Gulu Riots

After the arrests of two opposition party leaders, Norbert Mao of the Democratic Party (DP) and Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), riots have broken out in Gulu and Masaka, Uganda.

This is my home.

At 0:20 in this video, you will see the center square in Gulu, a place I walked past every day for four months.
That orange building on the left... that's the corner where my friend Francis parks his boda every day to wait for fares.
Down the street three blocks is my sister Bridget's kindergarten.
This is my town, and its being torn apart.

The essentials of the story is this:
Mao and Besigye have been organizing "Walk to Work" campaigns as a form of protest against rising fuel and commodity prices.  They are simply walking.  That's it.
Museveni's government, in an effort to stop these political demonstrations, arrested both Mao and Besigye, both of whom ran against him in the recent Presidential elections.
Following the arrests, the supporters of Mao in Gulu and Besigye in Kampala began to riot.  In Gulu, people began gathering in the town center, blocking the roads with logs, lighting tires on fire in the street, and throwing stones at police and military vehicles.
The UPDF (the Ugandan military) began shooting tear gas into the crowds and are randomly firing their weapons into the crowds.
Three have been killed and many more injured, and that may be just the beginning.




When you leave people with no way out, no hope for change, and no vision for a life better than this one... you leave them with nothing to lose.

I'm keeping my family and friends in Gulu in my thoughts always.  My family is safe for now and I haven't heard much of my friends there.  All I can do now is hope for the best.


All any of us can ever do is hope for peace.




"When hands are joined, no one can point fingers."