To a stranger, Edward Echwalu would describe himself as an occasionally complicated book to read through; first, a huge part of him is an introvert, and secondly, depending on the conversation starter, he could be the most open person anyone could interact with.
“It is difficult to get words out of me but it gets easier when we share a few common interests. Perhaps my biggest weakness is that I easily trust and expect that in return, which is such a flawed line of thought,” explains Echwalu, one of Uganda’s most gifted photographers.
When I ask him how and when he cut his teeth as a photographer, he says that he finds himself lucky to be in photography today because it wasn’t his dream to ever be a photographer. For some reason, as a young boy, he had an affection and admiration for television anchors and knew little if anything, how to be one.
Like many Ugandans, career guidance is almost nonexistent, and if it does, is more forceful than mutual. His case wasn’t any different. He got very little meaningful career guidance from the structures around him, yet continued steadfast piling on hours of morning and evening preps, revising and sitting exams while chasing a dream he knew nothing about.
Luckily, uncertainty breeds fear and that fear possibly encouraged him to study harder and eventually passed his exams. Everybody expected him to do courses like law, accountancy, medicine but his gut feeling and character never quite resonated with those courses.
Photography as a career choice came as a byproduct of the admiration of being on TV. Echwalu narrates, “I loved news reporters and anchors, but little did I know that someone would fashion out a career in photojournalism until I enrolled my Journalism degree at Makerere University.”
It helped that there was no TV or broadcast infrastructure at Makerere College of Journalism at that time which allowed him to spend more time with the analogue cameras and digital equipment the department had at the time.
That geared him towards photojournalism. Even that alone was not enough.
Hours upon hours of assignments, frame after frame were not convincing enough for him to decide on photojournalism as a career path. His class, of 2005-2008, was possibly the first to truly migrate to digital space and practice in journalism training.
At the time, there was a transition from analogue to digitization of news and the advent of social media platforms.
One particular platform were blogs which Echwalu extensively used to upload his pictures. It was merely a fancy practice of having a “free website” not knowing that it was his career defining moment.
Bill Recktenwald, a Pulitzer winning journalist from the University of Chicago looked at his blog posts during a recess term and gave him great feedback. For the first time, he saw value in his frames and perspective. From then on, the drive to document pushed him further and further into photojournalism as a career choice.
Blame it humility but the photographer will not aptly tell you what makes his craft stand out. He would rather leave others to draw their conclusions. He imagines that capturing the simplicity of ordinary life and emotions is what makes his work relatable.
He argues that compelling stories are told in the simplest ways. His goal has always been to document stories in the simplest of approaches which evokes emotions and feedback and ultimately the need for action or change.
He is currently on the road with Maureen Agena around Africa on a journey dubbed #AfricaByRoad where fans follow him on different social media platforms. His response to what inspired the cross border movement is the love for adventure.
“Ignorance is one of the biggest undoing of human existence. Any new road, glance, interaction, food, helps to inform our worldview and opinion about things that we are not accustomed to. A lot of our engagement and judgement are based on what is only known to us.”
He further observes, “Traveling changes all that. It makes you vulnerable enough to learn, relearn and unlearn. It helps take away bias and create a better understanding. Traveling humbles you. That was the drive from this Journey. We are on a mission to learn and unlearn about our continent and appreciate the diversity that comes with it.”
And where they can, they replicate the good things. They are also documenting their experience to inspire more travels by Africans within Africa. So far, It has been quite a lesson so far. The trip has taken and showed them people, landscapes, way of life, language, culture separated by borders that have inhibited free movement and trade and created a big difference in growth or regression based on colonialism.
Echwalu and Agena are moving through parts of eastern and Southern Africa and observe that every region is unique with certain attributes that others don’t have.
For example, infrastructure in Namibia, and South Africa is what other countries would benefit from. The Uganda weather and food would turn Uganda into the continental food basket, the scenic mountainous landscape in Lesotho would be a tourism hub, the vast reserves in Tanzania and Kenya would make them an exclusive safari destination.
They have journeyed through Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Namibia, Angola, South Africa, Lesotho), Eswatini, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi and will travel back to Tanzania, Kenya and finally Uganda.
The cities have been many: Nairobi, Lusaka, Windhoek, Cape Town, Maseru, Mbabane, Pretoria, Johannesburg, Gaborone, Harare, Tete, Blantyre, Lilongwe and Dar es salaam and over 100 towns.
I ask how the cities and towns compare to Kampala in terms of the nightlife vibe and general buzz. In southern Africa, the cities are very organized with functional roads networks, traffic lights and extremely clean. “Businesses close early and the people adhere to working hours. For major cities like Mbeya, Windhoek, Cape town, Maseru, Johannesburg and Pretoria, the vibe and general buzz is subtle. Kampala has its unique attributes that previous travelers to Uganda have never forgotten. It has layers and textures of amazing culture, flamboyancy and positivity,” the photojournalist further narrates.
Why a road trip, I curiously ask. He says a road trip gives you ample time to explore and interact more than any other forms of transport. As such, nothing prepares you for the amount of learning you get from a road trip. It also makes you vulnerable to so many things, and that way, a traveller is more receptive, polite and open minded.
The two have done several trips around Uganda and East Africa. In 2016, they did a similar trip to southern Africa from Uganda to Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Livingstone) then back via Kenya. It was a short one that lasted about three weeks only, and they deliberately avoided countries where they required visas as Ugandans.
In preparation of the Africa By Road trip, they packed things that are typically meant for a road excursion, namely a camera, tent, gas cylinder, an ice cooler, a first aid kit, a car toolbox, fire extinguisher, triangles, a portable table, cookware, sunglasses, coffee, food stuff (dry rations) and their laptops.
“Being a photographer, the camera is my tool for work. I move with it everywhere and because we are on a trip to learn and unlearn, pictorial documentation is of essence.
We carried a tent to save on accommodation costs. A trip like #AfricaByRoad costs a lot of money and some of the biggest costs go to fuel, accommodation and feeding. So, a tent would significantly reduce our accommodation costs, Echwalu says.
The duo has been cooking many of their meals to save on feeding costs, so the gas cylinder, cookware, cutlery, and foodstuff have come in handy.
The trip has happened during the dry season (Summer) in southern Africa and for sparsely populated countries like Namibia that are also surrounded by deserts, having a cooler is the right thing to do to stay hydrated.
The first aid kit is the travelers’ emergency health option in case of any minor accident. The car toolbox has all spares parts, oils, gadgets that the car needs in case of a mechanical problem.
In addition to the tool box, as a precaution, they carried a fire extinguisher and triangles in the event of an emergency.
Also, for one, a couple or groups that might want to plan for a similar trip, the photojournalist advises that they have to be updated with certain requirements before entering a country. While driving to South Africa from Namibia, Echwalu and Agena heard it is now mandatory to have a dustbin in the car in Uganda and so that could be their next item.
The planning of the journey started in January 2022 when the two decided to take a break from work at the end of the year and travel. They had been saving for the trip which meant that she decided to leave her senior communications job at a research centre in Nairobi and he was not taking on any assignments as a freelance photographer/photojournalist, deliberately.
“We agreed to set off after the New year celebration and travel for up to three months. We set off from Uganda on 6th January 2023,” he explains. As man lives so will they feed. Travelling through different countries, cities and towns meant a voyage of culinary adventures.
“We love to try out local and traditional cuisines even within Uganda, so for us, this has been one to test our love for different cuisines. For this trip we have been going to local restaurants to find the traditional foods and so far, Zambia has been the highlight. Utuchenge fish in Zambia exceeded our expectations.”
In Livingstone, Zambia, he ate the crunchiest Mopane caterpillars and well marinated crocodile ribs. They would have loved to taste local South African dishes, but to do that, they had to drive to the local areas which on the advice of many, were not safe to drive to.
They carried Ugandan culinary foods as well that they cooked while camping. On the list of foods are; kal (Millet flour), Apena (pigeon peas), Moo yaa (Hot pressed shea butter), Fried groundnuts, Amukeke (slice dried potatoes), soya, simsim balls, mberenge, and some bananas (bogoya, ndizi).
The social interaction with the people they meet has been fascinating too. They have been met with warmth and excitement every time they introduced themselves as travelers from Uganda , and thereon corner eyeing their Ugandan plates with uncertainty.
‘That must be so far’, some would respond. Others have also been quite knowledgeable about Uganda which would shock the duo. A well-established Namibian lawyer who randomly approached their Ugandan plated car told Echwalu and Agena how his mother studied part of her nursing course at Makerere University School of Medicine over 30 years ago.
Another stranger, a Zambian, told them how he missed his flight back home twice because the friends were “showing him Kampala” for three straight days. They all laughed! Others, especially white Namibians and South Africans told the Ugandans how they would like to visit to see Mountain Gorillas.
Numerous others were just curious to know what languages are spoken in Uganda, the weather, and life in Uganda. While away, the Ugandan travellers missed the stable weather and diverse tasty food. You’d miss all that and more when you take a voyage through deserts, sand storms and then extreme cold that gives your skin a beating.
Out there, there is not as much fresh foods and in variety as is the case in the Pearl of Africa. They didn’t miss the chaos, potholes and noise though. At the time of filing this story, Echwalu and Agena has reached Southern Africa and it is the time of the year when days are longer than the nights.
It gets dark past 9pm. As they add, for East Africans, it has messed with their sleeping pattern. He light-heartedly adds, “Do you know how difficult it is to convince a Ugandan to have dinner in broad daylight? It makes you appreciate the diversity of the world, but more so, the punctuality of the sun in Uganda.”
Not all cities or towns have come with shocking changes. Swakopmund in Namibia was such a small, intimate, clean and safe city in the middle of a desert. They particularly loved sand-boarding and quad biking in the desert. The majesty of Victoria falls would sway their hearts again.
They had been to the Victoria Falls before but could never get enough of its beauty, watching the complexity of the world through its waters over the rocks. And besides taking photographs at such beautiful African tourist attractions, and of each other, the two have naturally complemented each other in ways he describes as unimaginable.
“It helps that we are both able to drive a manual car and we have driven it in turns. We also assign roles ahead of each drive. Depending on who is driving, the other will be the navigator or route planner, cook, conversation starter, name it. As an introvert, Maureen comes in handy with her exceptional communication skill to initiate conversations and take notes.”
He adds, “I usually do the silent but critical job of photography to attach pictorial evidence to these conversations. We have been in situations where a language is spoken and Maureen, who speaks several languages, understood bits and pieces and this helped us either bargain and avoid being cheated or simply walk away from any trouble of biased people.”
One of the key highlights of the journey was driving through Namibia and Lesotho, both counties that they had never been to.
Namibia is surrounded by deserts while Lesotho is surrounded by thousands of hills. The contrast in weather of the two countries shocked the travelers.
Whereas Namibia was extremely hot, windy, sandy and dry, Lesotho was freezing cold, green and rainy. You need some 4X4 driving experience for both countries, but otherwise, any skilled driver can use any car.
The lows of the trips was being scammed by “Tanzanians” in Namibia who claimed to have been robbed at gunpoint in Cape Town and had been traveling back to Tanzania on people’s goodwill.
They sounded truly in distress with their Tanzanian plated car and that took a huge part of the duo’s budget to help people from “home.”
Echwalu narrates, “We had our reservations but we were convinced that Tanzanians are some of the most honest people we’d both met. We got tipped off by another Tanzanian traveler who got scammed the same way, three weeks before us. It was a brutal lesson on our part. We were just happy that we could help and will continue with that spirit of generosity, albeit, with a little pinch of scrutiny.”
From the onset, the travelers anticipated all sorts of challenges and agreed to face each day on a new note. As such, they have reflective moments at the end of each day, assess their role and how they could have handled it better, then agree to leave it behind them and look forward to a new day with new opportunities. What is an excursion without challenges, anyway?
I cheekily ask the story their Land Rover Defender would say out more loudly and Echwalu speaks for his car and says it has been pushed to the limits. The car would narrate, “Many know me for my rugged looks, and ability to create paths where there is none, but I can also go for longer distances that many others can only dream of. People have and continue to have doubts about me, but I have consistently shown that with proper care, I can and will outlast any other car you will meet on the road today.”
To keep the Land Rover on the road, the seasoned photographer and his partner drive responsibly. They also regularly service the car with professional Land Rover mechanics, and replace parts with original one. They drive it at an average speed of 80 kilometres per hour even if it can comfortably go at 160.
“We do not speed unnecessarily nor drive carelessly. Land Rover defenders are unique cars you can have in your collection. It is a car that turns heads, initiates conversation and just draws people. We have developed an unbreakable bond with this Land Rover defender that any slight change in sound will be noticed and looked upon without immediately. Its longevity is based on care,” he observes.
The objective of any trip is to have fun and create lasting memories. As such, if you are planning to take a trip, the couple advise you to develop a mantra of always making the best out of any trip before the planning process commences.
They add that money is such a big deal in travel and for ultra-long trips like the one they are currently on, it costs money. Lots of it. It requires ample time to plan to the last dot. They observe that again, even that is not enough as travel is so unpredictable. They tip that always plan for twice as much money you have originally planned for to cover your basis. So far, they have picked up souvenirs of sticker flags of all the countries that they have driven through.
