In Karamoja again

Karamoja has become an almost obligatory stop for everyone who visits us. Yes, largely my "fault" - but I couldn't possibly let anyone miss the most interesting part of Uganda, could I? And if it's a remote, non-touristy, hard-to-reach place with terrible roads and nothing to eat but rice and beans, even better!

And so last August Karamoja became a completely unforgettable experience for our four friends (and for me also)...

(to tell the truth, I prefer not to remember the 12 hours we needed to cover the 70km too vividly...).

But I wasn't least dissuaded by the above, and I included a trip to this forgotten place in the programme again, now for my family this February. This time (fortunately) the weather and road conditions were slightly more convenient than last year:

August 2012

same place, February 2013

It was the first time for me to return to Karamoja after finishing my project in Kaabong back in September - and for some reason I was a bit nervous about going back and how it would feel (comparing it with visiting your ex-Erasmus location after a time perhaps isn't quite the analogy I'm looking for, but after spending intense 5 months in the region the general notion might be similar).

And yes, returning felt a bit nostalgic - but it also felt great, and as always, impressively beautiful.

Last September, when I was leaving Kaabong, everything was wildly green. At that time, with the extreme rains during a good part of last year, it would be hard to convince a visitor that Karamoja is a semi-arid region. But now it looked completely different - dry, yellow, almost burnt.

Where before there had been flooded bridges and full rivers...

From the Kaabong bridge, July 2012

... now I found only sand.

same bridge, the other side of the "river"

But the rest was the same. The people...

... the cows...

... and both together.

And in the evening, as we went up to have a (warm and bad) beer on a rock near Kaabong, with the view of all the landscape... I couldn't help thinking, as I had so many times before, that this is why Karamoja gets under your skin. The wild beauty.

And during this trip I FINALLY managed to do what I hadn't been able to do during all those months I had spent up in that corner: visit Kamion.

What is Kamion (apart from a truck in Czech), you ask? Kamion is a small and largely unremarkable village just on the border with Kenya, in an area inhabited not by the Karamojong, but by the Ik, a small and almost forgotten tribe of traditionally hunters-gatherers. But it's also a place where you can get a glimpse into the geographical history of the continent: from just above the village you can look into Kenya and see a small part of the East African branch of the Great Rift Valley, with the valley floor stretching far and wide.

And to finish with, a proof that we really were close to Kenya (I suspect these ladies don't carry a passport for the cross-border visit):