Well we arrived back in Kampala yesterday after a week in Kigali. We had a nice time there and although we visited the Orphans of Rwanda orphanage there for the week, we didn't feel like we were helping as much as we felt we should be. This was mainly due to the fact that the orphanage has alot of qualified staff and any amount of visiting volunteers(like ourselves). So our time there was mainly just chatting to the boys and girls who were living there. We got first hand accounts of what the genocide was like through the eyes of some of its survivors. Terrible stuff to be honest.
The journey back to Kampala was nothing short of a nightmare! It really was crazy and it was all due to the driver’s insane need for speed. We left Kigali at 5.30am Wednesday morning and within ten minutes after we got out of the city, I said to Florence that this is going to be a rough trip. For some reason the bus didn't take the same route as we came. The scenery was equally as beautiful as the sun was rising over the mountains, but the road was very, very bumpy. The driver was absolutely hammering his way along these twisty, dirt roads with no care for safety in the slightest. After a half an hour, the woman behind us started retching her stomach contents onto the window and was using the curtain to wipe her mouth! That will tell you how crazy it was, when even locals were terrified. There were babies on board the bus, whose mothers were strapping them to their chests as best they could. The putrid smell of vomit behind me, coupled with the stale air made me very nauseous. I spent the next two hours praying that I didn't get sick as I had nothing only my day back on the bus filled with books. I passed a bottle of water back to the woman behind me to try and help her feel better. After a while she eased up, but the smell remained for the whole ten hour journey.
After about 5 hours, we stopped for a scheduled fifteen minute break at a little station. We were no more than five minutes off the bus when the driver was blowing the horn and revving the engine for us all to get back in. One toilet for males and one for females, and here was this lunatic driver hammering on his wheel wanting us to hurry up.
However, someone along the way decided to ring the bus office, which was Kampala coaches and made a complaint about the driver. No it wasn’t us! This resulted in a heated argument between the driver, the conductor(collects tickets etc) and a few passengers outside the bus. We had no idea what was been said as it was in their language, but the driver was not a happy man. When he got back on the bus he face was white with rage! A funny site giving the colour of his skin :)
This did result however in the bus restarting as a decent speed, in which all of us were very relieved. However, this did not last!! Two hours later, the bus was racing through tiny villages and towns at a speed of at least 80 miles a hour. People at the sides of roads were just stopping in their tracks and looking and pointing at the bus. Others were trying to tell the driver through hand signals to slow the F down! People at the back of the bus(where we were) were trying to get up and complain to the staff at the front but it was way too dangerous and bumpy to stand up. The woman started puking again behind us. We arrived in Kampala after a ten hours of that mess of a journey. When we got to the station, loads of people were going to make complaints, so we decided not to bother lining up in the queue.
We got ourselves sorted in the same block of apartments as we had before we left, so things are fine again. We spent this morning up in Sanyu babies home again and its good to be back here. We can be more helpful here.
Apart from that we have nothing else to report. We haven’t long left on this trip so we are going to try and enjoy African life for the remaining time we have.
Ciao!
