a tiny tailoring business in the square. Her life is very tough but she’s happier than she was, and she’s part of a group supported by UNICEF called ‘Empowering Hands’. Sarah helps other displaced and abducted children, ‘come back home kids’ as they’re derogatorily called, to reintegrate into society. There’s a lot of suspicion and fear amongst the people because many who weren’t abducted believe the ones that were went to the LRA voluntarily. People like Sarah raided villages, killing, maiming and abducting other children. There’s huge distrust. When she first arrived at Amuru she was too scared to go outside.
Listening to her appalling story, I was profoundly shocked. Of course I had heard there were child soldiers in Uganda but hearing the realities of Sarah’s life was so hard. I had no idea these massive Internally Displaced People’s camps existed, no idea that young girls like Sarah had been so physically and psychologically ravaged.
Charley and I left her hut in silence; neither of us quite knowing what to say, aware that we’d been in the presence of a dignified young woman who was desperately trying to come to terms with what had happened and to pick up the pieces of her life. But it wasn’t going to be easy – her childhood had been stolen and she could never get it back.
We then went to St Martin’s school in the neighbouring Copee camp where the children wore white shirts and maroon shorts and gave us a wonderful welcome. We’d come to deliver supplies from UNICEF – what they call ‘school in a box’ – which is one of the many really positive things happening in northern Uganda. When you hear horrific tales such as Sarah’s, it’s so important to remember that humanity has this amazing capacity to overcome adversity. For every self-delusional despot there are thousands of people determined to bring hope and stability to their communities.
One thing I see over and over again in Africa is the passion the kids have for school. They hunger for it, so conscious that education is the only way they can have any kind of future. That’s why ‘school in a box’ is such a great idea: a box containing all the materials to set up a classroom for eighty children – pens, little blackboards, chalk and notebooks. Each box costs £120 and Charley and I delivered ten to St Martin’s. We handed out the goodies to each child; a UNICEF bag containing two jotters, a couple of pencils, a ruler and a pencil sharpener. The kids were all scrumming round us, desperate not to miss out. I tried to explain that no one would, but when you’ve had so little it must be hard to believe you’ll get anything. The box didn’t just contain school books, but skipping ropes and footballs too; we watched the absolute delight a football gave them. No sooner was it out of the box than a game began that was about ninety-five a side.
CHARLEY: They called us ‘Sir’ which sounded strange but nice. We took the boxes into the classroom and were greeted with ‘Morning, sir’. I could get used to that. They have a tough life, they really do, yet they’re so hopeful; especially the young ones. It was a tragedy that Sarah and thousands like her had missed out. Daniel, however, still has a chance. He is being taught at the level of a twelve-year-old even though he is fifteen. But at least he is in school. We sat with him in his hut and he was wearing a football shirt, looking for all the world like any other teenager. Except for his eyes. His eyes were deep, very deep, and they looked way older than he did – his mannerisms, the considered way he spoke, echoed all that he’d been through.
His village had been right in the path of one of the LRA’s raiding routes. They would pass through abducting people, cutting them down with machetes. They didn’t kill everyone, some they just disfigured; cutting off lips, ears, eyelids…and leaving their victim alive. Daniel was abducted when he was seven and remained with the LRA until he was ten. He was one of hundreds in the camps and saw children born to commanders and young girls, children who would know nothing other than the brutality of guerrilla war. When the raiders came to Daniel’s village he was given a choice: go with the LRA or be killed. He was terrified – it’s so hard to imagine a child younger than both Doone and Kinvara being given that choice. Come with us or die, the soldiers told him. It was no choice at all.
And the parents, I couldn’t begin to imagine what they must have gone through. Their sons and daughters abducted; never knowing if they were alive or dead, if they’d been raped, beaten, maimed.
Daniel saw people killed and their bodies dumped in streams he’d have to drink from. Bloodied streams; he was drinking the blood of his so-called enemies. He was taught to use a machine gun, a machete, mortars; he was taught to raid villages and strike fear into people – all-consuming, paralysing fear. He was taught how to kill. He saw people killed and he wasn’t even ten years old.
He managed to escape during a firefight with the Ugandan government
forces; his unit was scattered and together with an older boy he just ran and kept on running. They spent days walking together before finally splitting up. After being gone three years, somehow Daniel was able to find his way back to his home town.
Imagine how that must have been for his parents, three years of not knowing and then one day the son they lost forever walks into the village.
Daniel couldn’t stay, however. Infected with the fear of re-abduction he went to Gulu town to stay with an aunt. Daniel’s older brother had also been abducted and still he hasn’t returned.
Daniel got involved with Empowering Hands and countered any stigma he felt about being a ‘come back kid’. He’s in school, even though three years behind, and it’s a fair distance for him to get there. What amazed me is the fact that the school itself is displaced. Like so many schools St Martin’s was moved from its original site because its pupils were gone. When the pupils were relocated to the camps, so was the school.
We were as touched by Daniel as we were by Sarah: the way he was dealing with his life, his desire for schooling so deep that he didn’t care about being in a class with kids much younger than him. I kept thinking about bicycles and the commandment I’d heard about. Before we left we bought Daniel a bike so he could get about more easily. He had no idea and we left it for others to give to him. I hope you like it, Daniel.
The visit ended on a high: we helped UNICEF doctors with a programme of inoculation – little vials of polio vaccine for the children, jabs for their mothers, de-worming tablets. The camps are vast and poor; the sanitation and healthcare limited, and all the schools are overcrowded.
Long Way Down Page 25