If you give a mouse a cookie

She is going to want a glass of milk. After my weekend of debauchery at the Hairy Lemon/Jinja, I had tasted the "travel bug" and decided to take up Carrie on her offer to give me a tour of Gulu the next weekend.

Located in the Northern part of the country and home to a large number of internally displaced person camps, Gulu is not a popular vacation spot. In fact, I cannot even begin to tell you how many funny looks I got on the bus ride up when I mentioned that I was going to Gulu on holiday and not for work purposes. Perhaps I should have been thrown off by the fact that despite being the second largest city in the country (behind Kampala, of course) Lonely Planet barely even gives it a paragraph. Nevertheless, I (and Leah) decided to give Carrie, who had spent a significant amount of time in the town over the summer, the benefit of the doubt and trust her assessment of Gulu as "one of her favorite relaxing places on Earth."

Unfortunately office bureaucracy meant that Leah had to cancel on our "girl bonding weekend" (you win, Jeff) but maybe better that way as Carrie and I already had to kick 2 Ugandans out of their seats on the 5:30 am bus because there was no way we were going to stand for the 6 hour trip(going to see Bourne Ultimatum at 9 and having an old school sleepover with 90210 afterwards is maybe not such a good idea before a planned 5 am departure...). 6 hours later- and not even Noon yet- we were in Gulu. We spent the afternoon in the market buying fabric and having new wardrobes constructed for ourselves and then met up with Beth, a friend who lives in Kitgum, for a rice and beans dinner at a local hole-in-the-wall joint. Afterwards we headed to the one pub in town (appropriately called "Da Pub") to watch the Rugby World Cup final between England and South Africa. The good news was that South Africa won, the bad news that not a single tri was scored and the lack of excitement coupled with our early morning wake up call put me in bed shortly after the game's finale.

Sunday was spent eating delicious vegetable sandwiches by a hotel pool before going to get massages (who says the North isn't relaxing?!). Not bad at all. In fact, it would have been the perfect day had it not been for the miserably hot, uncomfortable night of sleep inside (no, not underneath literally inside) a mosquito net in a shared bed. I have never been so sticky in my life, nor so frustrated as I knew that there was no running water and somehow a bucket shower just didn't seem like enough.

On Monday an exhausted Carrie and I said goodbye to Beth, attempted to pick up all of the stuff we had made (about 10% of which was actually ready) and then got on a bus back to Kampala. Again, we were among the last to board the bus (keep in mind African public transport doesn't have a schedule- instead the bus just leaves when all of the seats are full and, often times, when there is no more standing room in the aisle) so were not able to sit next to one another. Instead, the inflatable pillows and iPod came out and we tried to make up for our horrible night of sleep the night before. Things were going well for the first half an hour or so until the bus made its first stop for Uganda's version of fast food: men and women running along side the bus and trying to get the passengers to buy roasted goat meat on a stick, water, grilled cassava, etc. I have become alarmingly used to the smell of goat meat and having greasy sticks by my feet, however discovered a new joy when the man I was sitting next to decided to buy two live chickens to bring home with him. Clearly uncomfortable at the thought of spending the next five hours next to two live clucking chickens, the man looked at me and asked if I was afraid of birds. Forgetting I was in Uganda and figuring that might be an easy way out I said "yes, birds scare me." Now this response pretty much anywhere else in the world would definitely secure some distance between me and the birds however this isn't just anywhere- this is Uganda where people are friendly to the point of danger. The man found it his responsibility to cure my fear of birds and insisted that one of the chickens ride next to my feet. This was even better than the time a woman sat her baby on my lap to take care of because she was too focused on her two other children.

A little over three hours later I had finally gotten used to the chicken pecking at my feet and falling on me every time we hit a pothole or bump (about every 30 seconds) and was just dozing off when I heard what I thought was a gunshot. The horrible smell of burning rubber filled the now lopsided bus and it soon became clear that one of the tires hadn't survived the last pothole (not surprising as the buses generally hit them at 60+ mph). The bus slowly pulled over to the side of the road, opened its doors and turned off. We learned from the man sitting next to Carrie that the same thing had happened on his ride up from Kampala the day before, meaning that it was in fact the spare that had blown and forecasting a long roadside delay. After a severe laughing fit, Carrie and I walked off the bus and sat alongside the road with a variety of other passengers.

About an hour later after it seemed like every man on board the bus had a) stared at the flat tire b) kicked it to make sure it was in fact flat and c) scratched his head we were all encouraged to get back on the bus. A bit curious why this was happening seeing as we still had no spare tire, the man sitting next to me explained that we were just going to go without the tire. It wasn't necessary, he said. At this point alarms are going off in my head as I know that there are at least 2 hours left on the trip, however my newly-acquired African sense of patience (you wouldn't survive here without one) finally got the better of me and I tried to doze off again, pecking chicken at my feet.

Three hours, 52 speed bumps and over 100 potholes later (not exactly sleeping material...) we finally hit the Kampala outskirts. By this point it was 8 pm (8 hours after we had first boarded the bus) and I was rip roaring ready to get off the bus. Too bad it was absolutely pouring, which in Kampala is synonymous with traffic jam, and it took another 2 hours to complete the 15 minute trip into the city. At 10 pm I had had it and, despite the rain, demanded that the bus pull over so I could take a boda the rest of the way. I finally walked in my front door to my housemates anxious for stories as a result of the text messages I had been sending them throughout the journey at 10:30, 10 and 1/2 hours after I left Gulu.

Now I know many of you reading this may think that this would be your worst nightmare and it certainly wasn't a great moment for me; however that said it also proved to me just how African I have become because by the time I got into the shower at 11 I had completely forgotten about my frustrations and was more than ready to hop on the next bus to the North. Sure my weekend of relaxation was dented and all effects of my massage negated, but I am proud of how far I have come in terms of comfort and patience for if I remained calm, cool and collected during that experience than I truly believe I am ready for anything. And they say "African time" is a bad thing...