Soroti

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Soroti

Soroti is the main commercial and administrative centre of Soroti District

Soroti District

Soroti is a Districts of Uganda in eastern Uganda. Like other Ugandan districts, it is named after its 'chief town'....
in Uganda

Uganda

The Republic of Uganda is a landlocked country in East Africa. It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by Tanzania....
, lying near Lake Kyoga

Lake Kyoga

Lake Kyoga is a large shallow lake complex of Uganda, about 1,720 km? in area and at an elevation of 914 m. The Victoria Nile flows through the lake on its way from Lake Victoria to Lake Albert....
. It is known for the rock

Rock (geology)

In geology, rock is a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals and/or mineraloids.The Earth's outer solid layer, the lithosphere, is made of rock....
formation near the town as well as a variety of Muslim mosques

Mosque

A mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. Muslims often refer to the mosque by its Arabic name, masjid, ? . The word "mosque" in English refers to all types of buildings dedicated for Islamic worship, although there is a distinction in Arabic between the smaller, privately owned mosque and the larger, "collective" mosque ,...
, Hindu temples, Sikh gurdwara

Gurdwara

A gurdwara , meaning "the doorway to the Guru", is the Sikh place of worship and is referred to as a "Sikh temple". The most famous all of the gurdwaras is the Harmandir Sahib in Amritsar, in Punjab India....
s as well as several churches that meet in various buildings in the town varying from the drab Anglican

Anglicanism

Anglicanism is a tradition of Christianity faith. Churches in this tradition either have historical connections to the Church of England or have similar beliefs, worship and church structures....
Cathedral

Cathedral

A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop. It is a Religion building for worship, specifically of a denomination with an episcopal hierarchy, such as the Roman Catholic Church, Anglicanism, Orthodox Christian and some Lutheranism churches, which serves as a bishop's seat, and thus as the central church of a dioc...
to small Pentecostal congregations

Pentecostalism

Pentecostalism is a renewalist religious movement within Christianity that places special emphasis on the direct personal experience of God through the baptism of the Holy Spirit....
in school classrooms.

The town of Soroti still has many buildings reflecting the tastes of the large Indian

Indian subcontinent

The Indian subcontinent is a large section of the Asian continent consisting of the land lying substantially on the Indian Plate. The subcontinent includes parts of various countries in South Asia, including those on the continental crust , an Island#Continental islands country on the continental shelf , and an Island#Oceanic islands countr...
population that once traded in the town.

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Encyclopedia

Soroti is the main commercial and administrative centre of Soroti District

Soroti District

Soroti is a Districts of Uganda in eastern Uganda. Like other Ugandan districts, it is named after its 'chief town'....
in Uganda

Uganda

Lake Kyoga

Rock (geology)

Mosque

Gurdwara

Anglicanism

Cathedral

Pentecostalism

Indian subcontinent

Idi Amin

Idi Amin Dada , commonly known as Idi Amin, was a Ugandan Military dictatorship and the President of Uganda of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Amin joined the British colony regiment, the King's African Rifles, in 1946, and advanced to the rank of Major General and Commander of the Ugandan Army....
’s expulsion of the Asians

Uganda under Amin

Uganda was for a time ruled by idi Amin....
in the 1970s. In recent years, with the return of stability to the area, the town is beginning to thrive again with many new businesses opening up. This has also increased the sprawl of the town into the surrounding farmland. Soroti market

Marketplace

A marketplace is the space, actual or metaphorical, in which a market operates. The term is also used in a trademark law context to denote the actual consumer environment, ie....
suffered a fire in the late 1990s mainly due to its ramshackle set-up. The market that replaced is much more ordered, but still has stalls of fresh fruit and vegetables, dry goods and the local fish.

It is possible to climb the rock beside the town, with permission from the Town Clerk, and this gives an excellent panorama of the town and the surrounding areas. Views from the rock on a clear day extend as far as Mount Elgon

Mount Elgon

Mount Elgon is an extinct volcano shield volcano on the border of Uganda and Kenya.The mountain is named after the Elgeyo tribe, who once lived in huge caves on the south side of the mountain....
and Lake Kyoga

Lake Kyoga

Volcanic plug

A volcanic plug, also called a volcanic neck or lava neck, is a volcano landform created when magma hardens within a vent on an active volcano....
, which are common in the region.

At the back of the rock you can still find the graves from Uganda's colonial

Colonialism

Colonialism is the extension of a nation's sovereignty over Territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler or exploitation colony in which Indigenous people populations are direct rule, Population transfers, or Genocide....
period. The age at which the residents of these plots died is an indication of the dangers that the area of Soroti once posed. Many of the graves are in disrepair and overgrown. On the otherside of the airport is a much larger municipal cemetery

Cemetery

A cemetery is a place in which death body and cremation are burial. The term cemetery implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground....
where there are many graves with Arabic inscriptions. Located there is a bath house

Islamic funeral

Funerals in Islam follow fairly specific rites, though they are subject to some interpretation and local variation in custom. In all cases, however, sharia calls for burial of the corpse, preceded by a simple ritual involving bathing and shrouding the body, followed by salah ....
specifically for the washing of bodies, an important ritual in both local and Islamic burials.

Soroti Airport

Soroti Airport

Soroti Airport is an airport serving Soroti in Uganda.The runways and apron are tarmac and can support aircraft up to business jet size without damage to the surface....
has the second longest tarmac runway in Uganda, at 6100 feet, the longest being found at Entebbe

Entebbe International Airport

Entebbe International Airport is the principal international airport of Uganda. It is located near the town of Entebbe, on the shores of Lake Victoria, and about 35 km from the capital Kampala....
. This runway is capable of handling jets the size of Boeing 737

Boeing 737

The Boeing 737 is a short to medium range, single aisle, narrow-body aircraft jet airliner. Originally developed as a shorter, lower cost twin engine airliner derived from Boeing's Boeing 707 and Boeing 727, the 737 has nine variants, from the early -100 to the most recent and largest, the -900....
s. Soroti Airport was originally built as a training school for the British Overseas Airways Corporation

British Overseas Airways Corporation

The British Overseas Airways Corporation was the United Kingdom state airline from 1939 until 1946 and the long-haul British state airline from 1946....
to train their pilots in tropical flying techniques. It was later used by the East African Flying Academy to train pilots from the East African Community

East African Community

The East African Community is an intergovernmental organisation comprising the five east African countries Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda....
(Uganda

Uganda

Kenya

The Republic of Kenya is a country in East Africa. It is bordered by Ethiopia to the north, Somalia to the northeast, Tanzania to the south, Uganda to the west, and Sudan to the northwest, with the Indian Ocean running along the southeast border....
and Tanzania

Tanzania

Tanzania , officially the United Republic of Tanzania , is a country in East Africa that is bordered by Kenya and Uganda on the north, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the west, and Zambia, Malawi and Mozambique on the south....
). Today, the airport is home Soroti Flying School, which has various aircraft, including a Cessna 310

Cessna 310

The Cessna 310 was the first twin-engine aircraft design from Cessna to enter production after World War II....
.

In the summer of 2003 Soroti was attacked by soldiers from the Lord's Resistance Army

Lord's Resistance Army

The Lord's Resistance Army insurgency is a guerilla campaign waged since 1987 by the sectarian Lord's Resistance Army rebel group, operating mainly in northern Uganda, but also in South Sudan and eastern DR Congo....
. Previous attacks in Uganda had been centred on districts in Northern Uganda. The attack on Soroti was seen by the Ugandan government

Politics of Uganda

Politics of Uganda takes place within the framework of a presidential system republic, whereby the President of Uganda is both head of state and head of government, as well as of a multi-party system....
as an escalation in the threat posed by the LRA because of Soroti airport's strategic military importance. Fierce gun battles between the LRA and government troops forced the LRA back into the surrounding countryside. The threat of abduction posed by LRA soldiers then began a nightly exodus of people from the rural areas into the town seeking protection from the government troops stationed there.

The satellite imagery of Soroti is unusually detailed for a small African town.

For more information visit the government website: http://www.soroti.go.ug/index.htm