Richard Stupart

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Twenty three days until departure to Gulu. If you had followed this blog a year ago in the run up to Cairo, you would understand that I have a fascination with countdowns. Particularly at the end of the year, and particularly for adventures. This involves both. The previous week or so has not been spent idly – with emails of varying length traversing the continent to get arrangements confirmed.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

There are the days,
The ones we will remember forever
Tired eyes bear that same light
Inexhaustible
Tight corners at the smiles
Reflected in the tears that never age
The laughter and the pain of these days…

Read the rest of this entry »

South Africa’s oldest Presbyterian church lies silently with its brother in the hills an hour and a half from Grahamstown. They have been sitting in quiet contemplation for a very, very long time; and will likely contemplate a long time still.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today is day ten of fourteen production days at the National Arts Festival here in Grahamstown. Having drunk enough instant coffee to give my stomach a callous, I brought a bodum into the newsroom with me this morning. Mmmmm. Real coffee.  The days are spent busily climbing through every market stall, theatre, coffee shop and street for photographs. The evenings are spent catching up on the parts of my life which are not strictly arts or Arts festival related. Which is a polite way of saying “Dear god, I have been busy these last days”. Out of the chaos, however, are a few more images. And a promise of a story as soon as I have properly slept.

Read the rest of this entry »

Played by Bevan Cullinan, Gary the Tooth Fairy is a comedy play on at Festival in which Gary discusses life as a tooth fairy in modern South Africa. What was meant to be a simple photo shoot for an interview turned into an hour of running up and down the garden outside the Journalism building. Fairies are fickle creatures to tie down for an interview, you see.

Read the rest of this entry »

7am. In the Grahamstown rubbish dump, stilt-walker Richard Antrobus picks his way through old tyres, broken plastic and mud the colour of offal. Of all the places I thought I would find myself on a Saturday morning – in my entire life – this is quite possibly the very last. Richard is being trailed by a team of three Rhodes University TV students who are filming his antics in the dump as part of a series of twenty four one -minute documentaries on Grahamstown behind the scenes of the National Arts Festival.

Read the rest of this entry »