Richard Stupart

Today was my last proper day of class and the lucky beans are back on the sidewalks. There is one more assignment to be handed in – a whale-esque 5,000 word nonfiction piece – but barring some intervention from the gods of unanticipated disasters, I can get to call myself a journalist in a couple of months and a graduation ceremony. If there are two things that the course has taught me in the last year it’s that I deeply, absolutely do not want to be a reporter, and that I really do love finding and telling stories about things. With the journey to Gulu around 32 days away, I have been gearing up to get the most out of the visit.

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Cradock is an unexceptional town. It was founded around 1818 and has served, for the most part, as a stopping off point for people going to other places ever since. It’s a small town, and like many small towns, has come to invest not inconsiderable effort in trying to write for itself histories of various kinds. Tales of local boys and girls who made good. Characters and places given special focus as being quite unlike any other. The town has an information office, two actually. The older and uglier is downplayed though, in favour of the extensive signage of the new municipal desk, featuring the ubiquitous white ‘I’ that is so excellent at capturing passing tourists.

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Grahamstown, and journalism, was never about being a reporter. Like anything really, truly worth doing, it was about something bigger. It was in part about sharpening my storytelling. But also that over the years, travel brought me to realise how deep the shadow at the edge of the world I know might be. And because journalism was the closest vehicle to that space, it was what I ended up studying this last year. Always with an eye to stepping out at some point to find this edge of my world and push it again. Which was how Naomi’s text message found me on Monday afternoon and why I have had little proper sleep since. It’s time for another adventure you see.

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