I was really excited to see Nairobi at night; the city has a whole different feel. After dropping off our bags at the bus station, we grabbed some fries at a restaurant and candy for the journey at the supermarket. By the way, the restaurant we ate at is the chain that decorates with license plates, and we found a Texas one! It was right next to the counter though, so we couldn’t take a picture for you (not that you haven’t seen a Texas plate before). Our bus was supposed to leave at 9pm; we boarded at ten when it arrived. Fiona was quite excited that the security guard didn’t really go through her bag. She credited it to her being nice to the lady. I added that it might also have to do with the fact that she was with us, and while it’s not fair, we muzungus never really get searched (this remained true for the rest of the trip). After the aisles where extremely packed with passengers’ luggage and the storage underneath had been loaded, unloaded, and then reloaded with merchandise from Nairobi, we set off. It was midnight. Although Jess had a little boy behind her who kept tracing the outline of her facial features, it didn’t take long for us to all crash.
We pulled in to stop for a bathroom break less than two hours later. I had been really worried that I would need to go to the bathroom during our journey, but it turns out that was an unnecessary thought, as this stop was the first of many stops. We stopped at least every two hours for the bathroom; we stopped to pick-up/drop-off people. We stopped for police searches and customs searches I don’t even know how many times. We stopped to change a tire (this one I was okay with) and for just about everything else you can imagine. The night’s sleep was somewhat rough, but it was good enough for a bus. When we all woke up enough from the sun shining through our windows, it was just before 7am (our scheduled arrival time), and we still hadn’t crossed the border. For breakfast, we ate carrots and apples that we had packed for snacks along with some popcorn we picked up while they changed our tire. (I hope you all enjoyed your leftover Thanksgiving food; I thought of you/it often!) At the border, no one told us anything so we almost ended up smuggling ourselves into Uganda. Thankfully, the nice lady next to us told Fiona we might want to go stamp our passports at the nearby building. We left our bus and over half the passengers that were still aboard (no, I have no idea why they didn’t need to get things stamped too). It then left us, which we didn’t know it would be doing, and we followed it on foot across the border. We paid our dues, found our bus, and headed out again very thankful we were not driving a semi-truck. The line for them to cross the border had to be a least a full day’s wait. Anyways, that’s enough about the trip; just know we didn’t end up arriving until 12:30pm.
(UGANDA)
The country here is SO different from Kenya. Uganda is GREEN!!! I absolutely love it! As we drove, the houses turned from brick into clay/straw. There were little hut villages with naked children playing outside amongst the cows. I wish I could send up all the mental images, but sadly, I only have a few lame pictures taken through my window that wouldn’t open.
Mbale is not the city I was expecting but a small town surrounded by mountains. We arrived in the middle of a rally for upcoming elections, so we drove through the crowd of dancing youth to reach our stop. (Apparently, Uganda has had the same president for about 25 years and the youth of Uganda are ready for change.) Natalie was waiting for us at a nearby coffee shop. I love that it’s small enough here the shop owners know her. Granted, she’s been here three-years, but since Nairobi is so huge, I don’t think you’d ever settle in there like she has here. Natalie’s roommate, Emily, was also at the coffee shop. She moved here two years ago after finishing her degree at Harding and is now trying to decide if she’ll stay longer or not. She and Jennifer (the roommate we met in Nairobi who currently is in Kenya and not here) work for a school that ministers to missionary kids. They (and we for the week) live in a house (the teachers’ house) gated in next to the school.
(Here we are in their living room- Laquita, Jess, Fiona, and Natalie)
The coffee shop was kind of their escape for the day. Natalie’s Ugandan friend started it a month ago, and it also usually has power while their house currently didn’t. The power went out last night at their house, and they were having trouble getting someone to come over and look at the problem since the electric company just keeps lumping them with the rest of the neighborhood that lost power a week ago due to people stealing the lines. This is a very funny image to me by the way; I just have a really hard time picturing someone cutting down and rolling up power lines to go sell elsewhere. It happens though, and apparently, it happens a lot.
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