The Scar of War
While driving on something that could hardly be called a road we entered Uganda. It’s only a 5-hour drive from Lodwar and since some of my friends had to do business there I went along for the ride.
The exact point of entering the neighboring country was hard to determine since there’s no official border-crossing but I slowly started noticing the difference in scenery around me. The land looked more devastated and worn out as opposed to that of Kenya. It felt like driving through a landscape you see on the late night news when they’re reporting on another war in some African country. Not because of burned out tanks and skulls lying next to the road (it’s already a decade ago the bloody civil war was fought here), but because you can sense in the air bad things have happened here, like a ghost of a murdered man haunting his former house.
Maybe it was all just in my head but upon entering our destination Moroto my awkward feelings kept getting confirmed. Not only was the town in much poorer state than anything I’ve seen in Kenya so far, you could recognize in the eyes of the people here they have lived in real fear and they greet you in a very reserved way. Even the children seem less cheerful than the youth of Kenya and there’s still a lot of soldiers walking around carrying big military weapons. Add to this the many UN vehicles patrolling the streets and the way I saw people respond to the sound of an innocent bicycle-tire blowing up and it’s obvious some terrible things have happened here in the past.
A decade is quite long, but there’s a big scar of war in this town and probably in this whole country. It seems like a child that’s been abused when it was young: it might learn to live with what has happened but the mental damage will never heal completely. All you can hope for is the child not doing the same thing to his own children…
Originally published on Inside Africa (insideafrica.tv), 2006.