Travel To Arua and Gulu

I traveled to Arua and Gulu this week and three things captured my imagination that are worthy commenting about.

1) Uganda's Natural Beauty and the fact that we are destroying it. As you drive into Packwach, there are always elephants by the roadside or crossing the road or somewhere in the bush. In this age, seeing live elephants is breath taking. Putting a need for us to preserve them. Unfortunately we are not doing this. As you approach Packwach from Karuma, you have threehabitats on the right hand side. These are going to develop and definitely in the future, with more people and in the next three to four years, the elephants will be gone. Besides these three, building structures even the people themselves are settling or have settled in the national game park. If people settle where there are wild animals, they definitely seize to be wild and the people will kill the wild animals. There is need to do something about this.

2) As we drove to Arua, somebody who has been to Arua many times told us that it was common practice in the recent months for people either constructing the road or those on the road side markets to plants nails in the road side especially where people stop. I was not surprised when two of our vehicles tires went flat with nails in them and in the night. The management of these roadside markets should encourage the vendors to desist from such practices. I don’t think I will stop again in such places. Two tires flat in the night is not a very good thing.

3) The poverty in Uganda, it is amazing that in this century we have such massive poverty and I do not see hope of getting rid of this poverty. As we reflect on the causes and solutions, you do not see a quick answer in the horizon. All the successful businesses in Uganda and in many African countries, are foreign owned. The few indigenous businesses are about selling those foreign owned products. I noted a number of DHL lorries on the road and I was told it is DHL transporting beer in Uganda. Amazing, isn’t it? If DHL is to do transport business in Uganda, what will the Ugandans do? But you will also answer the question, why do they choose DHL?

I hope that our political think tanks can put their thoughts on these touchy issues.