Laodog

  “Senior, tin itye dead! Yamo tye ikomi bo?” “Ahh, atye bao-bao kitoro. Bisma tin pe ikoma omio yala ogoa oko. Opia aman pe tye agena atwali. Boc ikoma ni anwongo i style. Alonyo na pwod owoto oko”. If you were walking on the streets of Lira and you over heard the conversation above between two youthful friends, would you have understood what they are talking about? I don’t know when the last time it was when you were in Lira city. And what the street slangs in the city were. But the street culture in Lira is as vibrant as it ever was. Am reckoning that almost every five years, there is a new set of slangs that hits the streets. Some of them are quite enduring while others can be too localized and disappear as quickly as they come. Lately I have been keeping an open ear to them and I have been trying to catch up with really cool ones. In this article am trying to chronicle for you some of the street slangs from the 1980s to the 2020s. Besides, there is one slang that ha...

  Got Agwiciri If you’re bringing the family back home to Lango for the New Year, or looking for an adventure with friends or your other half, let me share a hidden gem that might just be the weekend highlight you’re looking for: Got Agwiciri! You’re probably asking, “What’s so special about it?” Well, I thought the same when the Local Council chairperson invited me. “It’s magical up there,” he assured me with a mysterious smile. I didn’t quite believe him—but curiosity got the best of me. So off I went to discover this place in Atongtidi Parish, nestled by the peaceful shores of Lake Kwania. Reaching Got Agwiciri is surprisingly easy. It’s about a 30-minute drive from Aduku town along a fairly smooth murram road. The first glance? Honestly, it looked unremarkable. I almost asked if we could just skip it. But our guide wasn’t having it. “You city folks, I’ll show you the easy trail,” he chuckled, directing us up a neat concrete path—one of two trails, with the other reserved fo...

  A foundation stone at the ruins of the Goan Quarters in Lira There’s a triangular piece of land in Lira town, near St. Kizito Primary School, that gives me goosebumps every time I pass by. It’s bordered by Lira-Gulu Road, Teso-Bar Road, and the road leading from the police roundabout back to St. Kizito. Tall mvule trees dominate the triangle, and their branches are home to thousands of noisy bats. There is a Pentecostal church there too. Though I’m not afraid of bats, the place always feels eerie, especially when the bats take flight, shrieking and flapping their wings as they move from tree to tree starting fights with each others. This triangle holds two memories that make it even more unsettling for me. The first dates back to my school days in the 1980s, when I attended Ambalal Primary School . Every day, I would walk past this very spot, often lost in my thoughts as I hurried to school. There was a kite bird that nested in those mvule trees, and it would torment me ever...