Giro di Karamoja

What does the first week in a new work normally look like?

Well, mine involved riding a bicycle on a bumpy dirt road in Karamoja, watching several times a theatre performance of Pinocchio, listening to songs about sanitation and hygiene during school visits, or checking out tomato plants accompanied by Karamojong dancing and singing…

At the beginning there was one donor organisation, five NGOs doing similar projects in five districts of Karamoja, and an idea to promote their work in the region. What came out from that was the First Karamoja Bicycle Tour.

Obviously inspired by the likes of Tour de France or Giro d’Italia, in this five-day tour people from the five NGOs would ride a bicycle between five project towns in Karamoja, reaching one town every day. And to sprinkle a bit of culture and education to the event, a play of Pinocchio would be performed in each town. If I now say that the T-shirts created for this occasion were pink, it should be easy to guess that the majority (nearly all, in fact) of those involved were Italian (they were saying something about pink T-shirt and Giro d'Italia, but really, I find the pink T-shirt thing SO Italian - let's face it, what other nationality would have chosen pink for a bicycle competition?!).

In case you are now asking if this isn’t a bit too much sport for poor NGO workers, you are right. Though a proper bicycle tour should normally involve exclusively bicycles, the organisers acknowledged that covering in some cases over 100km in a day on a very bad road might be slightly excessive, and so the bike riding was limited to some 40km daily, 20km before and after each city, with the remaining distance covered by cars.

And so, only a day after arriving from Kampala to Kaabong and with hardly time to unpack, I found myself surrounded by men in pink T-shirts and bicycle gear, determined on a purely non-competitive basis to be the first ones to arrive to the next planned stop.

Since bicycles were slightly scarce and eager sportsmen abundant (Javi very happily accompanied us throughout the week), I confess that I only pedaled during one of the stages – which was just enough for me, especially considering that I was lucky enough on this occasion to get a bike which didn’t change gears, a limitation painfully felt in the last part which was uphill. I’ve never been too much of a bicycle person, and frankly, observing the pink cyclists from one of the accompanying vehicles was interesting enough. Passing from the north to the south of Karamoja, there was some incredible scenery on the display.

I wonder what the locals must have thought when they saw a group of sweating whites in pink T-shirts riding bicycles with a convoy of cars surrounding them. Probably something along the lines of “crazy muzungus”. In any case, often we were greeted with an impressive display of enthusiasm, especially when arriving to some of the project sites.

It might seem that all of it was just fun (and much really was), but actually there was also an element of work: since we are all implementing very similar projects, we took the opportunity to visit some of the project sites, compare notes, share experiences and steal ideas. And as part of the local courtesy, singing and dancing accompanied us during every single visit. 

While mornings were filled with sporting dedication, afternoons were reserved for culture: a performance of Pinocchio by a Kampala theatre group took place in each of the five destinations we arrived.

I am not entirely sure how much of the play the spectators (most of whom spoke no English) understood (I didn’t manage to entirely comprehend the play even after seeing it three times), but what is certain is that everyone enjoyed the show.

A great week, good company, new experiences… definitely a very intense and interesting start!