T.I.A.

I want you all to know that a LOT of funny things happen here in Africa, but I have not gotten to really write all of them down. This particular one is pretty good, and everyone on my team said I needed to blog about it, so here it goes:

So I talked about Sam and his AWANA club right? Well, what I didn't get to say was that on our way back home, we have to get what they call a private hire. You see, here to get around, if you don't have a car, you A: Boda, B: Bike: C: Taxi, or D: Get a Private Hire. These are people who drive a car and they especially drive you around to the place you need to get to- no problem. Well, our last private hire...let's just say he was in a hurry. So we told Sam we needed a different private hire.

We sure got a different private hire.

me-"Hi, what is your name?"
him-"Apple"
"What, did you say Paul?"
"Yes, apple"
"Wait, you mean, Apple, like A-P-P-L-E?"
"Yes"
"Oh..."
Every time we tried to talk to him after that, he wouldn't respond to me. Maybe he was annoyed with me, maybe he didn't speak good english, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. It started to get dark and we get to the downtown area and we hear him say-

"Where do we go from here? Do you know the best way to go from here? I don't know the roads here very well."
Um...I've lived in Kampala for how long? And I'm not a local Ugandan right? This is why we hired a private hire.
So he stops on the side of the road (Oh, I forgot, when I first got in the car the door wasn't shut good, so I shut it, then Apple shut it again because, well, I dunno, there must have been something wrong with the door, so I'm praying that I won't fly out of the car because the thing is, I rarely wear seatbelts here, this is NOT America folks- seatbelts got nothin on africa) And I'm kinda thinking to myself, um, I hope no one decides to like open up my door at this moment. (Oh, I'm gonna let you know now that Will was with me, so, at least I wasn't alone in all this, haha)
So, it's darker and we are stopped on the side of the road and the guy is asking for directions- and I sort of recognize the road he was about to go on because I had been on it a few times (though I couldn't tell him where exactly to go from there) but after getting directions I say:
"Is everything ok?"
"Yes, it is ok"
And then we DON'T go on the road I'm familiar with. Instead we drive onto some obscure road that's bumpy (as normal) and there are people everywhere and kinda just a market street here in Africa. Ha, who knows what you could run into on those roads. Well, it turns out he didn't get good enough directions. So, he stops and asks a guy how to get to our place, and this guy just hops on in the car with us. The more the merrier! We drive down this really really bumpy road all the way to our place- we made it! I asked the guy- "Will you be able to make it back" because, well, he didn't know how to get there, can he really get back?

Oh, by the way, when we first took off, some guy next to us on the street was pointing at our front right tire- I'm pretty sure it was half flat and that some of those bumps were not caused by potholes along the way- hope the guy made it back safely.

Oh, the best part was that when we got back, I found out that Jana fell in a ditch and kicked a chicken bone off of her foot when she got out. She may kill me for writing that, but it was too funny to leave out. That night was awesome.

Oh Africa!