Kapchorwa

The Sabiny, a Kalenjin-speaking people related to communities across the border in Kenya, have farmed and herded the northern shoulder of Mount Elgon for centuries, growing millet and keeping cattle on the high ground while the Bantu-speaking Bagisu occupied the wetter southern and western slopes. The escarpment's edge gave both defence and a view over the plains, and the Sebei lived with periodic raiding from the pastoral peoples of the drier country to the north.

British administration reached the mountain at the turn of the twentieth century, largely through the Ganda general Semei Kakungulu, whose base at Mbale became the regional centre. A small station grew at Kapchorwa as the administrative point for the Sebei, and mission schools and churches followed. Arabica coffee, planted on the slopes from the colonial period onward, gave the district its cash crop and tied its fortunes to world coffee prices.

Sebei County became Kapchorwa District on 1 February 1962, months before independence, and the town has been a district headquarters ever since; Bukwo was split off in 2005 and Kween in 2010, and the three together make up the Sebei sub-region. Tarmac reached the escarpment road late, and for much of the twentieth century the town was a half-day's journey from Mbale. The growth of walking tourism around the Sipi falls from the 1990s, the gazetting of the Ugandan side of Mount Elgon as a national park in 1992, and the international success of Ugandan distance runners from these hills have all raised the town's profile well beyond its size.

Kapchorwa is the centre of Sebei identity. Kupsabiny is spoken at home and in the market, and the Sabiny keep a strong sense of kinship with Kalenjin communities over the Kenyan border, with whom they share language, cattle culture and a reputation for running. Christianity is the dominant religion, and church choirs and Sunday services structure the week in town and village alike.

Initiation has long marked the passage into adulthood on both sides of Mount Elgon, and is held in seasons rather than continuously. The best-known of these traditions is Imbalu, the circumcision of Bagisu boys on the western slopes, held in even-numbered years and accompanied by kadodi music and dance. Female genital cutting, historically practised in this area, is a criminal offence in Uganda, and campaigning against it by government bodies, churches and local organisations has been concentrated on the Sebei districts.

The hills above the town are one of the great nurseries of African distance running. Stephen Kiprotich, who won Uganda's Olympic marathon title in 2012, and Joshua Cheptegei, the world-record holder over 5,000 and 10,000 metres, both come from Kapchorwa District, and training groups can be seen on the ridge roads in the early morning. Altitude, a running culture shared with Kenya's Rift Valley and a network of local camps keep the tradition going, and athletics is followed here with the attention football gets elsewhere.

Kapchorwa is a small town — about 12,900 people by the last official estimate, in a district put at some 114,100 — and its rhythm is that of a district headquarters surrounded by farms. Offices, a hospital, schools, banks and the market employ a small salaried class; everyone else lives from the land.

Coffee is the money crop. Washed Arabica from these slopes is sold on as Mount Elgon or Bugisu coffee, bought by traders and cooperatives at the roadside in the harvest months, and its price shapes school fees and building work across the district. Alongside it people grow bananas, maize, beans, Irish potatoes, wheat on the higher ground and vegetables for the Mbale market, and keep cattle, goats and poultry. Tourism around Sipi supports guides, lodge staff, cooks and boda-boda riders.

Days begin early and cold, with mist on the ridges, and the town fills as produce comes in from the hills. Land is the pressing issue: plots are small and subdivided between sons, farming has pushed up towards the forest boundary, and the national park's edge is a long-running source of dispute with communities that once used the forest for bamboo, firewood and grazing. Young people leave for Mbale and Kampala for work, and the roads and power supply, both improved in recent years, still lag behind the lowland towns.

Eating here is mountain food, plainer and more millet-based than the banana cooking of central Uganda. Kalo, a stiff bread of millet flour often mixed with cassava, is the staple, torn by hand and dipped in sauce; posho, the maize-meal version, is equally common, and matoke, steamed green bananas, appears alongside. Sauces are built on groundnut paste (binyebwa), simsim (sesame), beans, cowpea leaves and other greens, with chicken, goat or beef on better days.

The dish the Elgon slopes are known for is malewa: young shoots of mountain bamboo, cut in the forest, smoked and dried to keep, then boiled and finished with groundnut paste into a dense, smoky sauce. It travels down the mountain to Mbale and Kampala as a delicacy and is served at ceremonies here. Roasted maize, boiled eggs, chapati and the rolex — a chapati rolled around a fried egg with tomato and onion — fill the street-food role in town, and avocados and passion fruit are abundant and cheap.

Coffee is grown everywhere but drunk less than tea: African tea, boiled with milk and ginger, is the standard hot drink, though farms around Sipi now roast and serve their own beans. Traditional drinks include millet beer, shared from a pot through long straws at gatherings, and banana brews, while bottled lagers and waragi, the general name for local spirits, are sold in the town's bars.