Back to Cold Showers and Squat Toilets

We had a very interesting bus ride to Mbarara. First, we arrived at the bus park far too late in the day. Normally, people arrive early in the morning, between 7 and 9 am to get a bus and they dont have to wait too long. We, however, decided to spend the day in Kampala craft shopping and did not arrive at the park until 1pm. When our car pulled up to the station, we were mobbed by a group of men. This is a fairly normal occurrence, except that the driver decided to open the trunk before we exited the car, and the men began carrying our luggage away. After chasing them down to recover our luggage, we then had to explain where we were going. No one spoke english (or pretended not to) and we just stuck with one man who took us to the crappiest bus I have ever seen, way down at the end of the park. After he dropped our luggage, he demanded money. "Five thousand," he yelled. Now let me just say, five thousand shillings will feed 5 people for dinner or pay for 5 boda rides for people to go somewhere. That is a lot of money, but of course, he is asking for the 'mzungu' price! I refused to pay him but he tried to take my luggage, so I dropped him 1ooo shillings. That wasnt enough. I finally just caved, and gave him all of my change so that we could get on this doomed bus. The bus was empty. This meant that we would have to wait until it filled out. This turned out to be 2 hours... Anyways, with the bus being empty we had our free pick of seats and got settled for our extended wait. The first person to get onto the bus was a young woman with a newborn infant. The bus was empty, but she chose to sit right beside me. Interesting choice, but this turned out to work in our favor. She made very little small talk but after waiting in the hot bus for what felt like forever, we were on our way. Many people got on and off the bus selling all sorts of random things. Radios were a popular comodity, but mostly people were selling food, water and sodas. We did meet a particularly interesting sales man who tried with all his might to sell my sister and I a man's beard trimmer. He came up with all sorts of reasons why we may want this, but he too eventually moved on, with his beard trimmer in tow. The bus ride started out VERY rough. In fact, I though I was going to die. I will say though that unlike my fear of flying, this was a very rational fear. The bus swayed from side to side, nearly toppling over as the bus dodged pot holes at a speed somewhere around 130kph. I was frightened, as was the woman beside me. Laura tried to calm us by saying that people with relaxed bodies tend to survive crashes better, like drunk drivers in car crashes. The woman beside me then said that the bus driver was likely to do ok then, because he WAS drunk. Great!!! She then told me about her bus trip last week to Kampala when the bus caught on fire and she had to crawl out of a window with her 2 month old baby. Well, gosh, that sure made me feel better. Ugh. After 4 hours on the bus from hell, we finally arrived in Mbarara, and to my amazement, all in one piece! Then we again had to deal with a mobb of men trying to take our things and load them into their cars, and of course, requesting an insane amount of money for a very short ride. This is where Jackie, the woman with the infant, came to our rescue. We had been ripped off all day. They overcharged us for the bus ride, did not give change back for the chapatis we bought and ran away with 5000 for gonja (fried banana) without giving us what we requested. Jackie had seen this throughout the day and yelled at these men, but nothing happened. I guess her fuse was finally blown. She yelled at the man in the car to give us a fair price, but after he refused, she came with us all the way to our hostel to ensure that he did not take our money. Then she continued on her way. I am still wondering why she was so kind to us...maybe a simple act of generosity??? or maybe not. Time will tell. Anyways, it was a very chaotic day and after suffering from a horrid migrane for the entire day, trying to get fare price was the last worry on my mind. Thank goodness for Jackie!!!

We are now back at Aquaview hostel and Lola was nice enough to book me into the same room that I had last year. I set up the mosquito net that I bought in Kampala and gagged at its smell...I never thought permethrin would smell like a dead goat, but somehow this is the aroma that the net took. Anyways, we finished off the day with some local food and tea. Matoke and G-nuts never tasted so good! I must have been tired though, because I still managed to fall asleep in 2.5 seconds despite the smell of dead goat and the blaring Ugandan music. Ahhhh it is nice to be back :)