A Close Call

Well, it's official, I'm now 26 years old. It's hard to believe, but true. I think that means I'm finally supposed to figure out what I'm doing with my life, but it may take a few more years yet. At least I have a beginning, I have started the applications for grad school, so eventually I may have something figured out. Oh well.

It was an exciting birthday. Kind of. I went to Kampala for the weekend, and everything went fine, I even got a lot of work done for the applications, but the return journey was a little different than what I'm used to. Everything was going fine until we hit the dirt road that goes to my house. I was pretty excited because the bus had made good time up to this point, and I thought I would be home at 7, or just before it gets dark. Well, something always happens when I get cocky and think that things are going to continue to go well for me, and so things obviously had to go wrong.

It's the rainy season, so the roads aren't in the best condition at the moment, and rains were heavy recently. I noticed something was wrong when we were on a slight incline but seemed to be slowing considerably. Eventually we stopped, and this was not a steep part of the road, let me tell you. But we could all feel the tires skidding and losing traction, and knew what the problem was. This particular stretch of road is incredibly prone to landslides and bad conditions, so every able bodied passenger (except for myself because I wasn't exactly sure what everyone was saying) got off the bus to try to help push the thing up the hill. The driver tried to accelerate, and everyone else was pushing, when suddenly the bus fishtailed and the rear end slid towards the edge of the road. This wouldn't be such a bad thing if there was a barrier of some sort, or no 30 foot drop on the other side, but only a small ledge of earth existed between the wheels of the bus and the drop. So the last passenger, an old man, and myself decided it was time to also vacate the bus. We got out, and the bus workers grabbed a hoe from the locals and began to dig out the areas in front of each of the tires and place dry dirt and sand in front of the tires. I stood beside the road watching helplessly, hoping something would go right. I was only 20 km from home, but it was getting dark and I didn't want to make that walk at night with all of my luggage. So I watched on as the bus continued to slide further and further to the edge, but luckily the ledge kept the bus on the road, it being lighter from having no passengers. The people pushing got the thing up the incline, and eventually we all jumped back on, although I was quite alert for the remainder of my ride. A little excitement in an otherwise calm and eventless 8 hour ride.

I got home safe and sound, and am here to tell the story, so no harm done. I probably would have survived if the thing had gone over the edge anyway, since the drop was only like 30 feet. But at least I didn't have to go through that! And sorry mom, for worrying you. Dan told me you were kind of freaking out, it wasn't that big of a deal, I was just worried because I didn't want to walk home in the dark:). I hope they can do something about that part of the road, because even in small cars you fishtail through the entire thing, and the rainy season has barely begun. I could be in for some more hair raising adventures.