Dust, Darkness and Dancing in Gulu
By James Abola
Our daughter is a few months past three years and has been inquisitive for most the past 2 years. Recently she has got round to asking where my daddy and mummy are. I reckon she always sees her Jjaja (her maternal grand mother) and wonders where the paternal grannies are. I have attempted to explain to her that daddy’s parents are no longer here but with little success.
When I got a summon to go home for the traditional marriage of my cousin Miriam I jumped at it and that is how daughter and daddy ended up in Gulu for three days. When we were about to live Gulu for Kampala she came with ‘knowing’ smile and told me “daddy I have seen your mummy.” Now I have to dig deeper to explain that although her biological grandparents are departed from this world she still has many grand parents alive! During our stay in Gulu I observed three things: dust, darkness and dance.
The dust
You see, for long time, Gulu has been the defacto regional headquarters for Northern Uganda and that is why in the 1990s the government located the Northern Uganda Reconstruction Programme (NURP) there. What is interesting that while most towns under NURP (Apac, Lira, Kitgum, Soroti, Kumi) used the NURP funds to tarmac all major roads in their municipality or town council, Gulu only managed to tarmac a few kilometres.
The road from Gulu Town to Lacor Hospital is one of the busiest but it is only tarmacked for about 300 metres! So dust is the most defining feature for people travelling or living along this route. I kept wondering how Soroti and Kumi could do so much on their roads and Gulu which hosted the NURP headquarters so little.
The darkness
My other cousin Joy completed her university education with honors but opted to go to Gulu and manage Rainbow Inn, a family business. I took a few minutes to check on her and provide brotherly encouragement. Joy was not her usual jovial self but stretched to breaking point and the main cause of her tribulations is load shedding or power outage. For the uninitiated, Uganda is endowed with many natural water falls which is the envy of many countries. Since independence Uganda has been surviving on one hydroelectric power dam. About 3-4 years ago a second dam was added adjacent to the old one. The nation was told that by this time Uganda would be producing more than twice the amount of electricity it was getting from the old dam. The reality however is that the country is now producing even less electricity than it was doing before a second dam was constructed. This means that we actually paid money (some US $ 340,000,000 I am told) to have less power!
So in the worst of times, the power supply to Gulu is taken off in the evening and only restored in the evening of the next day; then off again in the morning until morning of the next day. In other words power is off for 24 hours then on for 12 hours then off again for 24 hours. Joy’s Inn business requires reliable power at least to run the refrigerator and Digital Satellite TV (an important marketing tool for Inn operators in Gulu). She is therefore forced to run a big generator at a prohibitive cost.
The dance
While I was growing up the Acholi musical scene was ruled by two people Lakana Omal aka Adok Too and Samsoni Too. Both Omal and Too were poets who used music as a channel and masters of the nanga or thumb piano. I was privileged that our home was some 200 metres from that of Lakana Omal and our family closely interacted with him. Although Omal was totally blind he would walk without a guide to his garden, till the land and get back home. How he could tell the boundary of the garden remains a mystery to me up to know. Such was Omal’s musical prowess that when Milton Obote returned from exile in 1980 a Mercedes benz car was despatched to collect him to sing for the returned former president.
The great poets are now gone but the persistent insurgency in Acholi seems to have resulted in a growth in musical creativity. Most of the younger musicians are backed up by either guitar and keyboard or adungu but it is the content of the songs that pleased me most. Many of the songs contain socially constructive messages urging those still in rebel ranks to surrender and come back home or teaching the young people about the dangers of HIV/AIDS.
Well back to my daughter. When I told her it was time to go back to Kampala, she and her two cousins resolved that all three of them have to travel to Kampala that morning. They had such great fun that they wanted to extend it for a full week and I had no option but to grant the extension.
Our daughter is a few months past three years and has been inquisitive for most the past 2 years. Recently she has got round to asking where my daddy and mummy are. I reckon she always sees her Jjaja (her maternal grand mother) and wonders where the paternal grannies are. I have attempted to explain to her that daddy’s parents are no longer here but with little success.
When I got a summon to go home for the traditional marriage of my cousin Miriam I jumped at it and that is how daughter and daddy ended up in Gulu for three days. When we were about to live Gulu for Kampala she came with ‘knowing’ smile and told me “daddy I have seen your mummy.” Now I have to dig deeper to explain that although her biological grandparents are departed from this world she still has many grand parents alive! During our stay in Gulu I observed three things: dust, darkness and dance.
The dust
You see, for long time, Gulu has been the defacto regional headquarters for Northern Uganda and that is why in the 1990s the government located the Northern Uganda Reconstruction Programme (NURP) there. What is interesting that while most towns under NURP (Apac, Lira, Kitgum, Soroti, Kumi) used the NURP funds to tarmac all major roads in their municipality or town council, Gulu only managed to tarmac a few kilometres.
The road from Gulu Town to Lacor Hospital is one of the busiest but it is only tarmacked for about 300 metres! So dust is the most defining feature for people travelling or living along this route. I kept wondering how Soroti and Kumi could do so much on their roads and Gulu which hosted the NURP headquarters so little.
The darkness
My other cousin Joy completed her university education with honors but opted to go to Gulu and manage Rainbow Inn, a family business. I took a few minutes to check on her and provide brotherly encouragement. Joy was not her usual jovial self but stretched to breaking point and the main cause of her tribulations is load shedding or power outage. For the uninitiated, Uganda is endowed with many natural water falls which is the envy of many countries. Since independence Uganda has been surviving on one hydroelectric power dam. About 3-4 years ago a second dam was added adjacent to the old one. The nation was told that by this time Uganda would be producing more than twice the amount of electricity it was getting from the old dam. The reality however is that the country is now producing even less electricity than it was doing before a second dam was constructed. This means that we actually paid money (some US $ 340,000,000 I am told) to have less power!
So in the worst of times, the power supply to Gulu is taken off in the evening and only restored in the evening of the next day; then off again in the morning until morning of the next day. In other words power is off for 24 hours then on for 12 hours then off again for 24 hours. Joy’s Inn business requires reliable power at least to run the refrigerator and Digital Satellite TV (an important marketing tool for Inn operators in Gulu). She is therefore forced to run a big generator at a prohibitive cost.
The dance
While I was growing up the Acholi musical scene was ruled by two people Lakana Omal aka Adok Too and Samsoni Too. Both Omal and Too were poets who used music as a channel and masters of the nanga or thumb piano. I was privileged that our home was some 200 metres from that of Lakana Omal and our family closely interacted with him. Although Omal was totally blind he would walk without a guide to his garden, till the land and get back home. How he could tell the boundary of the garden remains a mystery to me up to know. Such was Omal’s musical prowess that when Milton Obote returned from exile in 1980 a Mercedes benz car was despatched to collect him to sing for the returned former president.
The great poets are now gone but the persistent insurgency in Acholi seems to have resulted in a growth in musical creativity. Most of the younger musicians are backed up by either guitar and keyboard or adungu but it is the content of the songs that pleased me most. Many of the songs contain socially constructive messages urging those still in rebel ranks to surrender and come back home or teaching the young people about the dangers of HIV/AIDS.
Well back to my daughter. When I told her it was time to go back to Kampala, she and her two cousins resolved that all three of them have to travel to Kampala that morning. They had such great fun that they wanted to extend it for a full week and I had no option but to grant the extension.
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