By Richard M. Kavuma
March 14 - 20, 2004
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It started like any other Friday but turned out like no other day before. For me, it was a day of firsts that will last long in my memory. On March 5, at 5.49pm, I saw for the first time ever the body of an LRA rebel killed by the UPDF. Burnt black and bullet-riddled, the body was of a small boy - about 12 years old. As I lay on the undersize bed in my smelly lodge room at 1.49 am, that boy's piteous body came back to haunt me. I struggled between resting my tired, beaten body and thinking about what I had seen. The thrills of travel are said to be in the journey rather than in the destination. But this gruelling journey to the frontline said a lot about those who kill and, or get killed in northern Uganda. The four of us, journalists from Kampala and Bombo, flew from Entebbe Air base aboard a UPDF chopper or Surambaya as Maj. Shaban Bantariza prefers to call it. On board were several boxes, whose colour I cannot reveal for security reasons.
An MP once accused the chopper of ferrying obushera from Rwakitura to President Museveni's war camps in the north. But these wooden boxes just didn't look like they contained obushera. By 2 p.m. we were in Lira barracks, having picked up Army Commander Maj. Gen. Aronda Nyakairima from Soroti. Minutes later, I was boarding the famous "Mamba" - that armoured car that Kony rebels reportedly fear more than Kony himself. At first, I was baffled by the simplicity of the Mamba. It looked like a Land Rover, save for the three soldiers manning the gun erected atop. The youthful driver, in a blue vest, was sweating even before we started and continued to sweat with worrying ease throughout the journey. Despite the slow speed, the mood was good, with the soldiers once in a while chatting in their Swahili. Being the only civilian in nearly a dozen people, I was a bit lonely. Both my feet rested on AK47 rifles and my mind went to those reported cases when a gun "accidentally" went off. At one point we met a convoy of UC (President's office) vehicles led by a minesweeper - which looks like a grader. Sitting right behind the co-driver, I felt a little protected - at least from land mines. But I still feared that an LRA sniper could easily shoot at the glass window and by the time the guys above rained bullets in the direction of the sniper, some one could be dead, and that person could as well be myself. I particularly felt that vulnerability as we passed Abia, where the LRA killed 51 people only last month. After about two hours, we reached Orum trading centre in Otuke County, where soldiers behind me burst out laughing. One of them called out my name and said "Omara Atubo's house". I later learnt that the soldiers expected the MP's country home to be bigger and perhaps more fancy. At Orum, we changed into another Mamba where I sat with two other media colleagues. The journey into the real jungle now started. For 45 minutes, with the mamba moving at the speed of a snail on a village road, we did not meet a single person or see a home. Since we were at the head of the armoured convoy, often our driver had to stop and communicate by radio to get directions. Then we branched off the security road and into the bush. The driver closed the roof, just as I was looking at the branch of a thick tree and wondering why an LRA rebel could not haul a grenade into our Mamba. Perhaps the driver too was aware of that possibility. But the Mamba ploughed its way through the bush, dodging anthills and flattening one short tree after another. Now and again we stopped, as if lost in the jungle. There was nothing but trees and thickets. "Mamba one " the driver would say, holding the radio. The other party would say something like "mbele" meaning forward. Just to be sure, the driver, sweating without a shirt would say, "Say again". Soon, a UPDF jet on reconnaissance appeared in the skies. Perhaps the rebels are nearby, I thought. Why else would the jet be in this particular area? It was routine check. After seeing some of the bodies of rebels killed at Gotojwang, at the border between Lira and Pader, and after talking to the rescued children and chest-thumping officers, it was time to leave. But not before seeing those horrific decomposing bodies of boys who were abducted the other day, given guns and turned into fighters. There was also time to hear UPDF soldiers complain of hunger, time to see a frontline soldier drawing black water from a stagnant stream. Under such conditions, you had to understand why the soldiers were ecstatic for having killed so many rebels. The SPG-9, one of the guns captured from the rebels is the smallest weapon that can destroy or significantly damage the mighty Mamba, the driver told us. The AK47 can only cause a scratch on the glass window, while the RPG may occasion a minor crack. The journey back was longer and harder. The Mamba is very uncomfortable. Sometimes you want to lean against the body of the vehicle and doze off, but each pothole you fell into something pinched you. So you try to sit without leaning against anything. Soon the bottoms were hurting and you wished you could stand instead. At one point, passing a under a mango tree, the driver stopped and the soldiers ate some raw mangoes, throwing some inside for us to eat. A part from some roasted cassava bought from Adwari Church on the way to the scene of the fighting, these mangoes were all we ate. The soldiers, we were told, are used to one meal a day. It would be 11.30 p.m. before we got to Lira town, beaten and hungry, but safe inside the Mamba. May be we were always safe anyway, as long as the rebels didn't have the SPG-9. |
© 2004 The Monitor Publications
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