Ugandan Experience

I was away from the school most of today, but do I have a story (Ali will share hers next time). It’s quite hard to set the scene, but with my words and your imagination we may get close.

I went into the capital city of Kampala today with my friend Godwin. He needed to buy a new brake cable for the school van and I needed to exchange some money. Kampala is about 30 kilometers from the school, the trip took nearly 4 hours.

It was my first time to travel in Uganda by public transportation, what an experience. I was reminded again how sheltered we are at the school. We first had to get to a bus station. The buses are actually small vans, similar to a VW bus…and there are 100’s of them. Each bus has two employees. One drives, the other hangs out the window shouting where they are headed. Imagine my confusion when we arrived at the bus stop. Dozens of buses with men hanging out the side shouting where they were going and begging us to board. Thank God for Godwin. He got us on the 14 passenger bus along with the other 18 passengers and we were off. I felt very big and white.

The driving in Uganda is…I’m struggling to find a way to describe it. There are rules, but none that I could identify. There are roads, but they are sometimes hard to distinguish from the market. And if there are lanes…no, there’s no lanes. None of this was too worrisome until we got into the very crowded capital. Traffic hit a stand still. Well at least it should have. Although there was no place to drive, everyone kept driving, swerving, honking, laughing…it was actually quite fun. I believe now that the only rule of the road that people follow is…the first person to the spot gets the spot. Somehow it works. After many near accidents, and I mean near, we got out of the bus. Safety.

At least I thought.

Moments later I found myself sitting on the back of a motorcycle taxi (aka boda boda). The motorcycles re-defined “no rules.” Whatever was needed to keep going was done. Several times my legs rubbed against buses next to us. We lightly bumped another motorcycle one time. And I really believe they think pedestrians are slalom courses.

In the end, we made it of course. 3 motorcycle rides, two bus trips, a Kampala tourist lunch and an incredibly encouraging and thoughtful conversation with Godwin and we were back at the school.

(I am hoping to re-live this experience and take along the video camera, I really want you to see what I’m talking about).

The first child I saw when we got back to school was Perez. He was walking hand in hand with Ali. Perez ran to greet me and Ali went back to work. Perez and I shared a few funny moments over the next two hours together, then time to go. His personality is hilarious (at least to me, some may call it something else), not only can’t I wait for you to meet him, I also can’t wait for him to mess with you.

Enough for now…goodnight, from Uganda with love.