Having arrived Wednesday evening, we stayed in a guest house and sought to get some sleep. The idea was to get up for a 6:30 Thursday breakfast and to hit the road for the 6-7 hour trip across country. Our driver’s name is Rodgers (no relation to Aaron, though I’m sure he wishes he was) who I misunderstood to be Ridges and called him that until the last three hours of his time with us. He is a young man with big glasses, he spoke in a very gentle manner and was often hard to understand.
We had Tim Prince sit in the front seat next to Rodgers so that he could experience the differences and some of the thrill/fear of driving in Uganda. Gar (who had previously experienced serving in Senegal, sat in the second row with Mike Evans. Mike can get car sick and we wanted Gar to see better. Stu and I brought up the rear.
One of the highlights of working with the people of Abaana’s Hope, the organization here on the ground, is how easy they have made it for us. We have had excellent drivers who were not only skilled, but knew their way around and paid all the bills. They, in turn, would hand them over to Abaana’s Hope, who would send us one bill to cover our expenses. They have been incredible to work with.
Turns out Rodgers didn’t know exactly where he was going. Having made this cross-country trip a number of times, we have a general sense of where we are going. Rodgers was slow and tentative in his approach. When we asked questions, his answers were so soft that Mr. Prince had to interpret (Rodgers spoke English). When we would request a bathroom break (like in the States, gas stations are the normal stopping place), he seemed to acknowledge the request and would drive by a couple more before stopping, only to have us sprint to the toilets.
There was a general uneasiness with the uncertainty with which he drove. We were to drive to Murchison Falls National Park, find our lodging there, rest a few hours and go on a Safari. We usually do this for someone who is coming to Africa for the first time. We asked Rodgers how much time till we arrived and it sounded like we would get there around 2 pm, seven hours after departure. We could get a couple of hours rest before our 4 pm safari.
It was fun narrating for Tim and Gar what was going on in the Entebbe area as we took off. The roads in this area have improved so much in the ten years we have been making our way to Uganda. We made pit stops, had a bite to eat and hit the road. 2 pm came and we knew we were a way out from our destination. He said we would get to Murchison in an hour. When we arrived and paid our fee at 3 pm, he told us it would be 1.5 hours till we got to the lodge we were staying at (the timing for the safari wasn’t looking good). This is a huge National Park! As we made our way toward the lodge we started seeing signs which were not all that clear. You could sense our driver’s uncertainty, but he never verbalized any concern. Being in a different culture, it’s not always clear if you should ask/question someone in this case.
I failed to mention that at the four-hour mark in our driving we started to have a challenge. It was in the upper 80’s and sunny, with six people and a lot of luggage (we brought eye exam equipment and 200+ pairs of glasses). It was cozy, but not obnoxiously so. We had decent air conditioning so the drive was fairly comfortable, until HEAT started coming up under our feet. We mentioned the concern to Rodgers, who pushed a few buttons up front, but no improvement…it was getting warm. Our upper bodies felt fine, while our feet were hot. The rest of our trip was marked by this discomfort.
We were already 8 hours into the 6-7 hour trip when he came to a sign (I’ll admit not a very clear one) for our lodge. As he chose to go on a dirt road, leaving the pavement, I said something like “Hey Ridges (remember I had misunderstood his name-and he never corrected us-not in this culture), are you sure your headed the right way?” He looked back at me, but did not respond otherwise. He kept driving. My uncertainty and frustration were rising with the temperature on my feet. As we continued down this path, the roads got a little dicey. We would slip on occasion from the recent rain falls and I was getting a bit anxious. I later discerned my emotion as anger because we had an apparently substandard driver, who couldn’t figure out the controls on his nice Toyota van (neither could we), and was apparently driving us down a safari road (in my opinion) rather than getting us to the lodge which we were now about two hours late getting to.
About ten minutes into this new road, I asked the question again and Rodgers just kept driving, occasionally slipping on this dirt road which seemed to be growing increasingly rustic as we went. Ten minutes later, we slid to a stop and I said “Ridges, I think we need to turn around!” He relented and we slipped and slid our way back over the dirt road, until we arrived at the black top and went the way the rest of us thought we should got and fifteen minutes later made it to the lodge at 5 pm, completing our 6-7 hour trip in a mere ten hours!
Fortunately, we were the only ones doing the sunset safari, so our patient driver was waiting. I was really looking forward to Tim and Gar seeing this, but I was less than excited to another 2-3 hours in a vehicle-even if we would see exotic animals. First world problems in a third world country.
