Slave trading in Fort Baker

Slave trading was hidden behind this hill

I would not know what places of interest to recommend to a visitor in Gulu.  Perhaps the St. Mary’s Hospital in Lacor ( where some doctors sacrificed their lives treating  Ebola and HIV/AIDs

The Pope said mass here

patients in 1996 and 2000) or the former camps for internally displaced persons (designated in 1996 and disbanded in 2006).  There are no buildings with interesting architecture or history, although I have heard that the cathedral

former IDP camp

of the Archdiocese of Gulu is worth-visiting.  The grounds where Pope John Paul II held mass in 1993 has no marker at all and is in a sorry state.  For want of a historical place to show for,  I can mention Fort Baker, named

Fort Baker marker

after Sir Samuel Baker, appointed Governor General by the Queen of England in 1869  to stop the Arab slave trading in the area.   He built the fort in the trading camp in Patiko where the Acholi people were forcefully enslaved.  People were sorted out as to those who were fit or unfit to be sold as slaves;  those unfit were brutally murdered.

Slaves lie down to be measured

Beheaded bodies littered the area and blood painted nearly every little rock around.   Patiko is about 2 hours of

Ravine for rejects

rough roads from Gulu town, and the pictures here are the scenes that await the visitor.  Except for the faded marker, there is no

Symbolic structure

other literature in the place, and no one is on site to speak with authority what the whole place is all about. It seems that people do not want to talk much about this sordid past although a school had been named after Samuel Baker - a reminder that he was the protector of the Acholi people from the Arab slave traders.

Behind the rocks was the sorting area
Watch the film Amistad (Morgan Freeman and John Hopkins) for related info.