July 22, 2025
After a good night's sleep, we climbed back into our trusty vehicle for the most difficult drive of the trip, which, as you can see, made Ella very happy . . . or maybe just a bit loopy.
And off we went into the sunrise.
Kidepo National Park is in the far northeast corner of Uganda, just south of the South Sudan border. The distance from Murchison Falls to Kidepo NP is only 250 miles, but it took us over ten hours to get there. We did stop for a little over an hour at an elementary school along the way, but even at eight or nine hours that is a pretty slow drive that can be attributed to the poor road conditions.
At first, the road was paved and we made good time for a while.
During this time and later on Ella and I made a point to record a few observations:
- The servers in the lodge talked about Ella's large camera as a gun. "I love your big gun. Are you going to shoot some animals?" one asked. On the day we left, he said, "Did you kill any animals with that gun?"
- On our drive we saw women walking along with large axes balanced on top of their heads.
- The road was sometimes dirt, sometimes paved. The dirt part was almost impassable.
- There were hundreds of small communities along the way that were comprised of small huts with thatched roofs.
- There were also "modern" villages with chain stores (we assume as we saw them multiple times) and power lines.
- We stopped for gas in a large city named "Gulu," which means "heaven." According to our calculations, gas cost $5/gallon, which partly explains why there are large trucks and motorcycles but very few cars outside of the city. How could these impoverished people afford gas?
- We also bought water in Gulu and were amazed when a girl came out with a full flat balanced on her head.
- Mannequins in store windows are pale-skinned, but they have African body types (specifically, big booties).
- Gulu was the nicest city we visited in Uganda. It seemed well-planned and was very clean.
- We saw a sign advertising The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Gulu, then we saw another sign directing people to the meetinghouse.
- There was a hippo in a pond on the side of the road.
- William ordered box lunches for us that we stopped to pick up on our way--a muffin, some chicken, a hard-boiled egg, some potatoes, an apple, and a box drink.
- We made a bathroom stop at a place with only a squat toilet. Ella did just fine (she never complained), but I slipped when the pole I was holding came apart in my hand. I fell backwards down the step, cut my arm, and made a mess. Bob had his own issues after me. Not a pleasant experience.
Eventually, we took a short detour to Acholibur Primary School, the elementary school that our guide William had made arrangements for us to visit. It serves 1,150 students between the ages of 3 and 11. It was NOT AT ALL what we were expecting. We had planned our donations for a one-room schoolhouse with 30-50 children! This was going to be interesting.
We first met with the Deputy Headmaster (a man) and the head of finance (a woman) in a tiny office stacked with books and papers and one laptop computer. We asked how many computers the school had and discovered that they only had the one we were looking at. The children were not using computers at all. Bob whispered to me that maybe we could get them a second computer, and we asked about how that would work--how we could get the money to them, where they could buy a computer, etc.
Rather than take us to the classrooms, which is what we were expecting, they took us outside to sit under a tree. Children brought chairs for us to sit in while they performed for us.
As a side note, one of the things we noticed in Uganda is how uniformly dark the skin color is. There were not shades of brown--just this beautiful, rich, dark chocolate color.
A group of nine girls went first, reciting a long lesson focused on climate change. They were not easy for us to understand, as I know we were not easy for them to understand, but we were blown away by their memorization skills. I don't think many of our schoolchildren in the U.S. could recite a speech this long.
Some of the classes were allowed to come outside to listen with us. They formed a long bank of well-organized sitters, kneelers, and standers that stretched quite wide.
Next, this young lady spoke about the need to keep cultural education in schools--drama, music, dancing, etc. She was even more impressive as she didn't have anyone else speaking with her to help her remember words when her memory failed her--which it didn't. I wish I had a recording of her presentaiton. She was also one of the best-dressed girls in the crowd. She must come from a wealthier home.
In the third presentation, one girl pretended to be a grandmother telling her five grandchildren a story around the fire about a girl being harrassed by boys and standing up for herself by telling them to stop. She went on to talk about the importance of women's equality. Don't miss the part about 2:57 when one of the boys stands up, gets a large stick, and breaks it in half before putting it on the "fire" and blowing on it to build the "flame." Everyone giggles during that part. I also love watching the children behind her around 5:00.
So many children, each with a story to tell and a life stretching out ahead of them that will be so different than my life or the lives of my children and grandchildren. It is hard to comprehend when they are real people and not just faces in a photo in a book.
As I noted earlier, we had come prepared for a much smaller group than what we found, and so we were taken into a classroom where there were about 30 children sitting on the floor. There were no desks other than the teacher's desk, no whiteboards or even chalkboards, no glass in the windows. but there were detailed diagrams taped to the peeling paint on the walls indicating that serious teaching and learning was going on, and I had to wonder if a whiteboard makes a kid smarter. Ella and I did our best to distribute notebooks and pencils and pens to the children, and we gave the rest of the supplies (markers, crayons, coloring books, easy reading books) to the headmaster. I must admit that it felt like a rather insignificant drop in the bucket.
I had also bought about 500 stickers, and while Ella and I were smiling and nodding to this impeccably behaved group, Bob was outside passing out the stickers to a riotous mob. We went outside and tried to help, but the kids were so aggressive, pushing and shoving with their hands helt out. They didn't seem to care WHAT they were getting, just that they got something--or five somethings. Older girls were attempting to discipliine the mob by hitting kids with a stick. It was pretty bizarre and just a bit horrifying to see these sweet children become a mob.
When we got in the car they crowded around the vehicle and I was trying to get them to tell me their names and/or ages, but they either couldn't understand me or were too shy. I never got a response out of any of them.
But some good came out of our visit. We returned home determined to do something for the school. Ella donated the remainder of the money she had raised to start a computer fund, and we put the word out on Facebook that we were raising money for a few computers for a Ugandan school. We shared some of these photos, and something about it captured the hearts of our friends and family. In just a week we were able to raise $4,150. We asked the school for a detailed plan of how they would use the money, which they provided, and we transferred the money to a Ugandan bank (an experience in and of itself). With that money they created a computer lab for the school. They painted one of the rooms, added electrical wiring, purchased tables and benches, and made it secure.They purchased five desktop computers and two laptops and paid to have all the equipment installed.
Evidence of an internet connection:
With the little bit of money left over they purchased some sports uniforms for the athletic teams.
Back to our Ugandan journey.
We finally drove away and got back on track to our destination. From this point on the roads were unpaved, but at first they weren't too bad, and there was a lot of interesting things to see outside our windows. No one seems to carry things in their arms. Everything is balanced on top of the head.
Maybe it helps their owner to keep track of them.
How much can you load onto a motorcyle? Quite a bit.
It looks like the whole town turned out for a soccer game.
It was at about this point that the roads got absolutely abysmal--muddy, deeply rutted, and often covered in water. We had to go very, very slow. But hey, look at that gorgeous scenery.
This section of road looked like it had been raked by a giant's claws. The water pooled in the grooves and made a treacherous mess that clung to everything and made every turn of the wheels feel like a bit of a gamble. Would we make it through, or would we be sucked into the morass?
We passed a large bus that had fallen over on its side and the passengers were all outside standing in the mud and trying to right it.
Even areas where the road was relatively dry and level felt treacherous. See this video, for example.
At least we were in a four-wheel drive Jeep-like vehicle. Check out this van that we drove behind for several miles:
And yet, if you had told me we were on the way to the remote paradise of Shangri-la, I would not have thought it much of a stretch.
We occasionally saw local people, but for long stretches, we didn't see any kind of housing.
A couple of boys "helped" us navigate a steep hill covered in slippery mud, and William, who has a soft spot in his ample heart for children, passed a few coins out the window to them. Another kid asked William, "Where's my money?" William just laughed and said, "I'll be back." William told us later that a lot of guides are afraid of this drive and don't want to do it.
We finally arrived at the park entrance, but we were told we had to take a longer route to our lodge because the short way was impassable due to road conditions. We were so happy when we finally arrived and checked in at the lodge . . .
Okay, not so luxurious. Our room was a tent with hardwood floors, a kingsize bed for Bob and me, and a twin for Ella. No AC, no fan. We were told to be very, very careful to zip up our tent every time we came in or went out to keep the bugs and critters out.
. . . and lots of comfortable places to sit.
One of the young waiters took an immediate liking to our beautiful granddaughter. He would always talk to her first in the mornings, ask her how she slept, try to engage her in conversation, etc. It was bothering her quite a bit, and when we started to tease her by saying "El-lah" like he did, she was not amused. "El-lah, would you like a second dessert?" "El-lah, could I bring you some hot chocolate?" She was having none of it and we had to stop. 😆
We ran into a few challenges. One was coming nose-to-nose with this large truck. They graciously backed up to a wider section of road so that we could pass.
Aha! A bustling metropolis and a major center of local commerce!
Another challenge was flooding that created rivers that bisected our road. We watched a man walk across and water was up to his thighs. Before we crossed, William got out of the vehicle and with the help of another man removed the air filter from under the vehicle. We followed closely behind another vehicle in front of us and made it through.
I wonder how that toppling-over van, which we had finally passed (when it got stuck in the mud), handled this?
The soft dirt was no match for the heavy vehicles that come through here, and even when the road was flat, the ruts were deep. See the spiky mountains in the distance? On the other side are Kenya and South Sudan.
It wasn't even the rainy season when we were there. Imagine what it is like then!
We finally arrived at the park entrance, but we were told we had to take a longer route to our lodge because the short way was impassable due to road conditions. We were so happy when we finally arrived and checked in at the lodge . . .
. . . and then were escorted to our luxurious accomodations! Bob, Ella, and I were given the tent cabin named "Giraffe."
However, after what we had been through on the road, having a bathroom with a sink, a real toilet, and a shower made our tent-cabin feel like a palace, even if we did have to go OUT of the tent to get to the bathroom (which was still attached to our lodging--complicated). And it wasn't until later that I learned there was not enough electrical current to run a hair dryer.
This was the lodge where we ate all our meals. They insisted on giving us an escort from our tent to the lodge and back to our tent every time we ventured outside, a three- or four-minute walk. Were those skeletal remains placed on the rock as a warning?
The dining area had a sweeping view of the wide valley . . .
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