Our adventure in our (unfortunately) non – amphibious vehicle

Tom and I left from Jinja to visit Okwalinga Augustine, an old friend from Soroti whom I helped put through school – who now is married with a newborn. Okwalinga rang me to ask if I would name his firstborn. I choose to name him after my brother, Andrew Justman – but then the family added on the royal 3rd name – hence Andrew Jean Justman. We kept putting off the visit for many reasons – bad roads, waiting for the driller to come, and more recently – the ole Landcruiser had many problems –to the tune of 2.8 million shillings. (It always sounds more impressive in Ugandan shillings, 2250 to a US dollar). So Ben, our local mechanic finally got the beast going with a new clutch system –but it died about 75 kilometers out of Jinja. I played with the fuel line and it moved almost 200m before pooping out. This gave Tom and I a chance to explore the happening whistle stop of Namatumba, just down from Busembatia – can’t miss it. We people watched and walked its two streets, had a cold soda as we waited for Ben et al to show up and save the day. They did this by rerouting the double diesel filter system – so it works –but you can’t turn it off… so we went back to Jinja 3 hours after sunset. The next day by noon, we were back on the road to Soroti (got your maps out?) Meanwhile, Ryan, exhibiting great insight chose to go up our normal way through south Karamoja using public transport.
It was great to see Okwalinga after many years, to see a boy turned man. I’ve watched him grow up over the years from a struggling lad living in an IDP camp to teaching others while providing for his family and 3 cousin orphans. So fun to see God at work! The next day, we headed down the road with KACHEP’s Chairman, John Loumo. John’s another story in himself - a few months ago, he suffered a terrible road accident in Kampala, the capitol city. He was sitting on the back of a boda-boda (a small scooter –taxi) when a matatu (a big van-taxi) smashed into them as the matatu entered the round-about. Then the taxi driver turned the matatu and drove at John’s lifeless body straddling the curb, put his van on top of John’s chest and ran off! It’s a miracle that John is alive.
Anyways back to today’s story – we headed north east up the Soroti-Moroto road. We stopped in the first Karamojong town, Iriiri and as we marveled at the mountains surrounding us, I asked, “Do you all want to stop here for lunch, or just push on to Nabilatuk?” The plate of beans and greens with chapattis was delicious –good thing we decided to stop, the next meal wouldn’t come for another day and a half! The mountain of Napak is really beautiful – it’s a serious of mountains that once, long ago, were all part of the same volcano – now it’s a large, craggy ring of 5 different mountains. Looks great from atop, as I’ve seen on multiple visits to search for medicinal plants and healers, and breathtaking from the circle below, changing with every angle and weather change. So, there’s this road (ahem, footpath) that goes to the south of it directly to Nabilatuk (home-sweet-home) that I haven’t traveled on for probably 5 years. One time, about 10 years ago, I met a huge raiding party of warriors from Bokora going to Pian. Thinking that I would give their plan away, hundreds of them menacingly surrounded our truck that day, guns ready, forcing us to retreat and quite literally beg for mercy…. but that’s another story for another day.
So, with adventure in the air, we asked around about the road. Another local NGO said, “Oh that road is fine, there are only 1 or 2 bad places, but your truck is strong, it will pass”. Off we went – it was about 1.30pm and we only had 45km to drive – what a short-cut! This’ll be great, John and Tom had never been this way, it’ll save us time and we’ll all enjoy amazing mountain views.
The road started out wide, with a narrow strip of grass down the middle and knee high grass on the edges. We’d pass handfuls of people along the way, every once in a while someone would recognize us and wave and shout in glee. It’s finally getting into the dry season, and the road showed it – dry and dusty, with women carrying large grass bundles on their heads in preparation of roofing homes. As we kept edging around the mountain, floods of memories danced in my head… here’s the protected spring that CHiPs put in, there’s the school where the healers first met Tom after he proposed – oh, they wanted cows for their ‘daughter’, here’s the village where one of our healers used to live, before he was tragically killed, oh, here’s a deep ravine that might be impassable –whew, made it through. On we went for 20km, sometimes in 4x4, other times hopping out to survey the road, but just chugging along happily enjoying sceneries, memories and conversation.
Till we hit the swamp.
We got stuck.
Then the flowing river, down the middle of our path, deep enough to our knees soaked, criss-crossed any way of easy escape. Along with the elephant grass, tall enough to block views left and right,– we could barely see the road that had become a narrow, windy path and certainly couldn’t see the hidden stumps below, just waiting to tear apart our tires.
We got stuck again, luckily some soldiers helped Tom and John pushed as I piloted. Thankfully, Tom and Ryan had just bought lots of building tools – but, before the ordeal was done – most of the tools had been used, and a couple broke. We got stuck in deep mud again, now the previous tire ruts were so deep that our chassis was sitting high and the tires just spun.
Actually, I can’t remember how many times we stuck and how many new people we met that day – none of whom knew how to drive, but all will willing to push and pull and give lots of advice on how to better drive.
They came out of the deep grass with machetes and hoes, we pulled out shovels and high-lifts, 2 meter long digging bars. Digging and pushing, straining and strategizing how to get out and search for more stable ground. We searched for any stone – rare in the dark, clay like muddy soil. No trees to secure a wench to…drats, we don’t even have one of those! Grassy savannah –perfect for zebra and giraffe. We cut grass and wedged under the spinning tires to get traction, lifted the truck to dig out the axel and put rocks under our tires. My shoes would get stuck deep in the mud till I finally just removed them. We had people standing on different corners of the truck as other rocked from the back and then ran to the front. We were all covered with sticky black mud, most of the time laughing, other times –frustrated, many times exhausted from the pushing and even walking. These shenanigans sometimes got us 2 feet, sometimes 20, but we just kept getting stuck - till we got stuck for the last time that day, in the middle of a swamp, just on the edge of the washed out road. The pushing ringleader of the now 10 men and 2 soldiers, Saidi, invited us to take a night in his manyatta –staying in the truck would have been miserable with swarms of mosquitoes and potential enemies. Soldiers came to watch over our truck as we slipped and slid along the path in the enveloping dark up to his huts in the foothills of Napak. Before locking up the truck, I found an apple, 3 full water bottles (from Okwalinga) and local mosquito repellent concoction (from Sarah). I left one water bottle in the truck for tomorrow’s escapades. Saidi had told us with about 30 minutes left of daylight that we should make a plan of where to sleep and his men were tired, they hadn’t eaten and all that was at home was local brew. “Let them rest and we’ll get you on the way tomorrow.”
So, as Saidi’s family got a hut ready for us, we splashed on the plant tincture to frustrate mosquitoes, divide the apple into thirds and gulped down water into our tired, mud-caked bodies. Washed our face, hands and feet and stretched out on the cow hides that they laid out for us. Surprisingly, they even strung up mosquito nets from the grass thatched roof, complete with holes that Florida cockroaches could pass through, the net almost reaching the floor. Throughout the night we enjoyed a cacophony of music ranging from the bzzzzzz of winged, blood sucking creatures and the whining and scratching of furry rodents crawling along the floor and bamboo roof supports. John’s head rested upon a pumpkin, my sore left shoulder butted up against the center pole; Tom used a sheet to cover his face from the malaria-infested creatures that were becoming fat and happy on our blood. Our morning came an hour before sunrise. After which we greeted our new neighbors and friends and slip slided away back to our sinking, non-amphibious Landcruiser whose white body was now mud streaked from tire to overloaded rack, which, by the way was leaning precariously to the left at a ever increasing 30* angle.
We strained from 6.30 to 10am before we finally moved…about 6 feet. Ugh.
This continued for another hour till we finally left our friends behind (with our pockets 100,000 shillings lighter) and us promising to return after the roads have dried with a goat and we’d stay for a long full moon weekend. This will give us a chance to story twice a day with them, share a goat roast and get to know one another better.
Off we went.
For about 20 minutes, just after leaving a one room school house in the middle of no-where. Now we were far from any civilization. Did I mention that I have yet to get the radio call working in the truck AND that cell phones don’t work so well in the bush? Well, they don’t. I had been trying to call ahead so that Ryan wouldn’t worry. Anyways, back to the adventure - John and Tom walked back to the school to see if they could get some help – I walked forward, looking for people (of which there were none) and rocks to help the truck’s spinning tires (of which I found few). The next time we got stuck, I heard a strange bird call… ah, it was my phone! By the grace of God –we found a 2 foot area of cell phone coverage and a search party was forming wondering where we were. So, as we were struggling to go forward to Nabilatuk, our friend Bob Wright from South Karamoja was with Ryan trying to find the cow path to rescue us.
Meanwhile, Tom and John found 4 guys to help push and pull us out. The same routine, lift the truck, fill the water filled rut with grass and rocks. Dig out the axels and push. After an hour, we whittled the work force down to 2 warriors and continued our trek to Nabilatuk. They ran ahead, swerving left and right off the ‘road’ to find solid ground, free of stumps, as I drove on following their flying tire shoes.
At one time, while Tom was atop the truck – he spotted Bob’s truck. Alas, it was turning around, we found out later he was concerned that he was about to get stuck and wasn’t even convinced that they were on the correct road. We pressed on, we prayed, we drove and finally spotted a white t-shirt in the distance. It was only 14 km from where we spent the night. Four relieved people spilled out of Bob’s truck with 2 thermoses full of cold water, much to our relief. 35 more km, we were home.
Ahh, just in time for the sunset, supper and shower.