Quiet towns and wild rides
On Friday morning, I returned from Yumbe to Arua. This marks the end of my second week in Yumbe, which in contrast to the provincial capitol of Arua, is very quaint and very small. The normally intense heat broke on Thursday evening in dramatic fashion as a violent wind came across the plains from the northeast, dropping the temperature about 90F to 70F, bringing rain showers that lingered through the night. The clouds up above looked like a summer front in Minnesota - purple waves rolling ahead of dark, ominous clouds, and the sky made it look as if down on earth, we were under a great sea. Hours each week in Yumbe, while I wait for people or documents to arrive, I watch goats and trash blow by in the hot wind. The wide open lots, half-built brick foundations and empty huts make ideal territory for the plastic bags and goat herds that fill the town. The work is slow and inefficient, although the lack of electricity, facilities and resources mean no one's clearly to blame. I returned to Arua on Friday along a 90km road on the slowest "bus ride" of my life. Our 1990 Nissan compact pick-up idled in Yumbe for an hour before we had three people in the cab and 17 people (plus three babies) in the bed of the truck. The going was slow, but I was told that the road was short. About twenty minutes down the road, we came to a stop while climbing a hill. After talking with some fellow passengers, I gathered that we had run out of gas - a curious problem given that we had just left town after idling for an hour. No matter, and no stress for the Ugandans I was with; we waited for about 45 minutes while a boy ran down the dirt road to find a few liters of gas which he brought back in pop bottles. When we started again, the battery was dead. Again, no matter and no stress, as a few men just hopped out of the bed and pushed the truck uphill or downhill until the engine sputtered to life. An hour down the road, we ran out of gas again. No matter and no stress. We waited, sitting on the road side, for an hour or so while the same boy ran down the road for fuel. I began to suspect an animal had died in the pillow that was protecting me from the springs of the seat (I paid a premium for a front seat, leaving the pregnant women in the bed - very un-gentleman-like of me). Finally the boy returned with a couple more liters of fuel. In the intervening hour, villagers walked by our human pyramid, but no cars passed. About a dozen push-starts later, our "truck" arrived at the outskirts of Arua, where the same boy hopped out and sprinted ahead in a failed attempt to distract the white-uniformed traffic cop from our small truck, heavy with paying customers. The driver did not have a license, so he spent another 20 minutes arguing a bribe with the traffic cop, before we drove on to Arua proper. Door to door service, 90km, five and a half hours. The Ugandans on board did not seem perturbed - and most of them were in far more uncomfortable positions, not to mention state of pregnancies. In the way that an American might react to a long commercial break during prime time t.v., they hardly seemed to notice the delay. So, a lesson in patience (or resignation). But I've been told by fellow Americans to not dwell on slow things or things that don't work in Uganda, so I digress.