Richard Stupart

When we arrived in Gulu, we spent only one night in the place we had booked to stay in. A serendipitous confusion of a lost booking and an entire house becoming cheaply available near the Kabero Opong district meant that we would relocate lock, stock and sleeping bag to this new home for the duration of our stay in Gulu. Looking back on the photographs I took of us there, nearly all are in the back garden. I don’t think we used the front door once after we entered the house on the first day. Read the rest of this entry »

Last year’s Christmas miracle was not being left in the desert in northern Sudan. This year’s Christmas miracle is nevertheless a contender for the throne of strangest annual experience. Every time I think I might have peaked at the oddest possible thing I could have done or been involved in, the world seems to find something new.

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Light and dark are a simple analogy for so many things. Waiting at the baggage counter for my pack and pondering the miles of home beyond the exit gate, I think I would have done well to consider how light and dark interact. How they manage, in a way, to make each other. Allow you to see what it is you have left and what it is you are moving into. Your eyes adjust until someone opens a bright door and you hurt. I didn’t think any of these things at the time. Instead, I wondered why, for the first time returning from a journey, I felt panicked.

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Kitgum lies about three hours east of Gulu, and is the largest town in the Kitgum district of Northern Uganda. It is a place where, as I stepped out of the front door of the Sunshine Modern Guest House (singles from 16,000 shillings), I was privileged to witness the entertaining spectacle of a resistant pig being lashed to the back of a motorbike. Read the rest of this entry »

Arriving in Uganda three days ago, I am now in Gulu. The fact that I am blogging this, from an airconditioned coffee shop in safety should immediately give you a hint that you shouldn’t believe everything you read in the papers.

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