Public Car

Could a new, more favorable trend be starting?  For the second week in a row my wait for a public car to bring me back from Mugujai was short.  Also for the second week in a row, the car was almost empty.  Until recently, the drivers would not start out from Busia (4 km away) until the car was what they call full (overloaded).  Now they are looking for passengers and fares along the way.  Good!  There are many of us along the way that need transportation.  Last week we went from one passenger, me, at the eastern edge of Mugujai, to one person shy of overloaded by the western edge of Mugujai (maybe half a kilometer).  This time we reached the next village before we were so overloaded that the driver sent one of the new passengers to another vehicle loading cargo nearby.

Kiko Alobu

They did continue to work on the border road since my trip last week.  The first half (the part that was grated last year) is still in reasonably good shape.  There are a few areas that remind me of a roller coaster, but that does not slow traffic like the potholes did.  Now the second half is good.  Even the places where drainage conduits were put across the road to move the water to lower ground without washing out the road are smooth.  Previously they resulted in a speed hump (too wide to be a speed bump but the traffic is still impacted).  The grating resulted in a better, more gradual ramp up, over, and back down.

The only downside that I noticed was the speed bumps that the people of Mugujai installed to slow down the traffic near the school and near the market, are gone.  The drivers are taking advantage of the change, so I must make my request for a stop before I can see the place I want to get out.

Kiko

I traveled to Mugujai last Friday. It is now Monday; I was surprised to see the road had been grated from Kogoropa going east since Friday.  This is a dirt road frequently damaged by the rain.  They grated the section from Keri to Kogoropa (the western section) last year.  The section from Kogoropa to Busia was not as bad (then); they left it untouched.  As the rains returned this year the hill down from Kogoropa became badly rutted, turning a two-lane road into a one lane straddling the ruts that were deep enough to cause a car to bottom out if the tire slipped into the rut.

Today, Kogoropa hill was grated, and the ruts had been filled and packed down.  By the time I returned, the grater had reached 2/3 of the distance to Mugujai.  It is good to have many of the gut-wrenching holes filled in.

Multi-language environment

I managed to get a public car back from Mugujai (to Koboko) quickly this week (unusual).  A little farther, the driver stopped to fill his last seat.  He spent some time talking with the family members that were seeing the passenger off.  As we drove, he asked her, in English, why she wanted to go to Gulu so late in the day.  Vehicles leaving now (from Koboko) would not reach Gulu today.  She explained that a family member was sick, and she was called to come help.  She had been doing the same thing in Mugujai and had to wait for the family to release her.  The family in Mugujai is Kakwa, but the members in Gulu are from another tribe, that became part of the family by marriage.  I have the impression that the reason the family members spent so much time talking to the driver is because she does not speak Kakwa, only English and the language of the tribe in Gulu.

Public Car

The route of a public car is far from fixed.  Previously I wrote about traveling to Mugujai in a public car that went via Tendele and then the driver put me on a boda because that route bypasses Mugujai.

This week, on the way back to Koboko, a couple of women negotiated with the driver to carry them and their cargo (presumably large bags of groundnuts because it did not smell like cassava, nor was it covered in charcoal dust like bags of charcoal are) to their shop on the edge of the boma grounds (community field) of north division, nearly 1.5 km off the normal route.  The rest of us just had to wait in the car while he made this diversion.  No one complained.

Tendele

This week the public car bypassed Mugujai.  While we were still in Koboko, waiting for additional passengers, a woman with kids in tow asked the driver to go to Tendele.  I never heard the answer and did not see anyone get in the vehicle right after that, so I did not think anything more about it.  Apparently, they did not get in the vehicle because the woman was making sure all the things she purchased were loaded into the boot (trunk).  Suddenly the vehicle did fill up.  When we took the turn off for Tendele some of the other passengers complained because they did not know you can reach Busia via Tendele.  I asked, and the driver said, yes, he would drop me in Mugujai on the way back from Busia.  This meant I would be late reaching Mugujai and my computer skills class, but I would get there.

When we arrived in Busia, the driver decided to hire a boda to take me to Mugujai at his cost.  This meant I would not be “as” late to teach class, because I would not have to wait for the vehicle to fill up again.  It also meant he could sell that seat in the vehicle again, which would earn him more money than he spent hiring a boda for me because he bypassed Mugujai.

Travel

Traveling by public car is becoming more challenging.  Once each week I make the trip to Mugujai to teach computer skills.  I catch the public car at the beginning of the route from Koboko to Busia (4 km beyond Mugujai).  There used to be several passengers around 9 am.  Now I am one of the few, so the driver insists on waiting until the vehicle is full.  There are several who try to get the driver to pick them up en-route and they will do that if there is room, but the trend now is to fill the vehicle before starting.

On the way back I am one of the people trying to get transport mid-route.  Lately, that has been hard, delaying my return home by an hour or more.  Fortunately, some of the drivers have been willing to start picking up return passengers (if they have room) while traveling to Busia.  It makes the trip longer (starting out going the wrong way) but it allows me to get in a vehicle before it is full.

Dust

The weekly trip to Mugujai is improving in some respects.  The first ten kilometers of the road have been grated so the vehicles are not constantly climbing out of one pothole and into another.  This has reduced the travel time back to what it should be. 

However, there are other aspects of the trip that are worse.  I have returned to wearing my CoVid mask; this time because of the dust along the grated (no longer packed) road.  Even with the mask, I end up sneezing and blowing dirt out of my nose by the time I arrive at my destination.  Only vehicles with working A/C provide any escape to their passengers.  Unfortunately, the drivers of the public vehicles do not consider the A/C as something worth spending money on.

Travel

I made my weekly trip out to Mugujai to teach computer skills.  Most of the trip is on a dirt (dusty during the dry season) road that parallels the boarder with South Sudan.  This road has been deteriorating since it was last grated two years ago.  It was badly rutted with potholes that were more effective than speed bumps in slowing traffic.

It was, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that grating work has begun.  Now the road has garbage embedded in it because the ditch was being used as a rubbish pit.  The grater does not care.  He just scrapes the dirt back into the road and fills the ruts and moves on while a roller (no longer steam based) packed it down.  Only the first few kilometers were done when I went to Mugujai.  The crew was working on the next few kilometers when I returned to Koboko in the afternoon.

Public Car

The new year is here, and the holidays are over; however, the routes that raised their rates, continue to charge the higher rate.  The drivers are up to their old tricks.  I saw you first and I have a good seat for you.  No, you do not want to go to that car that is about to leave, they will pack you into the back seat.  I will put you in the front seat.  I am going now, no delay.

Fifty minutes later, and after several other cars have loaded and left, “I still do not have any other passengers, so you transfer to this car.”  No delay?  It was all delay!  I do not want to offend, but I can not trust them to go when they say they will.