I have recently moved over to Uganda to check out some
projects and to look for other assignments. I had spent the last several months in
Tanzania working on a USAID project. So now I’m based out of Kampala Uganda.
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| Brynn with her security detail visits Kenya |
Going to Gulu
So this last weekend I decided to go back to Gulu where I
had spent 6 weeks in Jan/Feb of 2013. This time I decided to take one of the
local buses, how difficult could that be, it’s about 350kms, for you non-metric
types that would about 220 miles. In a bus, it usually takes about 5-6 hours
with stops and breaks and traffic.
I had a meeting in Kampala that ran until 5pm, afterwards we
set off to the bus terminal on a boda-boda or the back of a motorbike. Weaving through
Friday night traffic, I have my computer bag and a weekend bag over my
shoulders and holding on the back of the seat with my spare hand. Since Mom is
reading I will not mention if helmets are provided, but it only cost $0.75 for
a few mile ride. Sadly, we missed the 5:30 bus and the 7pm bus was already full
so we book on the 9pm bus. We sit around the busy bus terminal watching the
world go by until our bus leaves.
I’m traveling with Mildred, a colleague and friend who I use
to work with in Gulu, she is going to Gulu so she can move her apartment, she
has moved back to Kampala. Along with us is Juliet, Mildred’s twin sister. I
ask are you identical twins, which I can clearly see they are not, I’m told no
with the roll of both of their eyes, they get this question all the time. My
next question, are you Siamese twins? They
laughed and said yes. This started a weekend of joking about where they were
attached.
After sitting around until about 9:15 we finally leave the
bus terminal. The forward movement of the bus does not last long as we hit Friday Kampala night
traffic. Not the normal traffic where you go slow for a few miles, but dead
stop. It takes us about 2 hours to get out of Kampala. So this is going to be a
long night. As we get a bit out of town, another dead stop for 1 hour. This is
caused by a construction site with only one lane and it being poorly manned with less than one person. People
are in such a hurry and passing each other they end up blocking the other lane,
now NO ONE can move, and this is self-inflected. These are not just cars and
boda’s causing this mess, but also the buses heading to weekend getaway
locations. After about an hour enough drivers get out and help back up buses
and other vehicles to fix the problem, we are on our way. Until about 30 more minutes
later, same issue, same buses, WTF. After about another hour we are off again.
Now it’s well past midnight as I try to fall asleep.
You always wonder why everyone wants to sit in the front
rows of the buses, because the back rows bounce like a crazy ass illegal Disney ride. I’m in
the back. So, between the swerving to go around potholes, which there are many,
and the lifting-off-the-seat bounces, it’s next to impossible to sleep, oh
well.
So we arrive in Gulu around 6am, nine hours for 220 miles. That
is about 25mph. But in reality it’s 2 hours at 75mph, 2 hours at 35mph and the
rest at a dead stop.
So it’s 6am, where do I stay, well of course at a local
hotel, good thing I’m with Mildred and Juliet and they know Gulu. The first one,
I’m warned, has a very loud late night bar across the street, on to the next
one. Looks good, pretty quiet, but being 6am I’m not really going to sleep much
at this time anyways. The hotel guard says I have two options, my own bathroom
for 65 or shared bathroom for 35. Heck, I’m only now going to be here for one
night, I say I’ll take the shared bath. Then I find out this is not dollars
they are quoting but shillings, 35,000 shillings for a night. My brain is not
functioning at first because of the all-night travel, and then I realize that
is $13/night. I guess I could have splurged for the own bath, but it was nice
and clean.
I take a shower, crash for a few hours then check out Gulu
and visit with some friends. I was happy to find out my bike was picked up by
my friend Grace and given to child who will use it to ride to school.
On Sunday, it’s time to leave. There is no way the travel
could get any worse than the way to Gulu, hah. So our bus is scheduled to leave
at 2:30pm, I’ll be home at a decent time, good night sleep.
On the way back to Kampala we have an extra traveler, Chloe,
she is three and a half, but tells me she’s five. Chloe is Mildred and Juliet’s
niece, she is going to visit her Grandma who lives in the town of Jinja, a few
hours to the east of Kampala. We get along great. We get on the first bus and
find it’s over booked, Mildred and Chloe find a seat, but Juliet and I are seat
less along with a couple of others. Since we do not want to split the group, we
decide to get off the bus. Lucky for us there is another bus boarding
and getting ready to leave, plenty of room, we decide to take that bus. We get
on that bus at 3pm and wait, and wait, finally at 5pm it leaves Gulu. At the
time we leave, it starts to rain pretty hard, an awesome Northern Uganda lightning
storm. We then notice the roof of the bus leaks, people are tying bags and
curtains to the roof to minimize the discomfort. I was so far back, it did not
hit me, but my pain will come on the bouncing ride.
Off we go, late, leaky bus, but we have some space, not all
the seats are full, but that changes quickly when we stop several times to pick
up new passengers. So it’s all four of us on three seats, Chloe is using us all
for her seat as she sits across us all.
We make one more stop and a man gets on with two chickens,
live chickens, and he sets them under his seat. I look to my other travelers
and they say it’s normal. I shrug and continue to read my newspaper. Every so
often we hit a bump and the chickens would make chicken noises.
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| Can you see the chickens? |
So we’re traveling along, swerving around potholes, bouncing
around, and listening to the occasional chicken sounds. If you know me, you’ll
know I’m a news junkie, I have three papers with me and sharing them with my
fellow passengers.
At about 7:00, we smell something is wrong on the bus, than
we start seeing smoke coming from the front. The driver pulls over and shuts
down the engine, it’s overheating. By the time I get off the bus, I’m in the
back of the bus, steam is clearly coming from the engine and filling up the
passenger section. Oh no!
We get off the bus, they fill the bus with some water, let
things cool, and then the engine won’t start. So several of us try to push
start the bus. We are able to push it from the side of the road to back unto
the road and get it started. Now we realize something bigger is clearly wrong,
and the driver shuts it off again. It’s a pressurized tube from the water pump
that has broken. The local village mechanic shows up to help with a screwdriver
and a piece of PVC pipe. He is able to take some rubber tubing, some waterproof
tape that he takes from the old PVC pipe and rebuilds this tube. Now on top of
all this it’s now getting dark.
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| I took this picture, then joined in to help |
If you know me, you know I always travel with the
essentials, such as first aid kits, tools and two headlamps. I loan one
headlamp to the mechanic and use the other one to flag down passing high-speed vehicles
that can not see us since there are no emergency flashers, no flares, or no
reflectors. On top of all that the work needs to be done on the road side of
the bus.
In Uganda, and most of the developing world, when your
vehicle breaks down, people cut down branches and throw them in the road. So for
most local drivers, if you driving along at 120kmph and see braches you may
slow to 115kmph to pass safely. It’s up to the people on the road to get out of
the way.
Finally, we are off, it’s now about 10pm, five hours into
the trip. We finally arrive in Kampala at 2am. Since it’s too late to have
someone pick us up we get a cab to take us home, finally in bed at 3am.
Kenya with Brynna
Last month Brynna came to visit. We
decided to meet in Kenya since she had not been there before and she had
already seen the tourists stuff in Tanzania such as a safari and Zanzibar.
We flew into Nairboi, I had flown
in a few hours before her and met her as she came off the plane, we went through
immigration and stayed the first night at the Stanley Hotel, one of the oldest and
coolest hotels in Nairobi.
The next morning we jumped into
our Land Cruiser and with our guide and driver we head off to Tsavo National
Park, we spent two nights in and around the park. One night we stayed at the
Saravo Salt Lick hotel that is built on stilts so you can watch the animals as
the roam underneath the hotel.
After two days of safari we
headed to Mombasa for several days of the beach time.
We flew back to Nairobi, Brynna
left at about 6pm, I left at 11pm. They next morning the airport had a big fire
and destroyed the immigration section of the airport. Even though the reports
you hear say the airport is open and functioning, I’m not going to fly through
Nairobi for a bit of time.
Dogs in the Sewer
Last Wednesday night I came home
late from visiting some schools on the other side of Jinja. These schools had
computer labs installed over the last 1-2 years and we wanted to see how they
were doing. As I got home I noticed several neighbors were looking into the
street drain. Of course I stopped and asked what was wrong. Four 8-week old
puppies had slid into the sewer, they could clearly not get out. You could hear
them but not see them. I offered one of my headlamps and they could see them.
The mother dog, a stray, was running around in panic. They opened the drain so
the mother could get into the pipe and hang with her puppies for the night.
The next morning I woke and found
people looking into the drain again. They needed to get the mother and puppies
out. So we spent the next several hours getting the mother out by wrapping a
rope around her neck and pulling her out. The puppies were more of a challenge.
We had two buckets and several
pieces of PVC piping that we tied together. We would put one bucket in, with
the opening facing the puppies, the second bucket would face the other way so
we could put the PVC pipe into the bucket. Using the PVC pipe we would then
push the buckets through the sewer and pick up one puppy at a time. We were
able to get all the puppies out of the sewer. They are now staying in the bathroom
of the one of the tenants here. The first night they got the mother to come in
and be with her puppies. Just heard one has already been adopted.
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| One of the four puppies rescued |
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