{UAH} IDDI AMIN NEVER TARGETED LANGIs/ACHOLIs, THEY TARGETED HIM {---Series nineteen}

Friends

 

Since it was our last day in Acholi inn, we decided to take it easy thus spent most of the evening early night eating all the last meals we would get our hands on, in a very exciting trip through Northern Uganda, and since we had spent almost a full week in the region we had started to run low on cash but our vehicles really had started to tire. We went to bed with an understanding that we are going to start driving at 4 30am  through Lira Soroti striking Malaba and into Kenya. Two hours in my dear sleep, Ella my most beautiful Australian travelling companion on that trip, woke me up with that terrible look in her eyes. EM we are not leaving Northern Uganda till I visit only one family. She had a student she was communicating with that she needed to see and we bowed. We fuelled up and left for the deep Acholi land, target Madi Opei. We drove through Unyama Cwero Atang Lagun Nadiang through Kitgum Mucwiini direct into Madi Opei. The roads were terrible but the population was very nice, and Ella loved to see the children and trust me there were children in Acholi-land. I have just stated in another posting that Akena Adoko was born in a family of 43 children, and that is very typical in Northern Uganda. Generally this entire drive gave an impression that you were in a separate country, there were no guns, there were no soldiers on the roads, no road blocks and life was oozing out of those houses to the fullest.

 

 

This is the very typical home structure in Northern Uganda, small thatched houses. Depending on the size of family you can find three to five or whatever number of those small houses in a family. Because of the dry seasons every family has a food storage, and food is important in the North that every hat {Aksiisira} you go into there is food and when you refuse to eat, you send out a very bad news about yourself, so you take at least a bite. Acholis respect food as what I saw in Bakonjo. Never go to a Mukonjo home and refuse food you become very bad news.

 

As Ella and the rest of the team continued to enjoy the trip, I started to wonder about the massive properties I noticed at the homes, it started with huge tumplines covering properties I would not understand, until when we reached homes that had open properties. Huge dining tables, large refrigerators, stoves, massive electric sowing machines, very expensive carpets, I saw pull in wardrobes, I saw un opened safes, I saw huge amounts of very expensive clothes and you would not be surprised if the father gets out of that hut to great you when wearing a Giorgio Armani suit. Gomeses and very expensive dresses imported out of the UK, I saw piles and piles of iron sheets, Televisions and music systems of all sorts of sizes but makes, car tires and of all sizes, plates in tens of thousands, pans, cups, office cabinets were countless and you name it. There was one very common thing about these products, they never fit into the door ways to be put inside since the structures of the homes are as above.  They looked entirely out of place because when you look at a face of a one wearing an Amani suit they never matched. Some of these rugs/carpets were imported out of Middle East by very rich and hardworking people, for they are expensive than even my taste. Until when it downed on us that these were the properties looted by UNLA from the south. And this is where discussing Acholi land becomes very fascinating, because there is a soldier or soldiers from every single family, there was a looted property at every single family home, you just decided to pull in and you see the great atributes of looting from South.

 

My problem is not looting, my God I saw Kampala being swept clean after the fall of Iddi Amin, so this was never news to me at my age. My real problem was the mindset  that was used in looting these properties out of Buganda. Honestly if you know that you do not have a power supply in Cwero why do you load that refrigerator that you know has a value to the owner in Kampala and you do not have power in Cwero? For God's sake what is the value of an electric flat iron in Lagun? When you were lifting that huge sofa set and loading it on a Tata truck, it never occurred to you that it will never pass the door way of the hut due to its size? To you from Mucwiini when you lifted the television set, yes it looked beautiful, but how were you actually going to run it without power in Atang? Did you actually need all those plates? What were you going to use the glasses for and especially that many in Mucwiini a town without a single wine store? It is the mindset that decides that we are going to load all this crap, which we will not use but we will make these people suffer a loss of very expensive property, and we are going to make it to a simple waste. I saw Goats  pissing on carpets imported out of Saudi. Chickens laying eggs into deep freezers for the doors were hacked off. I saw children playing ping pong on dining tables intended to sit 12 because they would simply not fit into the hut. I saw very expensive suits hipped up in a pile at back of houses for they simply had no wardrobes, no suite cases to put them into and simply had no space inside the huts.

 

To you as an Acholi reading this piece and going after me, honestly didn't you see all these properties? When you looked at them what crossed your mind? Why didn't you attack these kids and demanded the return of them back South? My God if we went and stole things this massively and a single oldie sees them on our streets she stands up and demands that we return them ASAP to the owners, why didn't we get a single Acholi elder demanding that these properties get returned to the right full owners? Let me go after those that looted them for I know you are reading, as you were pulling up this stolen property  on Tata trucks, did it ever occur to you that people worked very hard to save and buy these treasures? When you get a gun you are trained to protect the people, who actually trained you that holding a gun means you become such anti people? If you looted these properties from the very people you were supposed to protect as a UNLA officer, who were Ugandans supposed to run to for protection from you? Which brings me to the very grand question, we drove through this region when you had just looted everything out of Buganda, how did this stuff end up? Did you bring it back south and resold it or you simply scrapped it out?  There was no market for it in Acholi-land for it was simply too much, and at a time South Sudan axis had not opened up yet. What happened to the massive properties you looted?  And just asking  !!!!!!!!!!! Ugandans we have always failed to clean up our country because we fear to hold such candid discussions, we let go and we work again and replenish our property, why do you think after Olara Ottunnu becomes the leader, and UNLA is reinstalled, Acholis will not come back and loot what you have today?

 

Uganda needs a very candid discussion to stop these pains once and for good.

 

 

Stay in the forum for Series twenty  is on the way   ------>

 

EM

On the 49^th Parallel          

                 Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in anarchy"
                    Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni katika machafuko"