Gulu town, the capital of the war ravaged northern Uganda is a thriving beehive of activity. The markets are bustling with traders, shops are full of products, bars and cafes are alive with music and dance and the restaurants are rich and full. If one didn't know the history of the 20 plus years of conflict, it could easily pass for just another town in peaceful and calm southern Uganda, or even a suburb of Kampala. There is a resurgence of construction and multi-storey buildings go up, taking advantage of the lull in the decades of fighting between the LRA rebels and government forces, the Uganda People's Defence forces (UPDF).

There is a mixed air of pessimism and optimism that peace could finally be at hand as negotiations continue in Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan. Rebel representatives and government negotiators continue with talks, though the threat of a government crackdown is as real as has always been. On the other hand, the US, through its deputy secretary of state for African Affairs is putting pressure on the LRA not to drag its feet and president Museveni is threatening an all-out invasion of the rebel hideouts in the north eastern jungles of Congo.
Our trip to the north was much more pleasant than I had expected. Surprisingly, the road is quite good. I had expected a rough, pot-holed, almost impassable track, taking into account the recent flooding in the north as well as years of neglect due to the war and general lack of interest by the government in the south to develop the north. Gulu town emerges almost as a surprise from the dense jungle about an hour after crossing the River Nile. The approach to the town is however announced by the unsightly rows upon rows of clusters of Internally Displaced Peoples (IDP) camps on both sides of the road, with almost naked, pot-bellied and barefoot children innocently playing on little patches of ground by the roadside or running after the bus.

I made the trip with Ben, my half-Kenyan half-Dutch friend. We unsuccessfully tried to persuade our other Ugandan friends to join us for the trip, but they withdrew at the last minute. That's when we learnt that there was a very deep psycho-social divide between the ordinary southerners and the northerners. One of them confessed that that the southerners have a phobia for the north and very strong prejudices against northerners. The Ugandan Bantus (Baganda, Basoga, Banyankole, etc) from the south and west see themselves as more developed, cultured, educated, decent, westernized and generally more superior to the northern and eastern Nilotes (Acholi, Langi, Madi, Teso, Karamojong, etc). Most of the young Ugandans we met in Kampala had never been and in their own words, would never dream of travelling to the north. I was however pleased to sit next to Moses, a third year IT university student who lives in Kampala and studies at Gulu University. He admits to have been terrified at the thought of taking up the government scholarship to study all the way in Gulu, but was happy to discard his misgivings after his first trip there. He has now come to enjoy his road trips to Gulu every semester. My colleague Hilde, a fellow researcher at the Africa Studies Centre, who had by now been in Gulu for about four weeks received us at the bus station and took us to a rather run-down motel, owned by one her friends she had made in Gulu.

Just like any other town/city in Africa with a large NGO presence, GULU is a town of contradictions. A small seasonal stream divides the rest of the town with the NGO quarters with manicured lawns, tall walled compounds, excellent, relatively expensive restaurants, bars and almost resort like establishments, running water, assured electricity supply, etc. On our first night, Hilde took us to one of these NGO type establishments with a superb menu with choice options from a sumptuous barbecue to the best cappuccino in town, a garden terrace, perfect dim lighting, piped jazz music; the works. I couldn't help but marvel at the contradictions of such unrivalled luxury, calm and serenity in the middle of a conflict zone and war torn society. Little did I know that the following afternoon, I would be even more amazed to find that the Acholi Inn afforded a luxury resort with swimming pool, steam bath, sauna and massage, right at the heart of a region ravaged by more than 20 years of brutality, abductions, rape, killing, plunder and massive human-rights abuses!

Only that morning, we had been to one of the IDP camps, witnessed the hopelessness of life in the camps, talked with old men, women, youth and children who have no prospects but for a stolen past, a broken present and a bleak future. Faces that spoke millions in despair and struggle to keep hope alive. Most of the middle aged and able bodies had gone to till the farm fields just outside the camps, and to return in the evening to the security of the camps. Rows upon rows of mud-walled, grass thatched huts, packed close together, with barely enough room to navigate around. The centre of the camp was a small market, the heart of the camp, with nothing but little piles of old, smelly dried fish, a few scoops of grain, firewood, second hand clothes and charcoal as commodities for sale (I wonder who would buy them since the IDP's have no income to speak of). The chatter at the village square was more about the risks of returning to the villages and farms abandoned years back, the fear of the LRA butchers returning, or the retaliatory attacks by the government military for alleged local support for LRA's. Some debated the issue of amnesty for the LRA killers, especially the leader Joseph Kony and his fellow commanders. Some of them voiced their tiredness with war and life in the camps and would give anything, even forgiveness in order to reclaim their lives.

We had a nice dinner at one of the better restaurants in town that according to Hilde served the best Italian pastries in town. My friend Ben who admits to have a thing for cars could not get over the fact that we spotted the latest model of the ultimate American SUV, the Hummer, right at the heart of Gulu. He literally had to leave our dinner table to go and inspect the Hummer and made a point of asking the waiter who it was that owned the Hummer in Gulu. It turns out to be one of the few wealthy Acholi business-men who set up the famed state of the art Gulu Independent hospital. The tragedy of which is that it has the best equipment and labs and wards money could buy, but he has not been successful enough in persuading more doctors to leave the comforts of Kampala to come work in Gulu.

After dinner, we made a point to patronize the Havana Club which, according to Moses, the IT student, was the best club in town. And Havana did not disappoint. The music was great and the young crowd thronged to the place, it was so packed, so lively and at some point I was amazed at how "normal" life was in Gulu. Things are certainly getting better in Gulu. The young people are embracing life, the legendary night commuters, the 40 thousand plus children who had to trek for kilometres to seek refuge in the town's churches, hospitals, abandoned houses, and verandas in order to escape the nightly raids of the LRA in the villages do not have to do this any more. The large tents covering the size of three football fields that had been set up by the UNICEF have since been pulled down. The government is trying to encourage the people to return home, the NGO's are grappling with trying to shift their focus from relief and emergency assistance to more long-term reconstruction phase, but the transition period is a bit confusing. According to Hilde, who's researching this very phenomenon, there is lack of clarity among the NGO community how to deal with the situation. By simply labeling the "phase" as "reconstruction" rather than "emergency/relief" a lot of NGO's claim the situation is no longer within their mandate to assist. That they do not do reconstruction, yet the people go back to their villages with nothing, they still need assistance with food supplies for at least one more year till they harvest their crop. They need assistance with farming implements, seeds, housing, water and sanitation, construction of schools, health services, etc. While it was hard for NGO'S to serve large groups of people clustered in concentrated IPD camps, it’s even much harder to cater for them while they are dispersed throughout the inaccessible jungle that is northern Uganda.

The government doesn't have the capacity to deal with the situation, but is almost forcefully shutting down the camps and calling it voluntary resettlement. The politics of Aid, intervention and the logistics of it and the power of terminologies is simply mind boggling (remember the debate whether or not to label the killings in Rwanda in 1994 as Genocide, or the Darfur debate, that acts of genocide have been committed, but its not Genocide?). We bid Hilde goodbye and wished her well with her research, although she confided in me how chaotic the whole Aid effort is with no coordination between NGO's, conflicts with local government officials, large gaps in delivering basic needs to the IDP's, and the uncertainty of the peace process, whether there will be progress towards a lasting peace, or as many sceptical residents say, who have seen numerous peace processes and promises come and go, that's its just the lull before the storm as they predict that war could still break out at any moment.
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