22-Jul-2019 -- This was my second attempt to reach this confluence. Last year, because of lack of preparation and too short time, we could not reach the place. There were just too many dirt roads that you get lost which one to take. Because of the hilly area, roads that seem to lead towards the confluence lead to another direction after a while.
As I had to go back to Arua for work, this was my second chance. Daniel Okurut, a Ugandan collegue, joined me on the journey to Arua and was willing to join me on this quest. This time I had set some coordinates as references, so we “hopped” from point to point, starting from the village of Uluko. Yet we did not reach the last point before we should start walking, the road was too bad. So we started walking earlier, first on the road, then branching of through tall grass and bushes. Not as easy as I expected, but I guess that again we had taken a wrong road with the car, although we were almost within 1 km walking distance. We hit another narrow track that we followed and that seemed to lead us straight to the target. We had to walk down a moderate slope, and down in the valley, we could see the cassava fields and huts. The path passed only a few meters beside the confluence, so a few steps into the tall grass and there it was. A small hut at about 20 meters distance, but the owners were probably too shy to come to us. We both don’t speak the local language here anyway, and those women surely don’t speak English. So we just did the necessary photos and hiked back. We followed the road a bit longer and made it back to Arua before dark.
Photo 8 gives a good impression of the area. We hiked down that rocky hill from where I took the photo, and down in the valley you see the fields.