We lost Ben. Jon’s buying food but ben never made it to the grocery store. I get him on the phone to find out that he has been dropped off, not far off, but in the wrong part of town. So he gets things straitened out and is on his way... meanwhile we try to get the rest of what we need to get on our way. Foods bought: noodles, sardines, snickers, breakfast bars, and water. We are all there packing our bags on some benches in the middle of the mall. Stuff is just getting thrown in so that we can hit the road, considering we are in a race with the sun and currently we are losing. The bota drivers take us up to the top of town from there we can start hitch hiking. Thumbs go up and let the games begin. We start walking into the sunset as the sun makes its last appearance and ducks behind the distant hills. I have found that in africa the sun stays in the sky as long as it can then it drops faster than a beat from a hillbilly band. We throw down a prayer to God that goes something like. “keep us alive, amen.” and keep moving just walking in two packs of two. This was in hopes that the driver would see the first and stop for the second. We land our first ride with a nice woman who takes us just a few kilometers but that's enough to get us out of town which is always better for getting rides. She was a nice middle aged woman listening to her sermon and telling us white boys to be careful. Who knew Africa gets more dangerous at night. We did. She dumps us off and we start hitching again. Its fully dark by now all you can see is headlights and shadows of people around you. That and 4 white figures with packs waving at every car that isn’t a matato (public transport). We land a flatbed truck with four other mudugavus (black natives) in the back who look at us as if we are all crazy as the thought of electricity on Noah’s ark. They smiled and so did we, few miles down the road we stop at a gas station for some petrol. Waiting in the back, Jon jumps down and asks a big rig which way they are heading. He saying he is going all the way to Gulu which was our goal for that night. We are all pumped! all we gatta do is ride it out. I look down at my hands and find that the pole in the back of the last truck apparently needed to be greased to death and now so was I. But we all pack into the cab of the truck. There are two in the back of the cab, Jon and Jer, Ben and i are up front. The driver hadn’t said a word but the other guy was more than thrilled to be talking to us and was just going on and on about who knows what. The truck is moving at 30 km per hour. downhill. We find out that they are going to reach Gulu by the next morning. So we start discussing the thought of getting another ride. Finally Timothy, the passenger, pipes up and says there is a police stop ahead and we needed to hide, all in behind the curtains. So we quickly all pack in 4 guys and 4 packs - no room. The truck stops and we can hear the police asking if there is anyone in the back. The men lie and say no. I glance over at Jer who is stretching the curtain so that it covers at least half of him from being in sight. But we made it past with no trouble. A few minutes later we spread back out. Getting smuggled past a police stop, check. The driver asks Timothy something, but he is distracted looking for a black bag. Ben is sitting next to him. We look everywhere, jon in the back finds a few black ones next to him but they arn’t the right one. Ben pipes up “is it this one?” and pulls one out from under his feet. “Yes that is thank you.” “Whats in it?” We open the bag an inside is the trucker's loaf of bread or midnight meal with a size 12 shoe imprint diagonally, making sure that it smashed the maximum number of slices. Ben goes. “oops, sorry thought it was a pillow.” but there are no hard feelings just laughs, so far. Finally the driver is heard. And the long waited question comes. “Do you guys have any money?” “Nope” the driver was getting heated. He obviously wasn’t as friendly and was wanting a little compensation. We ask to be dropped off because we are feeling some tension and besides we want to find a ride that might be a little faster than 5 km/hour uphill and 10 down. Timothy argues with the other man for a second and we then ask if the driver understands english. “Yes, he knows everything you are saying”-Timothy. Nice we were being ignored by a 30 year old african. So that's it. We demand to be dropped off, even against Timothy’s will, he didn’t want us to get hurt and said he would feel responsible. The truck drives off and its dark everywhere.
The only light is from the occasional person waking up checking their surroundings and finding that they arn’t in the texan desert or hell, just africa. We put the tent up and bed down. I whisper to Jon “should we take the rain tarp off?” We had originally left it on to protect against the thought of waking up with a cheetah or panther staring strait down at his dinner - us. But at this point it was becoming unbearable. “Im fine with it.”-Jon "Lets just take up the ends." So i get out and fold up some of the sides. We had been in the tent for about 2 hours and time was slugging along slower than the truck we had been in the day before. The joke passed around the tent that if we left the tarp on then we would all be perfectly crock potted by morning for whatever prey did stumble across us. A slight breeze blows through the tent and we all sigh and pause for a moment, but it is still standing at 90.2 degrees. --Andrew
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