Mountains and DHM style bus services

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  Butogota, Uganda
Saturday, October 29, 2005

Where do I start?!

Last wednesday I caught a matatu(local transport) from Kenya, over into Kampala, the capital of Uganda. I spent a couple of days organising a birthday present for myself, and then set off to enjoy it.

Caught a crazy, crazy bus into the mountains where Uganda borders the Congo (Zaire). I boarded the bus early on saturday morning, and sat by the window, patiently waiting for our departure as the bus tooted its horn and lurched back and forth, pretending to leave so that people would rush in. Then along comes Big Mama, and wedges herself in next to me. I literally have bruises on my shoulder from where I was wedged against the window!

Spent all day on the bus, and by mid afternoon, we were climbing the mountains

Bus in the Ditch

. Bear in mind that this is a full size bus, and a very narrow dirt road winding its way around the outside of the mountain. The driver is doing his best impression of a DHM courier, hooning around the corners while i look fearfully at how close we come to the edge, and the locals laugh at me for doing so. We come flying around a bend, and there is a truck with its back wheels teetering over the edge of the cliff. A cable has been attached, and tied around a tree to anchor it. The cable is running across in front of us, seemingly blocking our path. Now you might imagine that our driver would get out and assist the truck retrieval, or wait for it so we can pass? But instead, he gets someone to hold up the cable and drop it on our roof, then we drive through with a krrrrrrrrrrggggghhhhh as it scrapes the top layer off our roof. Unfortunately, space is tight, and we hit the truck, sending the front end another couple of feet closer to the edge. 2 tries later, we are through.

Our driver in no way sees this as a warning of the condition of the road, and revvs it up to around Gabby km/hr. We round another bend, to find a man changing a tyre, but are going too fast to brake in time, so we swerve. Swerve off the road, into a ditch, and the bus tips and lands against the embankment. STILL, I am the only one who seems particularly concerned by this bus ride, and concerned I was. I contemplated getting off and ditching the bus, but I was past the point of no return, the bus only comes once a day and there is nowhere to stay. We all pile off the leaning bus and wait about half an hour while about 30 men heave and ho and eventually right the problem. As we get back on, I notice a lady stayed on and breastfed throught the whole thing!!!!!

The next few hours were significantly less eventful, and I eventually arrived at my ultimate destination - Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.

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