Headed North

Akra with our ride on the highway north. We traded his car for his dad's for the month. We lost a pretty nice radio, but gained a lot more reliability and security in the rest of the car's functions. It's about a 4 hour drive from Kampala to Gulu, but ours had few delays...

Road accidents are a pretty common site in Uganda. We came across this accident an hour and a half into our drive. A matatu collided with a lorry carrying timber. We stopped to offer help.


Binford put his emergency medicine skills to good use for this American on board the matatu, heading towards Murchison Falls for a safari. The collision caused his shoulder to hit the seat in front of him with considerable force. Luckily, he broke no bones and John made sure the pulses, sensation, and motor functions were intact in his arm. His shoulder, though, caused him immense pain with any movement, so Binford fashioned a little sling with a T-shirt, a skill he picked up recently with some Wilderness Medicine folks in Connecticut. I, on the other hand, relied on my pre-med training to be of assistance. A mzungu came over to our car and typed into a little hand-held device, which then produced short English phrases on its screen. "Can you call my friend?" "Tell him I'm okay." "I have no minutes." While we tried to communicate in English, it became clear he couldn't understand us very well, nor produce much of any language from his mouth. I asked, "Where are you from?" That one he understood. A strained "France" came out of his tightly pursed lips. So I put my French to use, he would respond on his machine, and in the end, we got him a ride on another matatu taking him back to the French Embassy in Kampala.

After our work was done there, we continued on our way, crossing the Nile while baboons chased along side our car for food, and reached a small town just north of the river where the election fervor was taking hold. Yellow is the color of the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement (NRM). And dried banana leaves are another symbol they commonly employ. Note on the back of the matatu, it says "School Fees." Not sure what to make of this phrase, but big decals saying all kinds of phrases like "God Will" or "Jesus is Lord" are routinely pasted on the rear windows of buses and taxi vans.

Museveni on a T-shirt. Elections will be held this February. With so many candidates running for president and the opposition parties fragmented, public opinion is that there won't be much trouble for the ruling party.