Team TAE has given O Squad a new saying "Struggle Bus". We say this when we are having difficulty doing simple tasks. For example, getting yourself locked in your own room and you cannot get out. Or doing the dishes but you drop most if not all of them. Silly small things like that. There are some people that are always on the struggle bus so they become the designated drivers. And the rest of us who are just on for a day.
But there was this one day…
One thing that WR likes to remind everyone is to be careful what you speak over yourself and over others…Here is glimpse of our travel day from Uganda to Rwanda.
Tuesday September 3rd:
Normally our travel days begin in the morning, except for this travel day. Our bus was supposed to arrive at 9pm. So at 8:45pm a few of us start moving toward our bags that are already packed and placed into one room of our hostel in Jinja Uganda. However we were told that it would not arrive will 10:45pm. So what where there to do for the next hour or so? Watch football (soccer), star gaze, and fall asleep on the couch with several people as we try to stay warm.
The bus arrived at 10:50 and by 11:15 we were off! The seat I was in was broken so it would not sit up. Normally this is not a bad thing, especially on overnight bus rides! And it wasn’t…until I wanted to sit up. Anywho, back to the story, I managed to fall right to sleep with my broken seat. We were supposed to reach the boarder by 7am so I was excited to have a bus ride where I could sleep through the night. Yet I was woken up…many times. The bus stopped I think about a dozen times (wasn’t counting and that was when I was awake. I heard we probably stopped more than that) for people to use the bathroom or for the driver to take a break.
So when I was fully awake a 7am I was somewhat surprised to discover that we were still in Uganda…hours from the boarder. This is when the term struggle bus was placed over our bus. Shortly after I woke up we had a flat tire. And like what happens every time the bus stops, people had to use the restroom again. Yet once the driver discovered that we had a flat tire he didn't wait for the WRer's who had left the bus to come back. Instead he started the bus and took off without them. He was sure to tell us who were still on the bus that we was not leaving them but that he had to go to (yet another) different gas station to get the tire fixed. Getting that tire fixed took 30-60 minutes. While there I did see something that I never though I'd see…a flushable squaty. That's right, a squaty potty that flushes.
Anywho, after the tire got fixed we went back to pick up our fellow sqaudmates who were stranded at the other station. Once we picked them up we were back on the road! We reached the boarder at about 10am and from there Kigali (the capital of Rwanda) was just about a two hour bus ride. Once arriving in Kigali we stopped at another gas station to once again fix that tire that liked to go flat. We were at that station for 1-2 hours. While there the bus sometimes had to move out of the way of cars so it was constantly being started…this is when we realized that it sometimes had trouble starting. Once the tire was fixed and our driver knew where to go (one of the contacts came to meet the driver to show him where to take us) we were off! We were told that our drop off point was about 15-20 minutes away…
About 5 minutes into the drive at a circle intersection the bus died and stayed dead for about 30 minutes (maybe more). Then we were off again! We go a few meters when a traffic cop pulls us over and makes the driver turn off the bus (noooo!). After 15-30 minutes the cop says that we can go…only the bus won't start again…after sitting there for about an hour the bus starts moving! The bad news is that because the bus is having problems and that we are now driving up hill the bus cannot move very fast…in fact we joked about some people having to dump their packs to make the bus lighter or we would have to get out and push it. There were points in time where I think I would jog faster than it was moving. What was supposed to be a 15-20 drive down the road took about 75-80 minuets. We stopped at a gas station where everyone's contacts met us. I don't know if this was the original meeting place or where the bus driver said this is where I'm stopping have your people meet you here. Either way we were glad to be off the Struggle Bus!
Everything after that Struggle Bus went smoothly.
Moral of the story: be careful what you speak over the you, your squad, and the bus. And enjoy the ride no matter the struggle because you'll get some good stories and awesome squad bonding time from it.
