In the Danger Zone by Stefan Gates Read Free Book Online Page B

small group of protagonists can be sustained for 20 years.
    Museveni seems to have become a little dictatorial in recent years, with the abolition of the constitutional limit on presidential terms and the creation of a 10,000-strong Presidential Guard Brigade that is effectively his private army. There seems to be intense intimidation of the opposition, including the arrest of Besigye on a raft of charges such as treason and rape. Yet it's a mark of the state of the country that most Ugandans think Museveni is still the best bet.
    That night my career takes another twist: I track Besigye down to the Kitgum radio station and manage to have a short interview with him. I surprise even myself when I step forward with my hand outstretched and say, 'Good evening, Mr Besigye: Stefan Gates, BBC. Can I ask you a few questions?' I ask him why he thinks the LRA conflict has gone on so long and he talks about 'lack of political will' and a need for a renewed offensive. He's calm, direct and doesn't make rash claims, which I find refreshing. We talk for a short while, then he returns to carry on his radio interview.
    Aggoro
    I am picked up by a UN driver, Richard, who takes me (with three trucks of soldiers for protection) to Aggoro, one of the most remote and dangerous of the camps where I will live for the next few days.
    The UN Land Cruisers have air conditioning, VHF radios and cassette recorders, and if you put your bottles of water on the dashboard jammed against the windscreen and put the air con on high, you'll get slightly chilled water. I think if I were a refugee, I might resent these cars. But without this vehicle and protection from the UN and the army, I wouldn't be allowed to travel here.
    After three hours bumping along a dirt road, we arrive at the camp. Médedecins Sans Frontières have kindly lent me a thatched hut to stay in, but there's no food around, so I pull out my camping stove for the first time and make dinner. Risotto, since you ask, as it's the cheapest, most portable and filling meal I could carry. It's not bad, considering.
    Agorro is very isolated and it's been attacked frequently in the past so I go to sleep scared, my fear fed by the sense of terror that spreads across the whole camp at dusk as everyone runs back home and the sun drops like a stone. The LRA attack anywhere, even inside the camps, and usually at night. Throughout the night loud bangs startle me, and I get ready to run. I finally fall asleep just before dawn.
    The morning is beautiful and I stroll through the camp accompanied by a small army of children. Wherever I go there are shouts of 'mazungu, and people stop to stare at the speccy white fella wandering around their camp. I meet Odwa, a gently spoken man of 40 or so, and Doreen, his moon-faced wife. They've kindly agreed to let me see how they and their nine children live for the next few days, and he shows me around the camp.
    Agorro is strangely beautiful, a sea of thousands of identical circular mud huts with reed or thatched roofs. They are low and small, about the size of a hatchback car. Families are crammed inside them with pitifully few possessions – usually a few pots and some bags containing their aid rations, some plastic sheeting to lie on, maybe a couple of blankets and a few clothes. On the surface, the dust, the sun and beautiful kids make it seem idyllic. Underneath, though, it's gruesome. Utter poverty, terrible sanitation problems, disease, and almost no education or healthcare.
    But (it's a big but – the biggest but of the whole story and our reason for being here) people in these camps shouldn't be defined just by their misery or inability to support themselves, or even their status as refugees. It sounds banal to say it, but until I met refugees and cooked and ate with them, I thought of them as a concept, as a problem that needed solving, rather than as normal, complex people with lives as complicated as my own. Of course, refugees have the same concerns as us: