Tuesday, July 22: Another Not So Good First!

I spent most of the night wide awake, calculating and recalculating our hotel bill. I was trying to figure out how to fund this trip to the national park, but it appeared I was a bit short on the hotel bill here! Getting everything straight would require trips to the ATM and probably a trip to at least one bank.

Lisa reported that there was no hot water. I knew we had been without power most of the night, so I wasn’t surprised. Breakfast was complicated. There was a huge group of Ugandans holding some kind of conference at the Guesthouse. Within a few seconds of our arrival in the dining room, there was a long line of people trying to get coffee, toast, and fruit. The group was friendly, treating us as though we were a part of them. But it was a lot of people for that early in the morning!

Vincent was due at 8:30. He came to the room about 8:10 to deliver presents for us and for David. We finished getting ready and joined him at the van at 8:30. Our goal was to finish seeing children so that we could be free to go to the national park on Wednesday.

So we were off! Our first stop was Crown College to visit Nampeera Noreen. This was our second attempt. Earlier, her home told us she was at school and the school said she was at home. The same thing happened today! Vincent and Grace are looking into this.

Our next stop was Gayaza, where we visited two spectacularly nice girls schools. One of them had a building announcing it was built in 1940. The other claimed to be more than 100 years old, the oldest girl’s school in Uganda.

Our next stop was Luweero Secondary School, which seemed to be somewhere near South Africa! When we arrived, we saw Amanyire Joash (Tim and Edie). It seemed strange to see this boy who I still remember as a quiet, small for his age, elementary kid as a secondary school student. He was still a bit small and incredibly quiet, but he had grown into a young man.

We then began another incredibly long drive to Kwagala Day and Boarding School which must be somewhere north of Greenland. When we finally got there, we found a one rut trail leading precariously close to a huge ditch. Vincent passed the marked turn for the school and chose, instead, to take an unmarked trail that led to a church. He turned at the church and drove along the edge of a garden until we could finally see the tiny school. We were here to see Namhaba Robinah (Evelyn and Jenifer). This girl had lived with Grace for several years. She had decided to leave Grace and move in with her father. He had shipped her off to the middle of nowhere to live with her aunt. Although she obviously missed Grace, she said she was happy where she was.

This is a tiny primary school more than 40 kilometers from Kampala. I’m not certain, but we were probably their first white visitors. Every kid came running to see us, but see is all they wanted to do. They were scared to death of us! And their teachers were not much more brave!

Lisa finally broke through by letting one touch her arm. After that, every child wanted to touch her. They never did warm up to me. I think there’s something about sun glasses and a cane that makes me a bit intimidating to these kids.

We played with them for half an hour, taking pictures, video taping, and passing out single crayons and pencils. Everyone really waved when we left, but I’m not sure that it wasn’t with relief that we were going!

Robinah asked us to take her blanket and basin to her aunt. We drove along the market street of the tiny village until Vincent saw the woman. We pulled in and talked with her about Robinah. She had a toddler named Joshua who was hilarious. He wasn’t the least k tobit afraid of us. He tried to talk. He laughed. He grabbed the toy Lisa offered. Then all at once he noticed we were different. He didn’t cry, but he certainly stopped laughing!

We were a long way from Kampala, at least 40 km. once we made it back to the main road. We were north of Kampala, an area we knew nothing at all about. The terrain here was noticeably flatter. There were more swamps and more palm trees. We were still 200 km from Gulu, the center of troubles in northern Uganda.

We finally made it back to the main road and headed south toward Kampala. About 15 minutes later, there was a pop when Vincent shifted gears. The van quickly stalled. After the thousands of kilometers we’ve logged in Uganda, we were having serious mechanical problems with the van.

Vincent could only drive in first gear. To make matters worse, this road (the Gulu Road) was being rebuilt as we drove on it. The road crew would put a flagman out to tell us one lane was closed so traffic could flow in only one direction. At one point, we were crawling along in first going south, the only open direction. We had a huge piece of earth moving equipment running beside us as it flattened out a load of sand. A boda boda jumped into our lane heading straight for us. He ended up squeezing between us and the earth moving equipment on a strip of dirt no wider than a foot!

Vincent was amazing, as always. He managed to coast down hills and use the transmission only to pull up hills. As it turned out, traffic drew steadily worse as we approached Kampala so it didn’t particularly matter that we couldn’t go more than 25 kpm.

We drove inside the new by-pass and immediately came to Kolping House. It seems Bomba Road, the address of Kolping House, turns into Gulu Road at the by-pass. We all came inside to order sodas, but our team wanted lunch so they each ordered pork and chips. Everyone was quiet as we waited for the food. I got out my Dave’s Insanity Sauces to try to liven everyone up. It worked a little bit.

They left after lunch and Lisa and I went up to our room. It was the first day we’d had any break before 5:00, and both of us were asleep in no time!

Vincent later called to say that the gear box was damaged. We were able to get a temporary fix for only about $200. The work came with a warning, that this was only a temporary fix.

Between the health of the van, my lack of funds, and the death of Agatha’s grandmother earlier that morning, our chance to visit a national park was gone.

We spent the rest of the afternoon working on this blog, resting, and reading a bit. At dinner, we talked to a young man from Rwanda. He has been here as long as we have. He works for Serena Hotels. He is the head pastry chef for the hotel in Kigali. He is in Uganda for a month to observe the new hotel and its operations. He goes home on Saturday, and he can hardly wait. He wants to start a bakery in Uganda someday.