In the Danger Zone by Stefan Gates Read Free Book Online

anyone's mind to buy any more. The place is bristling with guns; most shops and offices have a bloke slumped on the front steps chatting to passing girls and swinging an AK47 around as if he's the bee's knees. But unlike many central African cities, Kampala works. Overall, Uganda works – you could even say that it's doing pretty well. It's relatively prosperous, with a growing economy, it's more peaceful and democratic than most of its neighbours, and it's blessed with decent natural resources, fertile soil and favourable weather.
    So it's all the more tragic that in the north of the country one of the world's greatest forgotten humanitarian disasters has been going on relatively unreported for the last 20 years. A small terrorist paramilitary group called the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has waged a pointless war since 1986, forcing somewhere between 1.2 and 1.7 million people to abandon their homes for the safety of IDP camps. An IDP is an Internally Displaced Person (basically, a refugee who hasn't actually left his own country), and the IDPs in northern Uganda survive on subsistence rations provided by the UN's World Food Programme (WFP). I'm going to call them refugees anyway, because 'IDP' sounds even more cold and impersonal than 'refugee'.
    Major Nfor's lips curl involuntarily at the thought of me going to one of the world's hungriest regions to talk about cooking. 'It's not like that,' I say, 'it's a film about how people survive.' After a very long pause he pushes my pass over to me. I ask if there are any recent security issues in the north that we need to be aware of. 'No. No problems in the north.' I get up to leave, but just as I'm out of the door he shouts after me: 'Of course, no one is allowed to be outside after 6 p.m. Curfew everywhere.'
    On the way to catch a UN flight northwards, my driver casually mentions that the LRA have recently threatened to kill all mazungus (whites) they find.
    Kitgum
    The next morning we touch down in Kitgum, one of the regions worst affected by rebel attacks. It's baking hot as we climb into an enormous 4x4 belonging to the World Food Programme with 'UN' printed on the side. I stick out like a sore thumb, a red-faced mazungu peering out of a white car.
    I check into the Bomah Hotel – one of the worst hotels in the world. It has a pool full of what looks like snot, some of the filthiest rooms I've ever set foot in, and tap water that's a disturbing light brown colour. But on balance, I'm surprised and grateful that you can even find hotels in places like this.
    I make a quick visit to the local market. It stinks, and there are open sewers all around. Most stallholders have only a handful of sweet potatoes or a small sack of flour to sell, and it scares me that there can be so little food available in a town this big. A few traders are doing better: there's a woman who buys and sells fish, standing amidst a cloud of fish scales and flies, and she has a mobile phone, but people like her are few and far between.
    The local WFP head, Robert Dekker, takes me to his aid depot where 30-odd bare-chested fellas are loading 140 tonnes of food onto huge, ancient trucks. It's the first time I've seen an aid operation in action and I'm disappointed to see how emotionless it all is. I thought it would be about sympathy, kindness and generosity, but it's actually about logistics. The WFP does a serious job and at this level food aid is about distribution issues, transport, manpower, efficiency, bureaucracy and accountability. Robert knows that he's saving lives but he's not a knight in shining armour – he's doing a job.
    Once the food is loaded, a huge army escort of 60 men rocks up to protect the convoy en route. There's an arrogance to these Ugandan army soldiers and I'm not sure I like them, but they've got some big guns, and they should keep us safe from attack by the LRA. I hop onto a Mamba – a rudimentary armoured vehicle – with the commanding officer, Norman, and some of his