Monday 22nd July- Journey from hell

After a night of heavy drinking, waking up at 5 o clock in the morning was definitely not the greatest way to start the night, especially with a 10-11 hour van journey to look forward to. By 7 o clock the tents were all packed up and we just setting off from the Red Chilli to our final destination of the Volunteer Lodge in the Bwindi region of Uganda bordering the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I was in a van with 7 other people including our driver who for the whole 10 hour journey had a tape of Christian hymns on repeat. I cannot emphasise how bad, monotonous and repetitive the music was. The tape lasted about 45minutes to an hour, so we listened to it about 10 times. By the end of the journey we all knew the words to the crowd pleaser favourites, ‘Im forever faithful’ and ‘I believe in Jesus’.  Apart from myself and the driver, we had 6 other volunteers; Dec, Mel, Kelly, Marissa, Catherine and Shiobhan (pronounced shivon).

After almost 2 hours on the road, our van was pulled over by a large and scary Ugandan policewoman, who Kelly (The photograph queen who already had 800 photos on one of her cameras, despite being in Uganda for less than a week) really wanted to take photos of until we managed to persuade otherwise stating that it probably wouldn’t be the greatest idea. The policewoman then proceeded to take our driver’s license and make him leave the vehicle for 20 minutes. Which to say the least was slightly worrying, we even had a plan to drive away in case our driver didn’t come back, or if the situation became worse.

Eventually our driver came back claiming that everything was OK, and we continued on our journey. An hour or so later we arrived at the Equator which was a brief stopping point for us. The equator was a tiny string of buildings in the middle of nowhere. It was a ‘tourist spot’ as a result of it being at the exact point of the equator, a line was drawn across the road leading to two arcs reading equator, one on either side of the road. There was a Ugandan man who was showing how the water was affected by pouring it through a cylinder. Myself and Dec wrote our names on a cactus where previous visitors had done the same.

Cactus

After leaving the equator we carried on driving for a few more hours, dodgy Christian hymns berating our heads, everyone in the van managed to get some sleep for a bit other than myself (as usual). We then arrived in the Ugandan city of Mbarara where I took out some desperately needed money and got some bits and bobs from the supermarket. The ever unpredictable Pav bought a massive watermelon for himself and was handing out amongst us all. Those of the group who smoke were ushered around a corner into an alley by Ugandan security guards. This was because it is seen as impolite and is frowned upon to smoke in public, it also apparently symbolises criminality because supposedly only Ugandan criminals smoke.

THE TWIXES!

We all then packed back into the vehicles only to find that Graeme (one of the team leaders) had decided he would use our van to store boxes of twixes, alcohol and other commodities. So as if the van wasn’t cramped enough before, the next 5 hours were to be uncomfortably cramped and full of items we were not allowed to use. The boxes of twixes eventually gave way filling the van with twixes which all melted or ended up getting squished.

The final 5 hours of the journey was extremely bumpy and jolty, with the only pauses being for Kelly to take a photo or 200. The driver wouldn’t even pause for a slash on the side of the road, although that’s probably because he couldn’t understand anything we said, or couldn’t hear us due to his immersion in his hymn tape. By this point we had realised that there was something wrong with our van, as it seemed that there was more dust and dirt in the van then there was in the rest of Africa.

About 20 minutes before we arrived at the lodge we were pulled over by a couple of volunteers who needed to be taken to the lodge after finishing their day at their schools. They were from the group that had already been at the lodge for 4 weeks. So for the last 20 minutes we had boxes of twixes and other items everywhere as well as 2 more volunteers sitting on our knees. By the time we arrived at the lodge the original group of us were so brown and dirty from all the dust that I couldn’t remember what I originally looked like.

The view from the lodge is pretty impressive, its situated on a hill within a national park. It is in the middle of the ‘impenetrable forest’ which eventually leads to the Democratic Republic of Congo. That night we had dinner, some drinks and unpacked our stuff in the dorms before going to bed.