Because It's Raining

I'm reminded of bannoubunkacoby's ridiculous shirt, that says "BECOSE I LOVE YOU!"

This past Friday, I was uwera's co-pilot for a whirlwind one-day trip up to Kalinzu, which is where she and JGI-Uganda do a lot of education work with the local schools there.

It's close to Mbarara, which is maybe a 4-5 hour drive towards the southwest of Uganda. For a map, check here.

Steph needed to be back for French class at the Alliance Français in Kampala on Saturday at 10 am. So, we had a LOT of driving to do in a very small amount of time. Minimal missing-work time, maximum drive-age.

We took the big JGI land cruiser, which is an utterly shitty car and pretty uncomfortable, but the only car we've really got that can take the bad upcountry roads.

We left at around 6:30 am on Friday and headed up through Kampala towards Masaka. The weather was nice.. good considering the Land Cruiser has no air conditioning or amenities of any kind.

Since we had no radio, and despite my coughing and Peter-Brady-sounding cracked gravelly voice, I actually read Memoirs of a Geisha to Steph the whole way up and the whole way back.

It reminded me a lot of road trips with booksymagnifico where I'd read to him. I like reading aloud, although it certainly causes me to miss 110% of the road scenery because I get so wrapped up.

We stopped at the Equation café and had delicious muffins and tea to go - we'd brought our own travel mugs. I bought some more locally-produced vanilla for regyt too, since I have to send that housewarming package anyway.

The drive didn't really seem that long, and Steph is a good driver and I didn't panic or feel like we'd be barreled over by some enormous lorry.

We got to Mbarara by around noon, and headed off towards Bushenyi, and then to Kalinzu. We'd been making excellent time, and as I got into the Land Cruiser (legs still shaking/vibrating) at our last stop, I made a comment to that effect.

Like a rainstorm after you say "at least it isn't raining" ... the ignition refused to light. We could HEAR something turning under the hood. But the car just. wouldn't start.

Of course, Kalinzu has NO mobile reception, and the closest town, Ishaka, Steph was starting to panic, so I tried to stay calm if only to keep our freakout from escalating exponentially. Oh, and one of the guys suggested we just "drive the car to Ishaka to the mechanic to have it checked out" ...

Uhh... How? What?

What was humorous was that "the car usually starts if you jiggle it" so here Steph and I are, rocking backwards and forwards in our seats having a little humpty-hump hydraulics in our dirtbag white Land Cruiser.

And of course all the guys at the site are just watching, laughing.

I got out of the car and pushed it backwards and forwards with their help but it still refused to start.

Just as I was suggesting that we find the mechanic sooner rather than later, miraculously, the car started. Who knows what was wrong with it, because lord knows neither Steph nor I know a THING about car mechanisms, but phew, we weren't stuck in Kalinzu.

So, off we went!

We decided we'd spend the night in Masaka so that we'd only have a 2 hour drive on Saturday morning. Neither Steph nor I knew of any lodging there, as it's quite a small town and not nearly as big as Mbarara. But we took the risk, and after turning down a 70,000 shilling a night place, found a place that seemed to have 5 different names -- a different one on each sign...

We arrived and got a double room for 35,000 shillings, and wow [sarcasm] .. was it WORTH it!! It started as we collapsed into the upstairs "restaurant" where the TV was blaring with no one watching it. We were forced there too, since they couldn't allow us into our room until it was "prepared" ... who knows what exactly that entails. Or why, at 5 pm, they didn't have a clean room available. They were certainly amenable to "taking our bags" ... thanks, girls, but we didn't get off the plane yesterday.

It turns out that the reception staff and the restaurant staff were one in the same, so we ordered our sodas downstairs when we checked in and only waited about 25 minutes for them to arrive! It was also exciting to order various things off the menu only to be told one after another that they were unavailable.

Steph ended up with fried chicken leg, after discovering that the waitress couldn't tell a fillet from a skillet, with chips, and I got an omelette with chips. (which I keep writing as "chimps"... gah!)

The food took forever, tasted like crap, but I did feel somehow vindicated when I turned down the TV in some mysterious way that kept the waitress who came upstairs to turn it back up to "blaring" from turning the volume back up at all. HA! I defeat you with my muzungu techno-knowledge!!

I tried to use the toilets, which were about a 10 minute walk through the maze of the parking lot away, and when it seemed that it might take another 10 minutes for them to find a single roll of toilet paper to populate said that perhaps we could enter our room?

So, in I went, and EE GAD it was like walking into ... well, what in the world is perfumed to death? A flop house? Honestly, we both got perfume headaches. And in all their preparations, there were still a strange woman's clothing hanging on the back of the front door.

We bedded down early since Steph had done so much driving, and I was sick, but we were woken up by incredibly loud TV noises, and laughing of the staff right outside our room. The TV was so loud, showing some awful Ugandan soap opera, that I actually got up and out of bed to turn it off. Annoyingly, no one was even watching it.

It doesn't help that I cough myself awake and sleep like shit and am cranky as hell. I did finally get to sleep, but I'll admit I whispered "sorry" after every coughing fit, convinced I was waking up Steph.

Before we went to bed, Steph asked what time breakfast was, since we'd have to leave by around 7:30 am to get to Kampala in time for French. They said 6:30 am, so that was fine. We gave them our breakfast orders and went to our room.

We wandered out at 7 am the next morning and were greeted by ABSOLUTE POURING RAIN. It could have been useful, considering the hotel shower had no water, but publicly naked muzungus isn't exactly ideal.

Neither is wandering around the hotel, looking for breakfast, and having all the lights be off, all the doors be locked and no one in sight.

We went around the side and came in through the front door of reception, which was empty and dark. Steph wandered and I stayed in reception, and called out "Hello!?"

I hear this distant, sort of muffled "Hello?" back and start looking for the source outside.

When, out from under the reception desk pops this mostly-naked guy, groggy because he's clearly been sleeping under the reception desk, a fact later verified when I saw his little mosquito net pinned up on the underside.

It turns out that everyone in the hotel is sleeping, and well, nothing goes quickly in Uganda. And honestly, Steph and I don't have time to wait the 25 minutes it'd take for us to have even hot water for tea.

So, grumpily, we complained and told them not to even bother, and to give us a discount. When Steph demanded to know why everyone was sleeping at 7 am when breakfast started at 6:30 am, the guy behind the desk was like "Maybe it's because it's raining?"

They're not cooking outside, but do people just decide not to do what they're supposed to if it's raining?

In Uganda, they SURE do, as we discovered that no employees had shown up at the petrol station so we couldn't get gas for the car. [they only do full service].

It didn't matter much, and I read as the rain beat down on the car. Thankfully, the windshield wipers worked, as did the lights (they hadn't previously).

I went to Dr. Stockley once we got to Kampala, and Steph went off to French. Took a matatu home, and learned from Willi today that he was sad I didn't tell him I was in Kampala Saturday.

To see you dirty from 2 days of driving and coughing? ;) Maybe next time.

Note to self: write about day with Willi today, Monday.

26

I thought I should mention this, but like, I'm not excited about turning 26.

In fact, it's sort of creepy, because it does mean that I'm "almost 30" (as many of my friends are nearly anyway), and, as I've mentioned several times, that I'm in the "second montage" of When Harry Met Sally with Scary Journalist Hair™...

Not just that, but I remember knowing older people when I was younger, and the automatic expectations I applied to them. Have I really accomplished the amount I should have at 26? Am I somehow on the right path? Would I really know if I was?

It somehow feels more weighted than 25 too. Like this should be the Quarter Life Crisis.

I mean, I could have chosen so many other paths too. I mean, damn, I could have been married by now (and probably divorced).

It doesn't make me any less happy, but it does certainly feel like the years go by very fast indeed. Faster than you mean them to? Faster than you're able to keep up?

I was prompted to find photos of my prom after a comment by gatsbys_regret, and I became immersed in looking at incredibly old photos, realizing that a good deal of them that I remember relatively freshly in my mind are now 10 years old.

10 years. Wow. Is it always going to be like this?

Sure, I've got a good memory, but it's never felt particularly long until now...