Aruu falls and Fort Patiko

Northern Uganda isn't precisely a touristic place. The absolute majority of visitors to Uganda head south-west to the see the national parks and the gorillas, and though of lately there have been a few initiatives to help develop tourism in the north, let's face it - not many people are going to fly all the way to Africa to see a fairly regular waterfall or a village.

When you live here it's different of course. A trip to Kalongo and Ngetta hill exhausted the most obvious recreational options nearby, and so in the search of an inspiration for a place worth visiting within a few-hour range I eventually resorted to a USAID Northern Uganda tourism handbook. From the few options which wouldn't be somewhere at the South Sudan or the DRC border, Gulu and surroundings seemed to triumph. After all the lots of work we certainly deserved a weekend trip, and so Michele and I set off.

Continuing in my staggering driving career (and equipped with a pillow to be able to reach the clutch), I drove all the potholed way to Gulu, about 3-hour journey from Lira. From there, we had two destinations: Aruu falls and Baker's fort.

Aruu falls have been on the "to-visit" list for several months, but it seemed impossible to find out where exactly they are. They are not in the guidebook, map or on the internet, and the general indication of "between Gulu and Pader" that we came across refers to a huge area. Finally in the USAID Northern Uganda handbook we found a more specific reference to a road they should be close to.

There are no signposts pointing to places such as these, and so we had to ask a few times - which became a little difficult once we turned off from the main road and passed through bush with no villages or people. After a few unsuccessful trials we found a road that led to a small very pretty river.

And after a few more trials, the sound of a water finally took us to the fall. This was at the end of the dry season, so there wasn't too much of water; I suspect that in two or three months' time it will look very differently.

View from the top of Aruu falls

One of the great things about "tourism" in northern Uganda, unless you visit villages or communities, is that in these places you're very likely to be completely alone. No people, just the water, bush, view, sun... amazing, really.

Baker's fort, or Fort Patiko, where we headed the following day, are the ruins of an old fort built in early 1870s by the British explorer Sir Samuel Baker. At the time of Baker's arrival, Patiko was a site of Egyptian slave traders, who were still active in the region of today's Sudan/South Sudan and northern Uganda. Baker's mission at that time was to (try to) end the slave trade in the area, and to formalise annexing of southern Sudan and northern Uganda to the Egyptian Empire as the province of Equatoria.

There isn't much left of the fort now - just a few (heavily rebuilt) walls of former grain stores. And the nice view.

Baker's fort is actually mentioned in the Uganda guidebook, and there's even a pretty tourist information board on the site (clearly sponsored by the Baker family) - just next to another, older signpost, from the LRA years when Patiko hosted one of the IDP (internally displaced person) camps which were scattered all over northern Uganda, in some areas displacing up to 90% of the population. 

I hadn't found photos of Patiko IDP camp, but these can give you at least an idea what the IDP camps in northern Uganda looked like.

Unyama IDP camp, Acholi, northern Uganda. Source

Kitgum IDP camp from above. Source

Nowadays, only 8 years after peace came back to the region, there is very little left of the camps. Most of the huts have been dismantled and former IDPs returned to their former villages.

Still, it continues to amaze me how these people, after spending in some cases one or two decades living in these crowded camps, with no or very small chance to earn their own livelihoods, dependent on food aid, in poor health and sanitation conditions and with persistent insecurity, manage to return after all this time and rebuild their life, livelihoods and communities.