Gulu
Trip Start
Jan 22, 2009
1
12
33
Trip End
Jul 22, 2009
Gulu,
Uganda
Saturday, February 28, 2009
I associate getting up in the dark in the UK most often with horrible cold winter mornings; awakening at 5am to a warm damp darkness just reminded me of awakening to go on safari and I was filled with excitement! We made good time getting out of Kampala and were soon winging our way northwards with a glorious sunrise filling the right-hand windows of the car. I quickly fell into a reverie watching the countryside turn pale in the morning mist, then fill with colour as the sun rose in a crimson sky. It's so beautiful ... And the road is so good ... Nice to be going at a decent speed, must be about 60mph ... Hang on isn't that a road hump???!!!!
I suppose that in some parallel universe a random road hump on a highway would be a good way to announce the beginning of road works. The top of my head would beg to differ! I was fairly catapoulted from my seat (mum and dad should look away now ... no there was no seat belt in the car I was in) straight into the roof and I'm sure that any adrenaline junkie would have been impressed at the 'air' our car achieved sailing over the hump.
My reverie didn't really have a chance to get going again after that. We'd speculated over whether this was the same road that I'd taken to Murchison Falls the week before (with the humps? Remember?? My bottom does!) and soon discovered that yes, it most definitely was. For some reason it seemed far worse this time, perhaps because we were in a smaller vehicle. Have I mentioned how straight the inter-state roads are here? Well let me tell you, they are as straight as the ones you see in American films and I can't remember the last time my stomach sank so much (or it would have if it wasn't jumping up and down) as seeing that road stretching out ahead with road humps as far as the eye can see. Oh and just for the record they are like the worst road humps in England - small and sharp. OUCH!
Once we'd cleared the road works, the journey was quite pleasant. The road to Gulu goes past Murchison falls national park and crosses over the Nile at a beautiful series of rapids. I wish I could have photographed it but the army has a base near there and as Jane was almost arrested when she took out her camera last time she passed, we didn't even attempt a sneaky pic! We also passed some IDP camps (internally displaced persons camps).
Some of you may know something of the history of northern Uganda; does 'Joseph Kony' or 'Lord's resistance army' ring any bells? It is a horrific history and has led to over 400,000 people being displaced in Gulu alone. The IDP camps are correspondingly huge - small circular thatched huts, crammed tightly together and stretching on to the horizon. To be honest I only got a really good idea at the size of some of them when in the UMA conference: they showed a photo of one camp next to a hospital and even as an ariel shot the hospital looked ridiculously small next to the camp.
I won't say much about the conference; it was interesting but also highlighted the huge issues that Uganda faces in terms of healthcare. Basically it is woefuly short of money. Just one example: I asked the Ugandan medical students how much they would earn as doctors and it works out at around 50 pounds a week. Let me tell you the cost of living is not that much lower than the UK and I know that there is an expectation on doctors here to dress / live a certain way; it is no wonder that corruption arises. With doctors salaries low, you can imagine the amount given for drugs / equipment etc is correspondingly low. I also found the session on management of mass casualty situations quite difficult to take in, bearing in mind that there is no ambulance service and should you get to the hospital, there is no provision for trauma care.
We returned to Kampala on Friday evening. It was a really interesting couple of days but it has certainly given me a lot to think about!
