LIFE IN ALL ITS SPECTACULAR WONDER (KLA TO ARUA)
01/07/2020
Today, I should be on a bus for 12 hours. I should have left Kampala early this morning. It is a long journey to Arua but over the past few years I have gotten to love that road. Oh there may be miles and miles here and there where I read a book or have a nap. For most of it, though, there is always intrigue out of every window. I feel the utter privilege of driving through Africa. For parts of it I listen to Paul Simon or Johnny Clegg or our own Jonny Fitch, adding to the stimulation of the visual a soundtrack to make it even more spectacular.
I am missing this journey today. Here it is, as I remember it. Travel it with me. Imagine it, in all its extravagant wonder. Please God, I will be back on this road very soon.
Take the Bombo road
Heading north out of KLA
Where lives are gridlock wasted
And boda bodas and car horns trap the urban beat
Give the man 2000 shillings for a New Vision
Then clear all the panoramas
To see matoke, maize and mango trees
Along the green rolling hills
To Luwero
Pay a white man price for pineapples
The best pineapples in the world
Let the juice drip down
And marvel at the height of the anthills
Smile at the field of sunflowers, as God intended them,
Under African blue
And the trees, African shaped air-conditioning.
I breathe and catch the moment
Now
Here
This
Life in all its fullest extravagant wonder.
The traffic has eased up now
Like this rural way of life
Up through Nakasongola
What a combination of syllables that is
On a road in the middle of Africa
Oh mercy and my oh my
Bask in every single fascinating scene
Out of every window, every moment
Every precious person
Carrying every kind of load
On bicycles or heads
Slow down around the bend
And down the hill
To Karuma Falls,
Baboons
Cheeky, entertaining and a little dangerous
And the Falls
Stunning effervescent cascade of the Nile
The Victoria Nile
Chasing itself up to Murchison for its spectacular fall.
I breathe and catch the moment
Now
Here
This
Life in all its fullest extravagant wonder.
After the baboons give up on the scavenge
Make a left
Alongside the edge of the National Park
The road straightens up for miles and miles
No need for McCartney’s Long and Winding Road
Less people now
But keep your eyes peeled
And there might just
If providence pokes the luck
Be a family of giraffes
Seeking the leaves
So elegant,
Their patterns, near perfectly painted by someone
Elephants,
Egrets on their back
Waving their ears to dismiss us
And the hippos,
Basking, bathing, blethering
On the edge of the Nile
The Albert Nile,
Wider, more sedate but no less beautiful
And no less that same Nile
As we cross the bridge at Pakwach
Through the human motorway service station
Boiled eggs, bottles of Stoney, chicken on a stick.
I breathe and catch the moment
Now
Here
This
Life in all its fullest extravagant wonder.
At last, into West Nile
Through Nebbi
Watching the changing scape of the earth
From the savannah where lions roam
To the more small rugged hills
In the dark shadows of Congolese mountains
The roads meander round, narrow
And thread through these borderlands
Of a district marginalised, maligned and misunderstood
Mud huts, thatched, in family clusters
Smoke oh so slowly spiralling into the now setting sun
Like the evensong rhythms of contented souls
Having hoed all day in their shambos
For enough, just enough,
Never enough for greed
The children still smiling
And waving at the muzungus
As if to amuse us
I breathe and catch the moment
Now
Here
This
Life in all its fullest extravagant wonder.
Finally,
You
Black as night
So beautifully bright
The shiniest light
In it all.
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