Taking Public: Vol. 1

So, the blog has been quiet...what I failed to tell you all is that our team said goodbye to two of my closest community for the last 2.5 years and then I was traveling for a while...WHM Mission wide retreat was in Greece and we decided to do a bit of traveling in the Mediterranean vicinity before the retreat, so I have just returned to BGO and the following is the first installment of a lengthy post about our return to the district...

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Thursday morning, 08:45am, Anna and I arrive at the bus park in Kampala...the definition of “hustle and bustle,” I am sure of it. Currently the bus park sits in the shadow of 2 huge billboards singing the praises of Ethiopian Airlines…we chuckle to ourselves in honor of Scott Will’s hellish travel experience in their care (or lack thereof) several weeks ago. We ask and are directed to the bus heading to Bundibugyo. We are the first 2 onboard (save a young possibly drunk guy sleeping in one of the seats who was shoo’d off by Kalita staff).

We stow our 4 pieces of luggage (backpacks and 2 coolers of frozen food), pick our seats and settle in, knowing we have about an hour before the bus is scheduled to depart. A great place to people watch (a favorite pastime of mine), we notice 2 bazungu walking to the ticket counter, I wonder aloud as to what their destination might be. We soon learn the 2 of them along with 2-3 SIL (Wycliffe Bible Translators) staff from Bundibugyo will all be “moving” with us to Bundibugyo that day. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:22-23) As young women with friends who have been treated inappropriately on public transportation in this country, we smile and laugh in honor of God’s tenderness towards us.

As the bus begins to fill, and we reach what we thought was a 10:00 departure time, no one else seems to mind we are not making any movements toward leaving. In fact, a snazzy dark green Land Rover pulls up alongside the bus, and out steps a nicely dressed African woman who begins giving directions to the Kalita staff around the bus to help her with her luggage. Next thing we see is a 40 inch Sony LCD flat screen television being hauled onto the bus and stowed in the aisle at the front of the bus, next to the driver and blocking 2 more rows of seats filled with people. “It’s no problem.” There is always room for something/someone else. How best to protect such cargo? Goat ropes of course…yes, the ropes used to tie goats to a fence or tall grasses while they graze, aka goat ropes. So, indeed the goat ropes were expertly twisted and knotted to fasten the gargantuan television to the metal bars around the driver’s seat. Remember, “it’s no problem.” While this TV/goat rope scenario is playing out as we all sit in the sun in the now full bus in the bus park, there are other people walking up and down the aisle selling things…primary school science review books, loaves of sliced bread, fruit, and the most interesting item for sale: antifungal cream. For all of your antifungal needs, don’t worry, you can always buy it on the bus.

Being the rookie Kalita travelers that we are, we didn’t realize that the seat numbers printed on your ticket are very much adhered to…it’s so interesting, you never know when people might get in a fluster about details…most of the time it seems like Ugandans could care less about details, but sometimes they can lead to quite a tizzy. We were the cause of such a tizzy as people tried to find their seats…long story short we were moved but in the end it was for our benefit for sure! We ended up in the first seats next to the door, which meant a bit more room and air movement. Thanks Kalita!