Four of the last six days I've spent at least partly on the road: a weekend in Kampala to celebrate the graduation party of a friend of mine who grew up in the care of the Sisters, and the last couple days with my host family in Atiak. Half the journeys have been straightforward and uneventful; the other two, a bit more interesting. So, for your entertainment, I present a (long-ish) travelougue:
Saturday, 23rd January, Gulu - Kampala.
Along with a few of the Sisters and Father Luigi (a Camboni priest from Italy who has called Uganda home for the past decades), I was headed to Kampala to celebrate my friend Rosemary's graduation. Her party was the next afternoon, so we wanted to reach in time and spend the night at a convent located in Ggaba, on the southern side of the city. We planned to leave at 9 am, as we informed Father Luigi at breakfast (he came by to make sure we were still on schedule).
So, at nine, we packed everything we needed into the car (including the cake we had made the day before for Rosemary), climbed in ourselves, along with a nun from another order who was visiting us and had asked for a ride back south. Walter, one of our drivers, started up the vehicle, and we set out to pick up Father. Before we got to his place, Sister Christine remembered that we were supposed to bring along a canister to refill with cooking gas in the capital. We turned around, got teased for having come back so soon, and set out again with the canister. This time, we picked up Father and started driving south, out of town, on our way to Kampala.
I dozed off and on as we drove, packed in the car and holding a box with a beautiful cake in our laps, but I woke up when the vehicle came to a stop. We were in Bobi, about an hour south of Gulu, and the vehicle was overheating. When Walter pulled the vehicle over, smoke poured from under the hood, and we climbed out. We spent the next thirty minutes baking in the heat as Walter and Father Luigi alternated between pouring water into the empty radiator, watching the water spurt back out in a boiling geyser, calling Geoffrey, the other driver, and just contemplating our options.
Eventually, Father decided that the vehicle wasn't going to make it all the way to Kampala, but the engine seemed to have cooled enough for us to make it back to Gulu. So, he instructed Walter to drive us back to Gulu and drop us off at the bus park, where we would catch a bus to Kampala instead.
Reached the park, we climbed into a bus - I can't even remember which one - and settled ourselves into seats. The three Sisters I knew chose to sit together, and I helped them settled the cake onto their laps. Father sat behind them, and I took the seat in front, accompanied by the visiting Sister. After about an hour, which isn't actually a very long wait, the bus set off. Somehow, Sister and I ended up with an empty space between us, even though the conductors usually seem to like the buses completely full for this route.
Shortly after we crossed the Nile, pouring with all its glory, a new passenger came and sat between us (on Ugandan public transportation, it's all too common for people to enter and exit the bus at random sports all along the way). A small woman, she nevertheless made her presence known, sitting as close to me as physically possible and fiddling with her dress the rest of the way south. She also had quite an argument with the conductor about the price, which would have made more sense to me if he was overcharging her (I've had the conversation many a time myself). Eventually, she handed over her money - but never stopped playing with her dress, keeping her elbow dangerously close to my face. I spent the next few hours fending off her roaming arms (seriously, this woman was as still as most three year old would be in such a situation) and pretending to sleep as I listened to my ipod. We bumped over countless speed humps; my back and tailbone were quite sore by the time we reached... All in all, it was not an atypical bus ride, and we were reaching Kampala after five or six hours.
Suddenly, Father came up beside me and tapped me on the shoulder, "Christine, we're getting out soon." I was surprised; I thought we were going to Ggaba, but we were only at the northern edge of Kampala; I didn't really know what was going on. He was intently looking out the windows, trying to pinpoint the exact location where we wanted to get off. Before long, he moved forward to tell the conductor to "stage," i.e. to stop the bus and let us off. And, in typical Ugandan fashion, the bus pulled to the side of the road, creating a traffic jam behind us, and our party climbed out.
It was only when our driver reached out to take the cake from my hands that I started to realise what was going on. Walter had driven the car to the garage, got it checked, let the engine cool down, and added water. It would still need to go to the garage this week, but he had managed to drive it down to Kampala, passing us somewhere along the way. He had stopped here to wait for us.
Eight hours after we had first set out, we once again piled into the vehicle. We spent the next couple hours driving around and doing errands in Kampala: first taking the cake to the house of one of Rosemary's adopted mothers, a member of Parliament from West Nile; dropping Father off at Our Lady of Africa; and finally reaching our place, after a few wrong turns, right as night fell.
We ate supper, laughing with the Sisters about our unprogrammed journey, and settled into the beds they had prepared for us, all glad to have finally reached.
Monday, 25th January, Kampala - Gulu.
After a late night at Rosemary's beautiful graduation party, we had planned to head back to Gulu on Monday. I woke up that morning, showered, and took my tea as the Sisters were finishing their daily prayers. When the Sisters from Gulu came to the dining room, we exchanged morning pleasantries, and I asked what plans had been made for our departure. It was then I learned that Walter had taken the car to the shop, to get the radiator fixed and to check the gears. They were waiting for the vehicle to be repaired before heading back to Gulu, probably on Tuesday or Wednesday.
I had already made plans to travel to Atiak the next morning, so I insisted on travelling that day, even though I knew the Sisters might (possibly, in the best of circumstances) head north to Gulu that very day. So, I set out: backpack strapped on, I walked to the main road and caught a boda (motorcycle taxi) to the bus park. I climbed on a bus to Gulu, paid my twenty thousand shillings (the standard fare), and set myself down with my ipod and book. Five and a half hours later, finished with my book and having marveled once again at the grand power of the Nile, we reached Gulu. Just a normal bus ride.
Tuesday, 26th January, Gulu - Atiak.
It takes about two hours to reach Atiak on a road heavily travelled by buses and lorries; I had only ever moved with the vehicles of the school before. This day, however, those vehicles and our drivers were not around, so I was going to move to Atiak by bus.
The Sisters told me I should head to the bus stage around 10 am to catch one of the buses from Kampala on its way to Moyo or Adjumani. There were no bodas near our gate, so I walked to the petrol station where the Zawadi buses stage. When I asked for a ticket up to Atiak, expecting to hand over seven thousand shillings, the man informed me that the buses were full.
I was in luck, though, he told me: another northbound bus was loading just up the road. He pointed out the tree where the bus had staged, warned me that it was just about to pull out, and told me that this boda right here would take me to the bus for "only five hundred shillings." 500/= to travel less than a city block: I laughed in his face and started walking, accompanied by a woman and her two children. We reached the bus, climbed on, paid our fares (she was riding all the way to Adjumani), and waited a bit. So much for the bus leaving so fast that I'd need to take a boda!
The only empty seats were in the back, and I covered mine with my lesu (cotton wrap) because there was so much dust. Two hours later, covered in dust and totally parched, I told the conductor to stop at the Atiak stage, and I climbed down. I walked down the road to my brother's shop, accompanied by a young cousin who was walking home with his bicycle. Stepping through the back door of my brother's lodge, I was sighted by my sisters, who ran to hug me.
I was home, in Atiak. Another normal bus ride.
Thursday, 28th January, Atiak-Gulu.
This morning, wanting to return to Gulu, I packed up my things and took tea with my host family. The buses from Adjumani and Moyo normally come through around 9, so after tea, we grabbed my things and went out to the road. Quite a little parade we made: siblings and cousins carrying the bucket, backpack, and box I needed to bring back to Gulu. Reaching the road, they set my things down and we waited for a bus to come by. Despite our nearness to the bus stage, we stayed where we were, knowing that any bus had to pass us too.
When the first bus came by, I said my goodbyes quickly and my brothers flagged it down. It was full, and I declined the conductor's offer to stand all the way to Gulu. The second bus didn't even bother to stop, the driver knocking his hands together in the signal that indicates a full vehicle. The third one stopped, but there were already people standing, and I once again declined to reach Gulu in such a fashion. "It's because school is starting Monday," my brother informed me, "all the children are going back. The buses will be too full for this week."
And so, still unsure how I was going to reach Gulu, I continued to wait by the road. At this point, most of the family had gone back to our compound, but one brother continued to wait with me. A lorry came through, hurtling down the road from Sudan. We didn't even try to flag it down: the back was closed, and he already had a passenger in the front seat. But suddenly, we saw it stop just up the road, and the passenger climbed down. Before he could drive away, the men sitting in front of their shops called to me, "You come, this is a good vehicle too."
So, I came, handing up my things and climbing to the seat located above my head. I was a bit wary of the arrangement, not entirely sure I wanted to spend two hours on a bad road with a man I didn't know. But, it seemed the best option I had to reach Gulu today, so I went with it.
I waved goodbye to my brother and the helpful shopkeepers, then exchanged greetings with the driver in broken English. Before long, I had confirmed that I'm from America and had learnt that he was a native Ugandan from the south. "Oli muganda?" I queried. "Yee. Omanyi Luganda?" We both started laughing as we realised that despite his limited English, and my almost nonexistent Acoli, we shared in common his native language.
We spent the next half hour discussing our ages (he guessed me at 25, maybe the closest blind guess ever in this country), politics (he loves Obama but speaks far less highly of his own president), the terrible status of the road (oh yes, I'm acculturated: contemplating how "good" a portion of road is, I glance down and see bare rock protruding between the sandy dust), and the climate (he told me Sudan is TOO HOT, and I tried to explain why bananas don't grow in my part of the US). After a bit, we stopped talking, occasionally sipped from our water bottles, and mostly just bumped our way down the road. We stopped in Pabo for him to buy rice: for some reason, it's cheaper there than Juba, Kampala, or anywhere in between, and I've become accustomed to this stop.
Reaching the edge of Gulu, I pointed out the compound of St. Monica's, and he pulled his huge truck to the side of the road. I disembarked, and he helped me carry my things from the cab to the gate. We shook hands: I wished him a safe journey, and he told me to have a good day. Walking through the gate, I smiled at the gatekeeper and waved to the lorry pulling off around the corner. This journey was far from what I expected, but it turned out far better than I could have imagined: I made a new friend and arrived safely.
