Christmas did not seem like Christmas this year…maybe because of the lack of snow cold weather and santa coming (its now Jan 26th and he still has not found me…hopefully the post office will deliver those packages soon…by deliver I mean make me travel an hour to pick up and drag all over town and in a car with 2O other people….}. Oh I guess the lack of family members also…just kidding miss everyone.
It began with a 7 and half hour bus ride that should have taken only about two and half hours… Finding the bus was hard enough the taxi park was a bigger nightmare than normal (if that is even possible}. A guy asked me where I was going when I told him he tells me it just so happens to be the bus I am standing next to…on the opposite side of the park and iv been tricked before and will not be tricked again so I yelled at him only to find out he was telling the truth. Once we finally got out of the park and backed our way down two streets…these drivers def have some major swoopability…. We were on our way…but not for long. We had to stop to get gas now this normally takes a whole 3O seconds because they enjoy getting a liter or 2 of gas at a time this time took hours. The driver and conductor began screaming at those working at the gas station kicking buckets and throwing things while others on the bus begin to get off and begin screaming as well and then there is the mzungu (myself} who knows very little luganda (the national language} sitting there just staring at everyone wondering what the hell is going on. I finally stand up and ask if anyone knows English and everyone looks at me like I am crazy and no one answers me. I sit there for another hour still having no clue what is going on and feeling like I am going to pee my pants…the lady infront of me was refusing to move and making people either climb over here or climb out the window…I opted to climb out the window and basically fell on my face in the process…Well finally the police arrive (we had to wait for them to walk there from a few villages away} and arrest the people at the gas station (I still have no idea what is going on}. Well for them to arrest them it ment putting them on our bus along with the officers and the conductor running behind the bus because he could not fit on the bus. We get to the police station and are there another couple of hours with people filling out paperwork etc. FINALLY a lady asks me if I know what is going on I tell her no and she starts laughing harder than I have ever heard anyone laugh and says to me “you mean you sat thru all of that and didn’t have a clue as to what was happening” no I sure didn’t. Turns out the gas station was out of gas and was trying to charge since the pump made it look like there was gas going into the bus. Not the best ending to the story but if I would have known what was going on the entire time I don’t think it would have been as interesting to watch as it was trying to figure out what was happening.
After all of that I finally got to Masaka and headed down to another volunteers site in the south west region of the country. A majority of our group was there which was fun because we hadn’t seen each other since moving to site because we are not allowed to travel for the first 3 months after moving. We relaxed messed around watched movies and had wonderful food and drinks. I was defiantly placed in the wrong region of this country as the south west is one of the only regions that has cheese (one of my fav foods I could eat an entire brick of cheese in one sitting}. Most of the food we had consisted of some form of cheese…grilled cheese quaso dip and other types of cheese dishes!!
