As a squad leader, I have the privilege of getting to see as many people on the squad as I would like to in any given month. The only downside to that is they are rarely in the same place, so that means there can be a lot of travel. This month I have been able to see everyone on the squad and it has been awesome, but the travel was quite draining. Here is what my travel has looked like this month.
I started my travel in Jinja, Uganda. An absolutely beautiful city that is right next to the Nile River. I was originally scheduled to travel with my co-leaders Denise and Tamica to Eldoret, Kenya, but that changed the night before we left because God had raised up a new leader in Andrea. Andrea was already in Tanzania with her old team and would need to come to Kenya to lead her new team. The easiest way for this to happen was for me to go to Tanzania to get her and turn around. So, after changing the bus tickets around, I was off for Tanzania which is about a 18-20 hour trip. The bus was actually pretty comfortable and not as packed in as many other busses we’ve traveled on during our World Race. After roughly 6 hours, we arrived at the Kenyan border (we had to travel through Kenya to get to Tanzania) and watched a woman pass out in front of us. The two girls I was with and I prayed while she lay on the ground and thanked God when she started to wake up. She ended up being fine, but had one major headache. After that incident, nothing interesting happened. We got back on the bus and headed for Tanzania. We arrived at that border around 7 hours later and got through with relative ease. Back to the bus we went and 5 hours later we arrived at our destination, Mwanza, Tanzania! There we were met by a couple of Racers and the contact and headed back to their living site. I was able to see two of the four teams in Mwanza that day. I then informed the team what was happening, and told them that Andrea and I would be heading out the next morning to go to Kenya!
The next morning, Andrea and I packed up our stuff and headed to the bus station. We had to change our tickets because our original destination was further than what we were told, so we decided to go to a city that was much closer. We were told that the ride would take roughly 13-15 hours. We both looked at our watches and realized we would be arriving very early in the morning. No big deal, we’re World Racers! So off we were to Kenya! We were cruising along wonderfully and then we got to the Kenya-Tanzania border. We had no issues getting across, but we started to wonder what was going on when our bus driver, along with everyone else, got off the bus on the Kenyan side and didn’t come back. So Andrea and I decided to get off the bus as well. We walked and walked, back and forth for about an hour, and then we saw the bus driver get on, so we hopped back on as well. We figured we would be heading straight to Nairobi (our connecting city), but found out that wasn’t the case about 45 minutes after getting back on the bus. The driver stopped the bus, got up, and told everyone to ‘go ahead and have your dinner.’ So we stopped for another 30-45 minutes. After having out dinner, we got back on the bus and took off, again figuring that we would be heading straight to Nairobi. We were wrong again. First we had to make an hour stop at a bus station 2-3 hours away from Nairobi! Andrea and I couldn’t help but laugh as we looked at our watches and realized it had already been 15 hours. Once that stop was over, we actually did end up going to Nairobi.
As we pulled into the bus station, we knew we had to take a taxi to the next bus place, so we hopped in and headed off. We got to our bus station and I asked the person working if we could buy tickets. He said no, that we had to wait until 6:30am (it was 4:30 at the time). I then asked him how often the busses ran to Eldoret and he told me ‘very often,’ so to clarify I said, “so, is that like every hour?” and he said yes. At that point, Andrea and I decided to check out a place to sleep for a few hours before finishing our journey.
After getting a few hours sleep we headed off to the same bus station. We arrived and asked for tickets to Eldoret, and the person at the counter looked at me and said “that bus is already gone, if you want to ride with us you will have to wait until tonight.” It turned out the man I originally talked to didn’t quite understand what I was asking. We really weren’t interested in waiting until that evening to get the 5 hour ride, so we asked what our options were. Lucky for us, there was a Matatu (a normal sized van that they shove 11-14 people in) going to Eldoret every 30 minutes to an hour. We took our chances and jumped in one. I am very glad to say that our ride was actually quite comfortable, and very uneventful. We arrived in Eldoret within 5-6 hours and then I realized I had lost my phone, either that, or it was picked from my pocket (I’d rather believe I lost it :P). So, I had to find a way to get a phone so I could call the group we were going to stay with to come pick us up. Andrea and I met a very nice lady who took us to a phone company, and we were all set! Journey number 1, done! Stay tuned for my journey from Kenya back to Tanzania!
