We have been traveling for about 36 hours at this point (with a break in Lira, Uganda for one night), and we are asked to climb into a Matatu (a 14 passenger vehicle) that will take us to our final destination of Gulu, Uganda. As I sit there in the second row next to the window, this scene unfolds before me. Ken decides to stay outside the vehicle to make sure our packs stay strapped to the top of the matatu. Women, children and men occasionally board the vehicle and claim their seats. As we’re waiting, a man approaches my window and asks me to buy socks or some sort of weird plastic toy in Lugandan. He notices that I’m eating my travel snack (which consists of two types of cereal, peanuts and dried pineapple mixed together in a plastic grocery bag), and looks longingly at it. I tell him no thank-you, but he keeps looking down at my snack, so I offer it to him. He’s hesistant, but eventually he takes it and says thank-you. About that time, Ashlee tells me there is a cockroach right in front of my and flicks it right down into my bag. I jump a little and then she says, they’re everywhere. Just about that time I look around at the walls of the matatu and I see little baby cockroaches everywhere. I look back out the window, and the man I gave my snack to comes back to hand me 500 Ugandan shillings (about 25 cents). I refuse the money, of course, and he says thank you again. Women and children continue piling in, about the time 14 people had loaded the matatu, we tell Ken he’d better get in the car or they might sell his seat. Little do I know, they let people keep piling in until we have no inch of butt space left, and even then, they just pile the children on top of the adults. One of the people who climbed in brought a chicken with him. Finally, Ken is the last person to squeeze in the second row, along with me, Ashlee a random woman and a little 7 year old boy who has to sit riding backwards on the wheel well in front of Ken.
We finally take off and we round the corner and the driver stops and gets out to visit a friend for about 10 minutes, then we take off again on a ride that is supposed to take 1 hour. Later, I figure out Gulu is 120 km from Lira. I know it shouldn’t take more than a few hours, but with all the stopping, the slow driving, the dirt, pothole-filled roads it takes us 4.5 hours. Sweating, body to body, we make it to Gulu.
