Starting in the late 1990s, fertility rates in this part of the country exploded, reaching more than 7 children per woman and a relatively low mortality rate in a region where food is plentiful, climate pleasant and all kinds of natural resources. During this trip, I revisited some of the early warning signs of the effects of climate change.

The Fort Portal-Ntoroko-Bundibugyo highway, which passes through some of Uganda’s most scenic areas, has been affected by mountain slides. Nature stubbornly continues to coexist alongside human activities in Semliki Gorge, Sempaya Hot Springs, and towns like Bundibugyo, except for street names that resemble Swiss villages in the mist-and-weather evening. cold.

In 2023, our road trip was to the Kikuube districts, home to the Bugoma Forest Reserve, on a work trip that took me to the fringes of one of the largest refugee camps in Uganda, with around 150,000 inhabitants.

Nakivale, near Lake Mburo, has a population of around 180,000. Between these is a very sparse population. The surface of the earth is dotted with human settlements, very rich and fertile soils and more and more outsiders traveling these routes in search of treasures underground. In 2010, during a work trip that took me through northern Uganda to Kasese, we asked how far it was from the Kikuube-Fort Portal junction in what is now Hoima town. hui city. No one seemed to have any idea how far apart they were.

Now, bright road signs tell you how far you are from Kakumiro, Mubende, etc. On this trip, we woke up early to pass through the gates of Kabalega National Park, known by its colonial name, Murchison Falls. I was shocked to find that the game park roads were now partially paved.

Tourists paid freely for road access inside the wildlife park leading to West Nile. The other shock was the dark silence of the night, sometimes disturbed at 4 a.m. by a few sugarcane trucks. Fifteen years ago, someone in the corporate world had the idea that commerce could continue for 24 hours in gas station shops as busy as Kampala’s street markets.

It was always amusing to walk into a Shell store at night and find a “crucified” employee at the counter, in the agony of sleep, completely oblivious to the world around him. I think this experience was enhanced with night lighting. Older planes had physical flaps. The most recent aircraft “close” automatically using optical triggers. The trains have quiet cars.

Two weeks ago I drove to Lira, this time taking a long detour to the east. In 2024, I found myself several times driving slowly from Corner Kamdini to what is now Lira City. The expedition east, then north, was another refresher in geography, following on from another trip earlier in the year near Lwakhakha, the border with Kenya in the district of Manafwa.

On the detour, I asked my group to warm up with a coffee in Jinja at Java House, the last official stop for this type of drink in the evening. After some careful pursuit, we turned northeast onto the Iganga-Tirinyi-Palliisa-Kumi-Soroti highway. The paved roads were more than silent in the dead of night. There have been some miraculous punctuations like the old Busembatia Mall, a booming Pallisa town. We stop for gas in Kumi before doing an emergency tire change. We all looked at each other, how we could have done this in the wilderness ahead of us. URA carries out random checks.

Soroti is now a town before turning left, towards Dokolo then Lira. The town is always welcoming at late hours, someone seems to have taught the people here how to make things work at night.

Scratching my head, I wonder what the train service would do if we had fixed the train first. All of these areas once had railway lines to Gulu, where the 382 km train line ended. By 1965 it had reached Pakwach and it operated in one form or another until Arua in 1969, Kasese in 1956 and so on. The roads did something but the train could have done more.