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The following reports were written for IRIN News, a UN funded ‘humanitarian news’ agency. The published versions (edited, and with pictures!) can be found here and here.

This was my second visit to Karamoja. I hope to go back, to learn and write more about a place that strikes me as one of the world’s under-reported development blackspots, in many senses. The World Food Programme has been feeding much of the 1.2 million population for decades. Development agencies and NGOs of every stripe are thick on the ground there. But despite these interventions, and despite the poverty and harshness of most people’s lives, and their all too evident ‘humanitarian needs’, the agro-pastoralist Karimajong seem, in the main, not too interested in becoming ‘modern’. (And for this reason they are widely vilified: ordinary Ugandans from other regions lament their ‘backwardness’ and these attitudes are easily discernible in aid agency and NGO staff too.)

“The Mountain People” by Colin Turnbull (1973, Pan, London; 253 pp)

In Uganda’s far northeast, bordering Southern Sudan and Kenya, the Kidepo National Park offers visitors a rare experience of African wildlife undisturbed by people. Road access is still difficult, but upmarket tourists can charter a light aircraft to fly in to a luxury tented camp where the abundance of game is matched by the abundance of culinary comforts. People who have made the trip say it is unforgettable. Now largely forgotten, however, is the human cost of creating this safari wonderland.

Published in Uganda’s The Daily Monitor August 11, 2011 It has never felt worse to be British. First a financial crisis caused by the failure of governments to govern a finance industry previously hailed as an economic powerhouse. Then draconian public spending cuts that threaten to create recession. And now the worst riots in living memory, which seem to have less to do with politics than with opportunistic, loosely networked lawlessness and looting.

Published in The Daily Monitor on April 12, 2011

As a guest at various meetings and workshops in Uganda over the last couple of years I have been interested to note how many of these, whether convened by government or non-government agencies, open with a short prayer.

Although having no specific religious affiliation myself I can see the positive value of this practice. It was exemplified by a woman invited to lead the opening prayer in an event I recently attended. She urged us to approach the proceedings “with humility” and “to seek wisdom and understanding from each other.”

British imperialists picked some fine spots from which to supervise their dominions. The colonial administration of Nyasaland, a 900 kilometre long strip of south east Africa that has been known as Malaŵi since independence in 1964, was headquartered on the lower slopes of Mount Zomba. Salubrious breezes ruffle the trees and flowering bushes that surround a cluster of early 20th century brick buildings, quaint and dinky now, making one wonder how so much power could be exercised with so little concrete. A dilapidated Gymkhana Club, built in 1923, looks out over a wide lawn that probably doubled as a cricket and polo pitch. It is easy to imagine the few dozen colonial officers and their wives gathering here for gin and tonic at sundown, some brightly planning an amateur performance of Charley’s Aunt in the surprisingly ample hall behind, others complaining about the insufferable stupidity of the houseboys and yearning for home.