Tuesday, December 1st 2009

            Today I woke at 4:45 and walked down to Maggie’s room.  She was ready to go so we walked outside at 5:00 AM.  The entire city of Kigali was quiet…almost unusually quiet.  We walked around for about 10 minutes when we finally found two boda boda drivers that could take us to the bus park.  I told my boda boda driver to follow Maggie no matter what – I didn’t want us to get separated at that time of the morning.  There was no issue with the boda boda’s and they took us right to the bus park and we got on the Kampala Coach bus with no problems.

            Maggie fell asleep pretty quickly.  I couldn’t fall asleep (usual problems falling asleep on moving vehicles) but this problem was exacerbated by a man two rows behind me playing music on his laptop.  It was before 6:30 AM and this guy was playing music loudly.  I was angry, but the gods punished him later for his transgressions.

            At around noon we pulled into a gas station.  Maggie was asleep and I was dozing pretty good.  Apparently, though, a man boarded the bus – walked all the way to the back where the people with the laptops had left their laptops on their seat while they got something to drink.  The man took two lap tops and walked off the bus.  (Nobody on this bus noticed this man didn’t belong there).

            When the people with the stolen laptops got back they were FURIOUS that Kampala Coach had let someone on the bus who didn’t have a tichet.  Then they asserted that the Kampala Coach operators had colluded with the thief who not only knew to walk to the back of the bus where the laptops were located, but was also allowed on and off the bus with no questioning.  Honestly it wouldn’t surprise me if the bus operators were colluding with the thief.  The buses here are shady as hell.           

            Long story short we were detained an hour while the people chased around the small town looking for the thief.  Alas, their search ended to no avail and the bus continued on its journey.  The rest of the 12 hour bus ride passed without anything major.  It was very weird to think a thief had entered the bus and apparently walked past where Maggie and I were sitting.  Guess we got lucky – mzungus are always targeted in instances like these.

            Maggie and I got back to Kampala, ate Indian food and went back to our compound mentally and physically exhausted.