I recently took a bus trip to Kampala. I left home at around three o'clock in the afternoon. I wanted to get to the bus when it was already full so that I wouldn't have to wait a long time at the station. I walked half of the way in order to do some shopping. I delayed for as long as I could; I arrived at about five o'clock and yet still there was no bus.
The bus arrived thirty minutes after I did but it did not take long to load since there were many people waiting. We left almost as soon as it arrived, but it would further delay us at a fuel station before the trip started. Unlike many of the passengers, I chose to climb onto the bus and secure a good seat before paying for the bus ticket. When I had climbing onto the bus, I looked to the front, which is where I prefer to seat. I asked a woman who was settling in if the seat next to her was free and she said it was. I then asked her how much a bus ticket cost. She told me she knew the bus driver, and that he was her nephew. She offered to go and pay for the ticket on my behalf and I agreed. Since the price of a ticket changes everyday I did not want to be overcharged. While she had gone off to get me a ticket, another person came and filled the remaining space on our seat.
While the bus refueled at the fuel station, the woman seated next to me told me more about herself. She told me more about her relationship with the bus driver. But then she spotted another one of her other relations from her village, a man who looked like he was in his early thirties, but whom she said was in his early twenties. He specialized in selling imported cars and he appeared to be in the middle of a business deal when she saw him. She then sent some one to call him, and when he had climbed on to the bus to greet her, the other man on our seat drew my attention to a bus driver in an air-pilot's uniform. He said that that was the uniform given to bus drivers of certain company operating between Uganda and Rwanda. The pilot then climbed into a red bus that had also been refueling near ours, and the bus pulled out of the fuel station. He then told me that that bus was coming from Rwanda.
PART II
We pulled out of the petrol station at about a half past six, the woman next to me agreed with me that we would be reaching Kampala late in the night. She greeted her nephew whom had now climbed into the driver's seat taking over from the actual owner of the bus whom had driven us to the fuel station from the bus stop. She told me that they do this sometimes. She then went on to tell me about the bus owner and their family business. Apparently, two of the maybe three or four bus companies running between here and Kampala are owned by two brothers, one had recently started his own company. The original company was owned by their father who had recently passed away.
The woman who by now was confirmed as my travel companion also told me more about the person at the fuel station that sold imported cars. She told me that although the business is his, he works with a team of friends. Together they have the biggest share in the local market, and yet he is in his early twenties. She told me that he is a married with many two children, and that he had built a house. He had married a woman from a well off family. But the marriage was not without controversy. The man had courted the woman against her father's wishes and when they were going to get married, the father gave them some start up capital and told them to leave his house where they had been staying, apparently he worked for the father at their place prior to this. She told me that his business is not as informal as it seemed, seeing that some of his business deal appeared to be happening in the back seat of the seemingly new car he was in when we saw him. She said that he had an office in town. She was fond of him, he once exchanged a car of hers damaged in an accident for another at a discounted price, and then went on to rebuild it and sell it. It was his enterprising mind that she admired.
Part III
The trip was never really silent, she was an open person. I told her that I was a recent graduated trying to get a job and then she told me that she had one or two children (I don't recall), studying at University level and some younger ones in primary and secondary school. She then told me a rather interesting account of how she got her first job in the education ministry as a secretary - She had gone in for an interview after getting her diploma. The prominent officer that she was going to be working for instead asked her whether or not she was married. She told him she was not. He then told her he would give her the job if she agreed to marry him. She returned home without the job after refusing to marry the man. She explained what had happen to her family, and her parents her mom included, which surprised me, told her to go back to this man and accept his proposal and she did. She told me she had been married to this man ever since, and that they even have this big family together; their eldest child is almost graduating out of university. I found all this oddly absurd. She said they have even traveled together spending some of their time in Tanzania; I think she said more than five years if not ten. She also said that she even tells her children the story of how she married their father against her will.
We also talked a bit about AIDS and how its affecting the people close to us. My main contribution to this conversation was my understanding of her stories. She told me of a friend or cousin or sister of hers, someone close (a lot of this is vague in my mind because it happened over a month ago around the first of April 2011) - As the story goes, a man with HIV and AIDS befriends the girl without telling her that he is infected, then he marries her and impregnates her then afterwards tells her. Before he tells her he says that he has a secret and that he would tell her after two days. Then on the second day he tells her. After telling her she goes to get tested and she finds that she is infected even though the baby isn't. Then, maybe out of anger she separates from him and goes to leave with her sisters. Since the separation she has gone on with her life separate from this man but of late they have started talking again. My travel companion says she recently met with the young lady and the lady was doing fine.
We also talked about something else interesting about AIDS, maybe it was AIDS awareness education in high schools and in primary schools; we talked extensively about AIDS as I recall. We also talked about the Ugandan job market and about how difficult it is to get a job. I told her that as a scientist it is very tough to secure a good job, something which she disagreed with. She told me about a situation where she had to scold one of her sons for not taking his sciences seriously, his argument was that he didn't see the point of doing well in mathemtics. I tried to explain to her that as a scientist you cannot survive as an average student you have to be above average in the least. Employers looking for scientisits seek out people that excelled in their studies, something that is not easy.
I remember saying something was not easy and repeating it because this is when the middle aged man sitting with us decided to enter this strangely interesting conversation we were in. He had been reading a book or a newspaper, I do not remember, his contribution as he told us was from a book called Think and Grow Rich. He quoted formulars of success from that book. He said that that we could use these methods when tackling these problems that we thought were not easy. He then became part of the conversation for the rest of the trip and at some point talked across me to my travel companion in the local lingo leaving me out of the conversation.
PART IV
It was a five hour trip, and along the way darkness came and covered our bus. I only remember at one point looking out the nearest window and seeing some stars in the dark-black sky behind the thin trees that went rushing by. I also remember at some point my travel companion buying two fingers of Gonje for me when the bus had stopped for a passangers break about halfway the trip; there was still daylight. Another thing I remember was a rather interesting word of caution my travel companion had for me at some point along the trip - She said that seeing that you are young and unemployed you need to be wary of eldery women that prey on young men like you. She said that there are old single women that will give you jobs in exchange for sexual favours. This must have been the conversation that got us talking about AIDS. We talked about these women, then I told her that I am very religious, and if I came across such a woman, seeing that I needed the job I would have to accept what she was offerring while aware of what the consequeces might be, but with with Gods guidence I would not do anything that is unworthy of his love. I must add that I came to discover that she was a Muslim woman although she didn't look it, and the other middle aged man was a Christian, and yet we praised God as if we were from the same church.
She got off of the bus at a fuel station where she worked, a short distance before the bus entered into Kampala. About ten minutes before she got off, the bus went past the area where she lived and she even pointed out a plot of land that she owned. While looking at her place two red buses went past us. Our driver stopped to talk with the driver of the second bus, clad in the pilot suit. The middle age man on my side told me that they were headed for Rwanda: it was almost ten o'clock in the night.
Soon after my travell companion got off the bus, I also got off, I left on board and in our seat the middle aged man who was headed for another Kampala surburb. He told me that it had been a long day for him as this was a return trip. He had a meeting early tomorrow morning here in Kampala that he could not miss, otherwise he would not have come back today. I then bid him farewell as I disembarked and that ended my bus trip to Kampala.