Hey cats and kittens, lemme tell you about the two longest
bus rides I’ve ever been on and how they were within two weeks of each other,
and how I’m not going to take that bus anymore.
The first was on my return to site after going to our All
Volunteer Conference (more on that later). Imagine you are me, because I will
be telling this story in the second person. Deal with it.
You specifically take buses which leave early in the morning
because it takes 9-10 hours to get up north. You leave the hotel at 6AM in
order to walk to bus park in order to get a seat on a bus leaving at 7AM. Good
so far. The bus leaves relatively on time. Also good. Less than two hours
outside of Kampala, the bus breaks down.
This is how you know
your bus is broken:
Instead of stopping momentarily (with the bus running) to
drop someone off at their stop, the bus is turned off.
The turn man (like mechanic/loader/person who assists with
turns in the city) is underneath the bus
The conductor and driver are out at front pointing at the
bus
Angry Ugandans are yelling at the bus staff
Some passengers immediately seek alternate transport (taxis,
bodas, etc)
So the bus breaks, it’s like that for maybe an hour, then
you start moving again. Hurray! You think that maybe it was a minor problem and
you’ll just be slightly delayed. You are wrong.
After two hours the bus breaks down again, and this time it
stretches into three hours waiting by the side of the road. You take your
things off the bus, thinking a replacement bus is coming. It is not. There are
other buses from the same company your bus is from, but they are going other
places, meaning it would only be a matter of time before you’d have to get off
and pay more for a taxi (or probably two or three taxis) to get where you’re
going.
You sit and drink a pop and eat some hardboiled eggs,
because there is of course no real food in the village/trading center where you
have broken down. Every time a bus comes by you think it is this fake
replacement bus, but really there are just a hell of a lot of bus companies in
Uganda, going every which way.
Then they ask you to reboard this bus, the one which has
broken down, which you are convinced is not a good idea. But you get back on,
and eventually you reach your destination, 15 hours after leaving the capital
city. You cannot possibly get back to your site (another two hours from the
city you’ve just arrived in) so you stay with another volunteer and head back
in the morning, still pretty exhausted.
Guess what? Now you’re going to a neat literacy conference
in the East of the country, so you have to take a bus back to the capital.
Stupidly, you take the same bus company thinking maybe the other time was an
anomaly. You are again, wrong.
The bus this time makes it almost halfway through the trip
before they pull over and stop. You think maybe, just maybe, if you remain
calm, they will fix it quickly and you will keep going, like your positive
thoughts will flow out into the world and fix everything – WRONG. They give up
on fixing it because it requires a part they don’t have and don’t carry with
them regularly. You are now waiting for the later bus which is coming behind
you. You wait for three hours, during which a drunk/mentally disturbed (or
both) man tries to tell you that you’re Korean/Chinese and that he is a Korean
trained commando who will protect you from other men, because you are his
madam.
On the plus side, you do end up having a pleasant
conversation with a University professor who is from Uganda, but spent some
time in Canada and the last 30 years teaching in Lesotho. He’s pretty cool, and
pretty chill, and so keeps you good company for a while. You also have made two
friendship bracelets so far in the trip, and given one of them to the bus’s
conductor.
The other bus finally comes; there are only a few seats, and
you get one of them! It’s a tight fit, but you at least left behind the broken
bus and are now on your way. Also, when you were leaving the other on the side
of the road, the bus coming the other way (from the capital) stopped to give
the broken bus a new part so they could fix it. You didn’t really think they’d
be able to fix it, which is why you boarded this new bus.
The new bus goes for half an hour, then stops momentarily at
a gas station for food and people to go to the bathroom. Then your old bus
pulls up beside, apparently having fixed itself. Maybe. You’re told to get back
on the old bus and you respond that you’d rather ride a bus which has not
broken once. Then the conductor of the new bus says if you are in a hurry, you
should get on the old bus. Why you might ask? Because now this new bus has a
mechanical problem. You heard correctly. You have a choice between a broken
bus, or a broken bus. These are your choices. You have not enough money and
certainly not enough language skills to take any other form of transportation.
So you get back on the old bus, certain you have made a
mistake, you have lost your coveted window seat and are now sitting next to a
mother and her five-year-old who only stops crying when asleep. And she doesn’t
sleep the whole time. And she’s sick. And sneezing/coughing everywhere.
The bus, surprisingly, does not break down again, and you
make it to the capitol about 4 hours behind schedule. Huzzah!
Congratulations, you have just lived my last two bus rides.
Isn’t it fun to travel? : )
Stay tuned for more entries about our All Volunteer Conference, and the Literacy Conference I'm currently attending!
