African Bus Rides

Part 1

15 June 2005

Ethiopia is a phenomenally aged country and society, like that of Egypt. In seventeen days there, God led me to engage the people and culture as much as I could. I experienced some of the most challenging, horrifying, yet also fantastic and fulfilling episodes of my life. Comic relief filled in the gaps.

Halfway through my stay, I took one of my many rough, crammed, and sometimes scary African bus rides. I highly recommend the adventure at least once!

I was in the back row. In America, it would have comfortably fit four people, and tightly fit five. But in most of my travels in Ethiopia and Uganda, “comfortable” meant six, “full” meant seven, and “tight” meant eight! This particular bus ride, counting one or two kids, was “tight.”

Toward the end of the five-hour journey, I discovered that at least some (maybe most) Ethiopian children do not use diapers. I was squeezed in next to a father and his infant son, maybe one year old. I looked down on the floor and saw a small but growing pool of liquid. I thought there was a hole somewhere and water was leaking into the bus—I had seen such holes before.

But then the father reached down and grabbed a small basin about the size of a large cereal bowl. He pulled down the pants of his child right there—who was still urinating—and plopped his little bare butt down into the basin for a couple of minutes!

Afterwards, he apologized to me in his minimal English. Most humored, I assured him it was all right. After all, it was just another of my crazy African bus rides!

Part 2

14 March 2005

I had bus escapades in Uganda, too. My Ugandan friend Jeremiah was driving through Kampala. We were just finishing a tiring day on the road on our return from a ten-day trip to southwestern Uganda. With me on the bus were eleven fellow college students, all studying abroad for a term, as well as our program leaders.

Most of us were likely asleep or snoozing when all of a sudden Jeremiah slammed on the brakes. He just missed hitting a random—but not altogether uncommon—goat sprinting across the road. Wide awake, we all turned and looked to make sure we did in fact miss it.

Well, we missed it. But a cyclist going the same direction we were was not so fortunate!

With a big bus beside him, he could not discern what was coming across our path until it was out of our path, and therefore in his path. The silly goat ploughed right into the bicycle rider, and we looked just in time to see the bicycle wreck and its rider go flying and screaming through the air! I doubt his untimely flight without parachute or wings offered him a graceful or painless landing.

Nothing was stopping that creature from getting to the other side of the road. In fact, it kept right on going after the collision. The poor cyclist, meanwhile, probably had to be taken to a hospital!