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Where
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Funerals, Not Being Robbed and Deadly Bus Rides20th August 2006 Just recently - for example - I found myself on the back of a motorcycle zooming through an Africa town whose name I can't remember. I was traveling in convoy with Travis and Sylvia, two people whom I had only just met. I remember being on the back of the bike and thinking, "Whoa. Just where am I exactly? What the hell am I doing? I'm in Africa baby! Cool." Travis' girlfriend's mother had recently passed away and we were on our way to pay our respects. I thought it would also be a good chance to hang out with Travis for a bit, as I will spending a lot of my time here with him. Sylvia is a friend of Travis' and she also wanted to attend the funeral. We crossed the equator on the way, which was kinda cool. At some point I want to get a one-foot-in-each-equator photograph. We had tried to get to the place that the funeral would be held at in one day, but circumstances conspired against us and we had to find a place to stay at in the aforementioned place whose name I cannot remember. We asked the motorcycle drivers to take us to the cheapest place in town. Not Being Robbed Sometime in the middle of the evening, I heard a knocking at the door. I ignored it as I was still mostly asleep. I heard my backpack scraping along the floor as someone pushed open the door. Dopey half-asleep-ness turned into morbid fascination which then led to outright shock as a guy came into my room and lit the candle next to the bed. "What the hell are you doing?", I said. He muttered something unintelligible. "No seriously man, what the hell are you doing?", I repeated. He muttered again, but this time I heard the word "Money" in his sentence. Hmmm. This did not look good. I was in bed in a budget hotel in Africa, somebody had forcibly forced themselves into my room and was asking me for money. Was I about to have a really bad African moment? On a recent trip to Kokrobite, I met up with a guy who I kinda knew. He had an iodine covered cut down the side of his face. He had been staying in a budget hotel in Ghana. Some knife wielding thugs had broken into his room and demanded money. He obliged, but they still cut him for good measure. This story was going through my mind as I lay prone on my bed. He wasn't being obviously threatening so I said something like, "Just go away. We can sort this out in the morning." To my surprise, he went away. Maybe to bring back some cronies. Maybe to get something to threaten me with. I was once again alone in my bedroom with a lone candle sputtering. Every noise outside of my room became threatening. Crunchy footsteps became those of hardened street thugs in my mind. I started to panic as there was no way I could lock my door. I jumped out of bed and pushed it up against the door. The footsteps crunched away and moved past my door. I felt a lot safer and soon drifted back to an uninterrupted sleep. I related the story to Travis the next morning. Apparently the guy worked at the hotel and had also asked Sylvia for some money in the middle of the night. He was actually asking for the money that we owed him for hiring the room. I guess he had been burnt before with people running off without paying and wanted to be sure that he got his money. Methinks that if he was so worried about it, he could of asked us before we slept. Me also thinks that waking up a still naive foreigner in the middle of the night and asking him for money is a good way to freak out said foreigner. Funerals It only took me but a few days to attend my first funeral in Uganda. We were taken to see the deceased soon after arriving. It was the first dead body that I have seen. I'm sure Glen - a pathologist by trade - would get a chuckle from this. The deceased was buried about fifty feet or so from her house. She was a strong Christian lady and the funeral was not dissimilar to those I attended in New Zealand. The grave overlooked a lake and a mountain. I will be very lucky to have such a view when I die. The grave was built just prior to the funeral. Travis ended up paying for the building of the grave. It was almost as if they expected him to pay when he turned up. He didn't have the money on him and had to borrow ush120,000 ($NZ 99.67) from me to pay for it. I'm sure the price went up due the Muzungu's (white man's) presence, which was a bit sad really. Trying to extract as much profit as you can from somebody's passing is just a tad yucky. Travis and I spent a long time after the funeral talking about Ugandan politics around a campfire. It reminded me of the first time I met Raymund - the head of the Philippines program I volunteered through and a good mate. After talking ourselves hoarse, we headed back with Sylvia to the nearest small town and found a place to crash for the night.
We we herded into a small room where a couple of mattresses were strewn across the floor. Sylvia and Mary (Travis' sister) were kind enough to go and get us some food. We had some plates but no utensils, so we had to go African style and use our hands. I am unsure why we were actually staying at this hotel and having to hunt for food in the first place. Travis was kind enough to pay for the grave even though he is not even a married relation, and yet we could not stay at the house. Maybe their was some family politics going on that I was not aware of. *shrugs* There was - surprise surprise - no shower at the "hotel". Being the industrious Ugandans that they are, Sylvia and Travis constructed a shower in the backyard from some sticks and some sheets. Neat. The kids here are like all the kids I've meet on my volunteer junket. They are fascinated by the white man. I managed to attract a crowd of them outside the hotel. I first entertained them with my juggling prowess before snapping a picture of them trying it for themselves. The also got great laughs from posing for an "ugly" picture. Heading Home and Deadly
Bus Rides The road outside Buduburum Refugee Camp is deadly dangerous with Ghanaian drivers hurtling past at ridiculous speeds. I volunteered with a girl named Kate. She had volunteered at the camp about a year or so ago. She related a story of a tro-tro that flipped onto its side after a tyre blow out. It slid into the path of an oncoming water truck and twenty souls lost their lives. She and some other volunteers tried to help out as best they could. With vehicles like this on the road it is no wonder these types of things happen... Overloaded vehicles like this cannot help either. Travis, Sylvia and I caught a roadworthy bus back to Kampala. The bus driver was idiotic in a typically African way. Some of the overtaking maneuvers he made were enough to make even the most road hardened African traveler cringe. One of the few things that slowed him down was an out of place traffic queue. We waited for about ten minutes before Travis went out to investigate. Turns out that a bus in front of us had been trying an idiotic overtaking maneuver and had to swerve into a ditch to avoid a head on collision. We learnt later that seventeen people had lost their lives. Most of the deceased and injured had been transported away by the time we got there, but those still not accounted for where desperately thirsty, so we handed out all the water we had. Once we got past the accident, our bus driver continued on in his idiotic way. Wrap Up It was a shame that such tragic circumstances gave us the opportunity. Questions? Comments? Try contacting
me. (c)
2005 and 2006 Malcolm Trevena. |
