Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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I have realized that I have never written a blog describing a typical travel day with sixty-one people on the World Race, granted most of our travel days have been extremely smooth. But this past week we were tackling our longest single bus ride through Africa and let¡¦s be honest, TIA (This is Africa)- something interested was bound to happen.  And thus our 28 hour African bus ride turned into a 44+ hour bus ride!
 
 


Our bus was scheduled to pick us up at the Adrift Campground on the Nile River in Jinja, Uganda at 12:00pm on July 1st.  12:00pm¡K1:00pm¡K2:00pm¡K3:00pm¡Kthe bus finally arrived.  There was some confusion with the driver of where we he was taking us so we clarified the confusion that we were going to Dar Es Salaam, not Arusha- just a several hour difference.

– Description of bus:
     – Shady
     – Roach infested
     – Noisy
     – Plexi-glass windows held on with caulk
     – Tinted windows that we weren¡¦t sure if the tint came from window tint or dirt
     – Had the shakes
     – Made of extremely heavy material
     – No toilet
     – No air conditioning
Almost immediately after we left it began to rain and the windows did not keep out the water.  We searched for anything we could find (coats, blankets, bags, etc.) to cover us from the rain attack.  Around 5:30 pm we went through customs at the Uganda-Kenya border and a money exchanger teller cheated me out of $9.00 USD- WHAT!?!?!

Every two hours we stopped at a shady squatty potty and waited in a line of 40 people- the men opted for the back of the building on most occasions. And every time we were about to approach a ¡§weigh station¡¨ the driver would pull off to the shoulder of the road and make the last three rows of the bus get out of the bus and into a few unmarked cars that would drive them to a roadside stand ahead of the weigh station and wait for us. The weigh station was charged if the bus was over the weight limit so we were able to avoid any additional fees- sketchy, I know, but the driver acted as though this was a common occurrence in Tanzania.

During the first portion of our travels I watched two movies and listened to three podcasts, but the African roads made it impossible to get much rest. Then at 11:00 a.m. July 2nd, we cross through Kenya-Tanzania customs.  TANZANIA!!! We made it! The landscape was absolutely breathtaking, yet drastically different than Kenya or Uganda. Tanzania was flat with spurts of massive mountains. Tribal people wearing their cloak and staff herded sheep across the plains. All of a sudden the left-side of the bus broke out into an uproar! WILD GIRAFFES!  A family of giraffes was gracefully crossing the Serengeti plains. It was absolutely beautiful!

3:00pm arrived and we stop at rest-stop that actually sold food (rice, greens, and beef chunks for $2). It was still an African rest-stop but it was the nicest facilities we had seen yet on our journey- food, two sets of bathrooms, a large parking lot, and it was cleaner than most. We stop for twenty minutes and let the driver know that we would like to finish up the remaining four hours of the journey without any bathroom stops. We re-board the bus and make it about 3-4 kilometers and that¡¦s when we heard a nasty grinding sound coming from the front of the bus. Our driver informed us that we lost a few nuts and bolts in our drive shaft which apparently are very important. We return to the nice rest-stop and waited approximately two hours for the replacement part to make its way to us. No biggy- TIA baby! 🙂
 
 

Twenty minutes later, our second World Race bus with our remaining 18 squadmates (that left two hours after our bus), arrived at the rest-stop, said hi, used the restroom facilities, and then continued on. The replacement part arrived but it was the wrong part number. Apparently there are no bus companies that operate between the hours of 10pm-5am due to the extremely high number of bus hijackings in Tanzania, so the new plan: Stay at the rest-stop overnight and leave at 5:00am. 

Our squad was so great upon hearing the news.  We talked, played cards, and took walks in the parking lot until the restaurant closed to the public at 10:00pm.  The owner of the restaurant was very generous and offered for us to sleep inside his restaurant if we wanted.  He also had his cook fix a couple pots of hot tea and coffee to hand out free of cost. He was such a blessing to us! We all spread out over the building and the bus. Some people set up their tents in the parking lot or inside the restaurant, some people slept directly on the tile floor, and a few people joined me inside the roach-infested bus.
 
 

It took awhile to get comfortable, and when I finally did I realized that everyone on the bus was constantly swatting at mosquitoes- malaria, no thank you. I managed to get two straight hours of sleep as I was curled up on two bus seats. My alarm went off at 4:00am when the replacement bus arrived. Everyone packed up their sleeping equipment and moved all sixty-one large backpacks onto the new bus. At 5:00am, just before dawn, our bus departed for Dar Es Salaam.

The last four hours turned into six hours. I¡¦m not sure how, but it was a much quieter six hours since everyone was exhausted. Around 1:00pm on July 3rd, we finally arrived at the bus station in Dar Es Salaam. A few teams were able to buy bus tickets for their continued journey to their ministries within various cities in Tanzania- anywhere from 3-12 hours of further travel. The rest of the teams waited for the local pastor to arrive with a private bus and we loaded it up and headed to a home to “rest” for the evening.  I say “rest” because on our ride to the house we realized that it was only a 15 minute tuktuk ride to the Indian Ocean. So twelve of us dropped our bags off at the house, grabbed our swimsuits and took off to swim in the ocean, while the rest either stayed back to sleep or went to get phone SIM cards, bottled water, and minimal groceries to hold us over for food the next few days.
 
 

So the last seventy-seven hours I have had about ten hours of sleep total. But all I keep saying is FINALLY I have a sweet African travel story and “God’s provision and safety¨ is written all over it! We could have been stranded in the middle of the Serengeti where we were in prime location to be hijacked, but instead we happened to break down a few kilometers from a stop that had a gate, food, electricity, running water, and extremely welcoming owners.  Praise God!  And I know this is funny, but it was probably my absolute favorite travel day yet. I mean, what a great memory right!?!? 😉