Moroto, Karamoja

When I met anyone in Kampala and mentioned that I was going to be working in Karamoja the response was usually one of shock that anyone would consider living and working in such a remote, hot and difficult part of Uganda. Karamoja is seen as being a very different region culturally from the rest of Uganda and it has historically been beset with conflict, and is often badly affected by drought. I on the other hand was quite excited to be moving to somewhere that was going to be quite different from anywhere I had lived or traveled before.



We drove up from Kampala, starting out well with tarmac roads for most of the journey as far as Mbale, which is where things got a bit more interesting. From Mbale we turned onto marram or red roads. The towns we passed through became smaller and smaller, with traditional style thatched houses taking precedence the further north we traveled. Cars became less common, and we were often sharing the road with motorbikes, sometimes over loaded with 3 or more people or huge loads on the back, and cattle being herded often by small children.

We arrived in Moroto just after dark so we had to wait until morning to see where we were going to be living for the forseeable future. Moroto is a town of around 14,000 people set at the base of Mount Moroto, a beautiful and imposing range of mountains. It is fairly small and relatively easy to find your way around. At the center is camp swahili, where many people live and sell any and all sorts of produce. There are two main "supermarkets", which bear no resemblance to Tesco's or Sainsbury's, but sell a mish mash of different products, which can apparently vary from one day to the next. There are also a wide range of smaller shops which stock a similar apparently random range of products, so working out what you want to purchase and where to get it from is challenging! There are also lots of street food sellers along the main roads, most selling Chapattis which they will fill with a freshly made omelette and roll up into the local dish known as "Rolex".

Although there are a lot of NGO's in Moroto - some estimates say 54(!) which is huge given the population size, it is not terribly common to see a white person, or Muzungu, walking through town. We certainly drew a lot of interest as we walked through town getting our bearings, and we were followed by choruses from small children of "Muzungu, Muzungu" as they waved at us.

Although our houses were ready and waiting for us, they were unfurnished, and even though we had picked up a lot of household items in Kampala, we were still awaiting necessities such as gas, fridges and water filters, which were to be sent up from Kampala. So we had to stay in hotels for the first few weeks. Luckily there are a few hotels in Moroto as we became a bit like goldilocks - the first hotel was too loud, that was until we got to the second hotel where we discovered another Ugandan tradition - overnight church services on Friday night which run at full volume until 6am. Finally, hotel number 3, Mount Moroto seemed like a winner.

Mount Moroto hotel was situated a bit out of town (so less noisy!) in the foothills of Mount Moroto, and had lovely gardens in which you could sit and relax. We were reliably informed that it was the meeting spot for Muzungu's, as most NGO staff passing through Moroto stayed there, and it served a mix of local and international food, which was great news. It was not a bad place to spend our first 2 weeks in placement.