When you look at the images of Karamoja on the internet, what you see are contrasting photographs sitting awkwardly side by side, like two cousins from different walks of life meeting each other in person for the very first time, after years of writing each other letters.
The older photographs are the village guy. He writes in colonial cursive style and miss-spells a few words here and there, but obeys the rules of grammar and punctuation surprisingly well. Overall, he writes very good letters but most importantly, he writes just the way his teachers coach him to write.
Hoping to get something from his presumed rich cousin back in the capital, Kampala, he writes naively: “Karamoja is very dry. There is a lot of hunger. Yesterday, we could not afford to find something to eat so we had to sleep hungry. Can you imagine that the other clan came and raided our cattle last night? Yes, they did. We are scared because now everyone is saying that they have guns. Many people died. It feels very unsafe here.” “Will you send me some clothes and shoes to wear; and books also?”
The newer photographs are the hip but humble town cousin whose parents are most likely both civil servants living in the middle class neighborhoods of Kampala. He is clearly not desperate and in fact he lives a pretty good life but he is more appreciative of what he has than he is boastful about it. He is not trying so hard to show how good things are, because he is aware of how, in many ways, things are not so good. Either way, he humbly celebrates what he has.
This cousin is empowered and this is the image of Karamoja that has not received enough attention. Because he is humble, he will not put himself out there but this image of Karamoja is the one that we need to be the face of Karamoja, because it is more real today than the other desperate picture of Karamoja is.
Kara-Tunga Arts and Tours, a local tourism organization has successfully put cracks in this perception barrier, causing one to re-think what they know and what they have read or heard about Karamoja. In fact, a lot of Karamoja’s empowered new image is as a result of the photographs that Kara-Tunga Arts and Travel has put out into its online media platforms.
This is where photography, vlogging and blogging come in. These are the ways through which the reality of what Karamoja is on ground, can be showed to the world.
To heal the image of Karamoja, it will take content creators with their laptops, cameras and smartphones, moving to the deep and the near places of Karamoja to capture the culture and vibes of the region, and bringing this out into the world for its due appreciation. Content creators from Karamoja and for Karamoja will be the solution to repairing the image of Karamoja.
It will take a deliberate effort to leverage on the power of story telling to change the narrative on Karamoja, like Kara-Tunga Tours and Arts is doing, and expose her as “Uganda’s Best Kept Secret” like she truly is.
Yours truly,
Anna Grace
