Pakwach

The land on both banks of the Albert Nile here belongs to the Alur, a Luo-speaking people who settled the hills and river country of West Nile over several centuries. They belong to the wider Luo group, whose related communities are spread through northern Uganda, South Sudan and Kenya, and in Uganda they live mainly in the Pakwach, Nebbi, Zombo and Arua districts.

The crossing made the modern town. Before any bridge, traffic between West Nile and the rest of Uganda depended on ferries over the Nile, and Pakwach was one of the points where the road met the river. Under British rule West Nile was a far corner of the protectorate, linked to the rest of the country across the water. A railway was pushed north-west in the 1960s and reached Pakwach, where the line met the steamer route that came down the Victoria Nile, and the town was briefly a railhead for cotton, tobacco and other produce; the tracks now lie disused and the road carries the traffic.

The town shared the upheavals of the north. The collapse of Idi Amin's government in 1979, and the fighting and movement of people that followed it in West Nile, unsettled the town, and the long insurgency in Acholi country to the east disrupted travel and trade for years. Since the mid-2000s the road has been rebuilt, refugee settlements have grown in the districts to the north, and Pakwach became the headquarters of its own district when it was separated from Nebbi.

Pakwach is an Alur town, and Alur, a Luo language related to Acholi and to the languages of the Kenyan and South Sudanese Luo, is what is spoken in the market and at home. The Alur kept chiefdoms under hereditary rulers, each called a rwoth, and the Alur Kingdom still counts dozens of chiefdoms in Uganda and across the border in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, alongside district government. Descent, clan and the respect owed to elders still order social life.

Music and dance are part of weddings, funeral rites and community gatherings, with drums, the adungu — the arched harp played across the north — and dances performed by lines of women and men. Christianity, Catholic and Anglican, is dominant, with a Muslim minority and long-standing traditional practices around fishing, rain and ancestors persisting quietly beside the churches.

Being a border-facing trading town shapes manners. Traders, lorry drivers, fishermen and travellers heading for Arua, the Congo and South Sudan pass through constantly, and the town is used to strangers without being a tourist place. Fishing communities on the Nile have their own rules and rhythms, and permission is expected before photographing boats, catches or landing sites. Greetings are unhurried, and time spent on them is never wasted.

About twenty-three thousand people lived in Pakwach at the 2014 national census, and official estimates put it past twenty-eight thousand by 2020, growth helped by its becoming a district headquarters, which brought offices, staff and services with it. The built-up area spreads along the main road, with newer housing on the outskirts and villages of compounds scattered through the surrounding bush and farmland.

Fishing is the oldest trade. Canoes work the Albert Nile and the northern end of Lake Albert for tilapia and Nile perch, and much of the catch is smoked and sent inland. Around it sit farming — cassava, sim-sim, millet, maize, groundnuts and sweet potato — trading in the market, transport work on the highway, and jobs with the district, schools, clinics and the national park. Falling fish stocks, restrictions on fishing gear and the seasonal nature of farming keep incomes uncertain.

The day starts before dawn at the landing sites and in the gardens, the market fills during the morning, and activity thins in the afternoon heat before picking up again towards evening at the roadside stalls and bars. Water supply, electricity that comes and goes, wildlife wandering out of the park, and the condition of the roads north and east are recurring local concerns.

Cooking here belongs to the Alur and the wider north-west rather than to the matooke country of the south. Cassava is the everyday staple, boiled or dried and pounded into flour for a stiff bread, often mixed with millet or sorghum flour and eaten with the hands. Beans, cowpeas, greens and sauces thickened with groundnut or sim-sim (sesame) paste go with it, and shea butter from the trees of the north is used in cooking as well as on the skin.

Fish is what the town is known for. Fresh tilapia and Nile perch are fried whole or stewed with tomato and onion, and smoked fish, dried hard over wood fires at the landing sites, keeps for months and travels to markets far inland. Malakwang, the sour hibiscus-leaf dish cooked with groundnut paste, is eaten across the north and in West Nile is also prepared with fish or beans.

Roadside eating serves the highway: chapati, samosas, roasted maize and gonja (roasted plantain), goat grilled over charcoal, and the rolex, a chapati rolled around a fried egg with tomato and onion. Tea boiled with milk and ginger is drunk through the day, and local brewing — beers from fermented sorghum, millet or maize, sold in calabashes, and the distilled spirit known generally as waragi — is part of evening social life.