Through Uganda (part I)

I'm leaving at dawn. Damiano picks me up with his off-road-ambulance. It's still dark. In ragged camps of the sky vacated from the clouds we see only a few stars. For most of the night, as the day before, it rained. We hope that the track towards Iriri and south is not too shabby. The headlights cut through the darkness. Matany is already awake and soon we leave it behind along with the shadows of its inhabitants, motionless sentries to our passage of a new day already old and slow wayfarers by measured gestures towards a granted destiny. Behind Moroto the light is making its way in a tangle of clouds more black than gray and paints the sky a violet-purple that gives hope. Damiano drives fast on the track whose bottom is more than passable; Only in some places appears dug deep ruts and muddy and, at times, the red clay of which is kneaded becomes slippery as a wet bar of soap. We recite a short prayer that sounds sweet in the silence where the rumble of the engine seems a distant thunder: that the journey be easy and free of obstacles and dangers. On our left the rising sun reveals the massive Napac. The savannah is a blue-green sea rippled by scrub stains and a thick blanket of clouds that marks the horizon looks like the foam of the waves from which the mighty flanks of the mountain rise as high cliffs. The shadows accentuate the contrast of the daylight now arrived and before Iriri the humidity of the night gives us a final farewell coagulating in a veil of mist. Iriri, the Karamoja gate on the path we are heading south. We cross it in a kind of pastoral symphony whose score is played by the lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep that young people armed with long rods and with a counterpoint of dried recalls, divide as we passed. Swarms of flies and insects follow them turning reflections of wings in the air, while slow theories of farmers wrapped in their dark Ananga is going to the just mentioned fields on the edge of the savannah. We move on and, soon after, the top of a hill gives me an image that strikes my heart with the force of a punch, and the sweetness of a caress. Breathless I stare a plain that is lost beyond the borders of my imagination toward horizons that dissolve in the sky, shaded by blue mountains by famous names, Kadam, Elgon, but always changing in appearance as the emotion that cause inside me. The sky is clear, of an almost azure blue: Damiano and I feel serene. We do not talk, but I just watch his profile fixed on the road that is lost in front of us like a spear thrown into the belly of the plain to sense a hint of a smile and a renewed inner peace. Even I, when I look in front of me, I feel the embrace of his peace that reassures me, as if nothing in the world could trouble and hurt me more, as if I felt ready. Now we are in the land of Tesos: the landscape changes, less harsh, more cultivated fields, villages from the face less wild, yawning a quiet country life. Soroti, already a city. An airport, even a flight school. Asphalt, although sometimes rough and worn by carelessness, intersections with a presumption of traffic island and around, far as the eye, the plumed reeds and papyrus swamps of the immense Lake Kyoga. We turn to the west-southwest, toward Lira. The ground ripples in sweet hills from the widened and soft hips and soft cultivated fields and extensive counterpoint forest patches in a climate of obvious wealth and fertility of the soil. It all sounds great, thanks to the sun that shines rampant greenery around us of emerald hues, but this is the land of Africa, is the Eden where the snake always crawls. "Not more than three years ago Kony men reached the outskirts of Lira - tells me Damiano - the city was overrun by refugees and around that there was looting, massacres, blood. It seemed that they would not encounter obstacles". Now it seems impossible that those streets crowded with people piling up around stalls submerged of agricultural products, marked by shops selling all kinds of goods have been the stage for a looming tragedy ...

Agostino Gaglio

Photogallery

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