Gulu, Uganda – Northern Uganda is known most for being the site of a war between the country’s government and the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony. Signs of the ravages of war are evident to those who know the bloody history of this region.
The road to get to Gulu from Southern Uganda is a kidney-jarring ride that makes a person not want to get back into a car for the return home. What should take four hours to drive usually takes twice as long because the condition of the road is so poor that it’s like a game of whack-a-mole. Add to that the distraction of wild animals and the beautiful Karuma Falls.
Karuma Falls lie south of Murchison Falls National Park. They are a popular spot for travelers to stop to take photos – but only momentarily. Near the cascading falls is a bridge that is heavily guarded by Uganda soldiers. Raise your camera to take a picture of the bridge and a soldier is sure to raise his gun. That’s because the bridge over Karuma Falls was a marker for where people left peace behind and entered an insecure land. During the 20-year rebel insurgency, soldiers guarded the bridge to ensure rebels didn’t cross it into the south. Just 10 years ago, travelers had to be escorted across the bridge after soldiers determined if your intent to travel north was safe. Once you’d been cleared to pass the bridge, travelers could wait as a long as two hours before being escorted across it. As if the LRA battle wasn’t enough to sour the beauty of the falls, the bridge also was one from which many people jumped from to die during Idi Amin’s regime.
The falls may soon vanish because the Uganda government is building a hydroelectric power station at this site on the Nile River. Plans to build the power station came about in 1995, but only last month were plans finalized and President Yoweri Museveni ceremoniously cut a ribbon to start construction. It’s expected to be complete in 2018. When finished, Karuma will be Uganda’s biggest dam.
Surrounding Karuma Falls is a game preserve, so it’s not unusual to have a monkey approach you as you are trying to quickly take photos before crossing over the bridge. Monkeys can be a common site in certain parts of Uganda. There are at least nine species of monkeys in this country.
If a monkey doesn’t thrill you, certainly a baboon carrying around her infants will. There aren’t many cuter things in the wild than seeing an infant animal peeking out from the mother’s fur as she investigates why traveling foreigners tumble out of the car, elbowing each other for the best shot.
To elevate the excitement, stopping to stretch your legs and hike around Ziwa, a forested area of about 30 square miles. Today after grabbing lunch at a nearby shack, friends and I decided to look for the famous but small group of rhinos that live in Ziwa. At one point, both black and white rhinos were extinct in Uganda. But in 2005, the country worked hard to reintroduce white rhinos, and today in Ziwa there reportedly are nine of them.
You can track them in those 30 square miles, and if you are lucky, like we were today, you can run across them within minutes of bush-whacking. At point, a group of rhinos was about 50 yards in front of us and a group of ankole longhorn was 50 yards behind us. I didn’t know which I would rather have charge me. While I think these ankole have nothing on Texas’ longhorns, I learned that rhinos will charge you and make life worse for you – unless you rapidly climb a tree.
