MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Winter Spring 2020

49 The crew dubbed me “ Kwuom ”, meaning “the one with the wind in his hair” on my last night with them. Being a white-skinned mzungu from another continent is one thing, but in Karamoja, where most outsiders are clean-cut employees of NGOs or religious institutions, the sight of a man with shoulder-length hair was enough to make me stand out. To accompany my new name, my new friends also performed a head-to-toe makeover, dressing me in contemporary Karamojong fashion complete with rubber jewelry and the standard shoes made from discarded tires. To be so welcomed into the tribe was incredibly humbling and made me feel that my time in Uganda—a month of teaching trail building techniques to a group of guides in the town of Moroto—had made a positive impact. I had arrived in the area hoping to share my knowledge and experience from growing up in the Sea to Sky, an area that has seen immense financial wealth spring from mountain biking over the past 25 years. A community of nearly 15,000 and counting, Moroto sits in the far northeast corner of Uganda adjacent to Mount Moroto. This extinct volcano is the highest mountain in the region (3,000m) and is part of a chain protruding out of the savannah to bookend one side of the Great Rift Valley, which many consider the birthplace of human civilization. Moroto is the largest town in Karamoja, a region of 300,000 primarily pastoral communities bordering Kenya and South Sudan. After Idi Amin’s brutal dictatorship ended in the late ‘70s, thousands of guns flooded the area and decades of bloody violence ensued. Asuccessfuldisarmamentcampaigntoexchange rifles for oxen and farm equipment created roughly a decade of stability, however Karamoja remains one of the poorest regions of Uganda. But development is coming fast and a new highway will mean easier access to the globalized grid of communication and trade. For a region lacking education and basic resources, shifting from relative isolation into the 21st century global economy has brought many cultural changes in only one generation. Shongz, aka “Julius,” is one of the guides who gave me my new name. His story mirrors that of his rapidly changing homeland. Recognizing there was more to life than his chaotic surroundings, Shongz quit drinking heavily at the ripe age of nine (after starting when he was five) and focused his ambition on education and pursuing his passions of sports and making music. At 25, he now hopes that a reputation of stability will boost tourism to Uganda and allow him to focus on creating wealth for his community. “We understand. We are trying to wake up as the youth,” he says. “And tourism is how we can make a small difference.” The rural communities surrounding Moroto had a glimpse of the biking world in 2017 with the inaugural Tour of Karamoja. At the time, this four-day mountain bike ride was the largest off-road cycling event in Uganda. The tour was founded by the late Paul Sherwen, a road bike legend who spent over 30 years as a commentator for the English broadcast of the Tour de France. He was a dual citizen of the UK and Uganda, and as a boy visited Karamoja on hunting safaris with his father as a part of the khaki-clad aristocracy. From a young age, Sherwen fell in love with the land and people of Uganda. As stability returned to the country, he used his clout as an international sports celebrity to bring positive attention to the region. The first Tour of Karamoja in 2017 saw 23 participants. For 2018, the event based its operations on Mount Moroto, setting up on a flat outcropping near the Tepeth tribal community of Musas. Thanks to a Whistler connection with one of the tour organizers, I was invited to lead trail crews to build an entertaining two-and-a-half day stretch of riding. I agreed without giving much thought to the challenges of developing a trail network in under a week on foreign soil with a novice crew who did not speak English. We hired 25 people from the community and used basic hand tools to refurbish centuries- old trails connecting some of the villages in the Moroto highlands. Rough footpaths became streamlined bike trails that could hold speed on the descent and provide enough thrill and challenge to keep riders entertained. Recognizing there was more to life than his chaotic surroundings, Shongz quit drinking heavily at the ripe age of nine (after starting when he was five) and focused his ambition on education and pursuing his passions of sports and making music. Karamoja