FORT PATIKO

After having distinguished himself in the East Indies, the British explorer Samuel White Baker (1821-1893), renowned for his hunting skills, undertook his first trip to the Africa of the Great Lakes in 1861, in the company of his future wife, Florence. Pursuing the dream of all the intrepid adventurers of the time, he hoped to discover the source of the Nile. But he is outpaced by fellow countrymen Captain Speke and Captain Grant, whom he meets on his way up the river at Gondokoro. The latter, however, provided him with information that would allow him to be the first European to discover Lake Albert on March 14, 1864. Along the way, Florence and Samuel passed, at the end of 1863 or early 1864, to Patiko, an outpost of Ottoman Egypt, constantly prey to the exactions of slavers, looters and poachers. On his return to London, where his discoveries earned him the praise of the Royal Geographical Society and ennoblement, he wrote travel accounts, including The Albert N'yanza Great Basin of the Nile and Exploration of the Nile Sources, in which he described the black slave trade still in force in that part of the world. Baker and Baker set foot in Africa again in 1869, at the request of the Khedive of Egypt, Ismail Pasha. He wanted to modernize the khedive economically and socially, to establish his territorial domination over what is now southern Sudan and northwestern Uganda, and to abolish the slave trade from a civilizational point of view. Samuel Baker, leading some 1,700 soldiers, left Cairo for the south, where he built forts to pacify the region. In 1872, he returned to Patiko to build the fort of the same name. After a series of skirmishes, he ousted the slavers active in northern Uganda. Although his contribution was, all in all, quite modest, many Acholi hail Baker as the one who eradicated slavery from their land (in Masindi or Hoima, Baker does not have the same aura, as he is perceived as a colonialist who sought, in the name of khedevivat, to conquer the kingdom of Bunyoro). Today, only a few remains of the fort remain (three stone structures sealed with mortar that are, in reality, just old granaries). Listed in 1972, the site, based on a green kopje bristling with imposing rocks, is picturesque and, like the nearby eminences, worth a detour. A bucolic track of about thirty kilometres running due north from Gulu gives access to it.