In
the last week of November, I covered a lot of ground in only six days. Zipping
between Central and Eastern Uganda brought its share of adventures.
My trip to Kampala started at 4:44 a.m.
on a Sunday. A friend of mine had spent
a few days at my place and had to get up early to start his journey home. I
left my house at 6:30 and got on a white Galaxy
bus headed to Kampala at 7:00. After hearing from other Volunteers in my
area that Sunday was a bad day to travel, I was ecstatic at my good fortune of
actually being able to snag a bus that early, and of the possibility of reaching
Kampala at a decent hour. Silly
girl! We didn’t actually leave town until
almost 8:30. After stopping a few times,
we reached the Mbale bus park. I was
relieved to be able to make a “short call” (a quick pee) in a pay
bathroom. (It was a step up from most
short calls on long bus rides. The bus pulls over on the side of the road while
everyone scatters behind bushes. I tend
to follow the teenage girls who must be as self-conscious as me and know the
best way to conceal themselves. Most of
the time, I try to dehydrate for these trips. )
We must have waited close to an hour sweating our asses off before we
pulled out of the bus park. Even then,
we stopped right outside to pick up another passenger even though all the seats
were full. The other passengers were
pissed. They started yelling at the
conductor that they didn’t have any more time to waste. After making our second stop for fuel, we
finally rolled down the highway to Kampala.
Just as we approached the bridge to
cross the Nile River in Jinja, the police stopped us. The bus pulled onto a side road as the
conductor got off to show the police officers some papers. After about ten minutes, everyone got off the
bus to seek shade under a billboard. The
conductor was making phone calls while the police just laughed at him. Eventually, he rode off on a motorcycle boda-boda with one of the officers
following in a station wagon. A woman told
me that our bus was only licensed to travel between Mbale and Kampala, but not
to Soroti. She was trying to compare it
to how planes have to register their flight plans. All I could think was “WHO CARES?!” This isn’t the FAA. We weren’t smuggling drugs or arms. We weren’t even crossing any international borders. This was one of those rare occasions where I would
have actually supported corruption. I
was very tempted to just yell out, “Someone just bribe him with a few thousand
shillings so we can get the hell out of here!” As I watched trucks from Kenya
pass by, I resisted the urge to hitch hike with them. I kept hoping a USAID or Peace Corps vehicle
would pass so I could flag it down and beg them for a ride or that some other muzungu (foreigner) would take pity on
me. Instead, I took the opportunity to make
another short call. As I walked up the
hill, I noticed that other people had the same idea. On both sides of the road were steep concrete
ditches where one man was squatting to relieve himself. At least he had the class to try to conceal
himself, unlike most men who just turn their back to the road. I made my way to an abandoned set of water tanks. As I made my way to the back of one of the
massive tanks, a few other women were squatting behind cinder block walls.
We were finally allowed to leave, only
for our bus to run out of fuel an hour outside of Kampala. When I heard this, I just started laughing. I’d had enough adventures on the Galaxy for one day. So, I joined about ten other passengers when
a taxi (minivan that carries about 20 people) pulled over. When the driver offered me the front seat (the
Queen Seat as Linda and Joanna call it) I jumped at the chance, thinking my
luck had finally turned. Just as we were getting ready to leave, a man with a
STIHL weed eater said if I was going to sit in the Queen seat I would have to
hold his “stick” so it could go through the window (it wouldn’t fit anywhere
else in the taxi). Having visions of the
weed eater being stolen out of my hands or it hitting something and shattering
into a million pieces, I relinquished the Queen Seat to him. Instead, I sat
between him and the driver. Every time
the driver shifted gears, he hit my leg.
I cranked up The Killers on my iPod to
drown out the radio broadcast of some football match. It’s amazing how much of
an impact music can make on your attitude while you’re travelling. You can go from “I hate my life. Why does this always happen to me?” to “This is such a fun adventure! I am the master
of African transportation” in just a few seconds. Unfortunately, that high only lasted a few
songs before we pulled over in Seeta (on the outskirts of Kampala) to pick up a
few more passengers. While we were
stopped, the driver started arguing with two men who were trying to exact a
taxi park fee from him. After about ten
minutes, they exchanged phone numbers and we were on our way. As the Galaxy
bus passed us, I regretted getting in that taxi. At our next stop, some man with crazy eyes
came out of nowhere and tried to grab the keys out of the ignition. My first thought was “Shit! I’m trapped
between a weed eater and a fight.” Luckily,
the driver showing the crazy man his phone somehow stopped the argument. I can only assume that it was related to the
previous one. I finally got to my hotel
at 6:30, twelve hours after I left my house.
My trip home to Soroti on Tuesday was
relatively smooth. But the next morning,
I was off again to Katakwi for two nights to help some district health workers
carry out Integrated Support Supervision. East of Soroti, Katakwi borders
Karamoja (which borders Kenya), which might be one of the least developed areas
in Uganda. Kadeppo National Park in the
northern part of the district is supposedly one of the most pristine and beautiful
parks in the country. Peace Corps forbids
us to travel to Karamoja as people are often killed during cattle raids. There are many stereotypes about the
Karamajong people including how they like to fight and walk around naked (but
not at the same time, I hope). If Karamoja is the wild west of Uganda, then Katakwi
is its slightly tamer neighbor.
It takes about an hour and a half to
reach Katawki muncipality from Soroti.
The road between Soroti and Moroto (in Karamoja) is notorious for being the worst road in Uganda. Articles about the state of the road often
appear in the national papers accompanied by pictures of busses stuck in the
mud. Luckily, a private car took me to
Katakwi. The road there was dusty and
rough, but nothing like what we would face the next day.
Thursday
morning six of us piled into a station wagon and headed out. On our way to the first health center, we saw
a few men rolling huge concrete pipes along the narrow dirt road. They were
constructing culverts. We all got out of
the car to see that two huge drop-offs stood between us and our next stop. Our car was too wide to make it across and we
couldn’t go around because we were surrounded by a swamp. But, they filled one hole with huge rocks and
our station wagon miraculously made it across.
Not long after that, our car got stuck
in a huge puddle. This time, I thought “well,
this is it. I’m going to have to spend the night here and no one will even know
where I am.” For those three days, I didn’t have phone coverage as there was no
Orange network in Katakwi. But, an
Orange tower was being constructed. I
hadn’t even informed Peace Corps that I would be in Katakwi. So if something happened, I wouldn’t even be able
to reach them on my phone. Two of the
women walked to the nearby village to get help because they knew many people
there. They had to resort to pushing it
out of the puddle. My vanity (if I was
going to have to sleep in those same clothes and wear them a second day I might
as well try to keep them clean) prevented me from helping until the very end
when I knew I wouldn’t get mud sprayed on me. Just as the car got out, about
five men showed up to help us, which was reassuring that we wouldn’t have been
totally deserted.
After we stopped for some “bites”, the
road got even more isolated as we drove through the rain. But the scenery was beautiful as we moved
towards Mt. Motoro (in Karamoja). On clear days, I can see Mt. Moroto from
Soroti, so I was really happy to finally see it close up. But then we reached what
looked like the worst spot on the worst road in the entire
country. There was no way that little
station wagon (without four wheel drive) was going to make it through the muddy
pit. I thought we were going to have to
turn around and return to town. Tree
branches were scattered around from previous drivers trying to gain traction. We all got out and walked ahead to get out
his way. Somehow, he had less trouble
getting through it than the last one.
Our next health center to visit was at SOFAD
(School of Artillery and Defense), a military base near the border of
Karamoja. Get this - it’s an area called
Bagdad. As we got closer to the small
town just before SOFAD, strange noises were coming from one of the wheels. We managed to pull into another smaller
health center so the driver could try to repair it. At that point, I just accepted that I would
actually be spending the night there. A
few people told us that we could walk the rest of the way, so we took off on
foot. As I was walking towards Mt.
Moroto in the most remote place I had been to in Uganda, I had a “Whoa, I
really live in Africa” moment. Very few
cars were passing by. After five
minutes, we flagged down a small white Isuzu pickup truck, and the driver gave
us agreed to give us a lift. The five of
us climbed into the bed of the truck and I sat on two old tires. After about a five minute ride, we were
dropped off at the road leading to SOFAD. It was actually pretty fun.
The “gate” to the base was made of tree
branches and controlled by two soldiers.
We were directed to a small building where we waited for the commander
in an office where the windows were filled with mud and sticks. As we walked to the health center, I noticed
about one hundred small straw tents on the ground. At first I thought they were for
animals. But when I asked someone what
they were, I was shocked to learn that the soldiers slept in them. The commander told us earlier that this
location was temporary for the base and that huts for the soldiers would soon
be constructed.
The health center, which also serves
the civilian community, was one of the most depilated structures I had ever
seen. It was a small building with holes
in the roof and wasp nests. But the soldiers
and staff couldn’t have been nicer or more hospitable. A few of us settled in on the front porch to
get data from their registers. In the
distance the sunlight was hitting a rock structure so perfectly that I had to
resist the urge to run towards it with my camera. It looked like something in Monument Valley,
Utah. As the wind picked up and the temperature dropped, I moved inside to
avoid the impending rain. After a few
minutes, it really started pouring. Bed-ridden
patients were wheeled to the center of the room away from the windows. Water started seeping in and forced everyone
towards the interior of the building.
After I found a dry spot, more people started crowding in and I found
myself in an old bathroom waiting out the storm with a few female
soldiers. Once the rain let up, I sat on
two cheap green plastic chairs (they had to be stacked on each other to support
me because both had huge cracks in them) in the interior with one of the health
workers who used a flashlight to help me read the register.
After we finished our work and made our
way back to the entrance, Sapphire came to our rescue. Sapphire is the name I
gave to Fred’s blue Toyota Hilux four-wheel drive truck. Sometimes a man named
Abdallah drove Sapphire when we needed an extra vehicle in the field. I had never
been so happy to see her. Besides
Abdallah, six of us crowded into Sapphire.
It was almost 7:00, and dark by the time we left the base. After a few minutes, we saw an old woman (an amojong in Ateso) walking towards us on
the road. Her hands were up and she was
saying something. At first, I thought
she was trying to get a ride from us (as I had seen this gesture from younger
women before trying to get a ride). But
then someone said, “Look at that drunk amojong!”
She wasn’t trying to flag us down; she was just talking to herself. Not long after that, we saw a woman getting a
little wobbly on her bike. She slowly
fell over, looked back at us and grinned. We all died laughing. Someone said “That’s the problem with
drinking. I said “you think she was
drunk?” to which they replied “she definitely tasted something!”
My experiences are pretty typical of travelling
in Africa. It was more inconvenience
than anything else. Honestly, I wouldn’t
trade any of these experiences for anything in the world. After all, it’s what makes such great
stories. Some people have much worse
tales. A few weeks ago, my coworker,
Ruth walked into the office and started wiping her face with tissues. A baby had thrown up on her during a short
taxi ride from Kumi.
Tomorrow I head to Kampala for the
third time in three weeks to meet Mom at Entebbe Airport. Instead of subjecting her to public
transportation, we are splurging on a private tour company to drive us to some
of the national parks and Soroti. But I’m
sure our trip won’t be without a few hiccups. Stay tuned!
