The Arrival

God is good! I’ve arrived safely in Gulu after a pretty crazy day of travels, having to trust in the Lord because I pretty much had no idea what I was doing. I arrive in Entebbe at 7 in the morning, make my way through customs, grab my bag and then find a taxi to take me to the bus stop. I am running off of maybe an hour of sleep and am totally out of it. It takes me about 5 minutes of us driving to realize we’re driving on the left-hand side of the road. So that’s cool, I’ve personally always been a fan of the left side. My mind starts to wake up as the sun rises and I look around and start observing the beauty of this place which is so extremely green and lush with banana trees everywhere and Lake Victoria surrounding us. We start getting further into the city Kampala and the traffic starts. The driving was crazy enough when we were outside of the city, but it was several times more hectic once we enter the capitol. I can barely put into words the contrast of driving styles of the U.S. versus Uganda. I would say the biggest difference is that in the U.S. there are rules. Yet, somehow I’m completely calm riding shotgun while nearly hitting every bicyclist we pass on the road, either because I was still half asleep or that God knew how stressed I should be and was giving me a peace about it all. Come to think of it, the whole day was like that and I’m sure that it was the Lord watching over me. So we stop by a Barclays ATM and I make a rather large withdrawal of 300,000. I know, big roller. Well, the exchange rate is 1 dollar to 2,600 Ugandan Schillings, so not really. But still, I felt pretty cool.

            I get one of the last spots on the bus as we sit for an extra half-hour as street vendors walk up and down our aisle selling food, drinks, watches, earrings, solar panels… You know, just the basics you would need for a bus ride. We finally take off and I’m caught in between the excitement of looking around at all the beautiful new stuff and nearly falling asleep. Eventually the sandman gets ahold of me. Another thing about the driving I didn’t mention, they use their horns extremely often, usually just letting pedestrians, or people on bodas (motorcycles) know we’re passing/about to hit them. The two are the same over here. The thing is that we pass quite a few people, and consequently use our horn quite often. This makes the whole sleeping thing a little more difficult. I’d say after a cumulative hour of sleep, I’m feeling pretty good. I continue to stare out the window like a little kid looking into a candy shop. We make stops every 45 minutes or so to let the street vendors try to sell us more food and drinks. It’s actually pretty convenient, and I almost venture out to buy what I think is a fried banana but think twice and stick to my food that I brought. Along the way I see quite a few cows, goats, chickens, and even some baboons! It’s almost as if I’m in Africa! As we get closer to Gulu, I start going over my gameplan once I get there, which is not a whole lot. Basically the plan is for me to find three guys from California who are staying at the Acholi Ber hotel. Sweet. I had thought ahead to look up the location and load it onto my maps so I could walk right there. Thinking I had this whole thing figured out, I pull out my phone to get he map up, only to realize that A) The map didn’t stay loaded B) I don’t see street names C) AT&T’s coverage in Gulu is non-existent. So much for more bars in more places.

            I walk around aimlessly for 15 minutes until I suck up my pride and actually ask for directions. The lady asks if I plan to walk there, and then just decides it would be better to call a boda driver over to take me there. So here I am with a forty-pound backpack, and another on my front on the back of a motorcycle in the middle of Gulu. I fit right in. He drops me off and I pay him probably too generously, but hey I’m safe at the hotel with the three guys at it who I’m supposed to meet up with, so I should be golden from here. Well it turns out there isn’t room at that hotel. No biggie. I walk down the street and walk into the next building that says “hotel” on it. I negotiate a price and think I made out pretty nicely. That is until I see the room, which is, well, different than what I’m used to in the states. But I didn’t know what was the norm over here, so I just roll with it. I unwrap the mosquito net and try to get a little nap before I go find the guys.

            I wake up sweaty, laying under a mosquito net in a room with dirty floors, no running water feeling lost. Lord, what the heck I am doing here? I just sit and talk with God for a solid half hour, half laughing about how crazy this is right now. I was feeling like Jonah, feeling like I wanted to hop right back on the bus and buy a flight back to the other side of the world. Good joke, God. You got some nerdy white engineer to come all the way to the middle of Africa. But I feel like God asked me, “Do you trust me?” and it was a nut-up or shut-up point in time. So I get some water in a bucket and shower myself off, put on some clothes that I haven’t been wearing for 3 days, and go walk around. Here we go Lord.  We walk down the street and grab some food. I sit on a table staring out into the street, looking for a group of 3 white guys. I’m trying to think of what I would have done if I did see them. Probably just run out of the restaurant and yell, “Hey you white people! Are you looking for another white person?!” That might have been an awkward way to start our friendship. Maybe it was for the best, but I didn’t end up seeing them. I pay my 13,000 for lunch/dinner (I know, I splurged) and go back to the hotel. I talk with the boy at the front desk of the hotel who checked me in for a while, trying to learn some of the town and culture, and it was nice just talking to a friendly face. What I’ve learned now is that everyone is just as friendly, it’s great! It’s about 6:00 now and still light out, so I head down to the other hotel to see if the three movie-making guys are there. I walk in the front door, don’t see anyone matching my extremely detailed description, so I walk back out thinking I would check back in another 20 minutes. As I get back on the road, I hear a girl from the hotel balcony yell “Are you Beau?!”. This was rather confusing to me, because I was only expecting these three guys to know I existed and no girls, but I spin around and confirm that I was in fact, Beau. She then replies, “Oh, that’s a cool name. Nice to meet you!”. At this point, I’m not really in much of a joking mood but try to figure out how this random girl in Gulu knows my name. Turns out the other three guys told a group at the hotel that some white guy was going to be coming looking for them, and to tell me that they had gone to play ultimate Frisbee. So I invite myself up to hang with the crew who are students studying abroad in Rwanda and are taking a trip to Gulu. They really provided a blanket of comfort in a time where I was feeling just slightly out of place. They’re all hungry so we go out to eat and this is when I experience my first power outage, which are very common here so the waiter just lights a candle in the middle of the table. Talk about setting the mood.

We finish up the meal and start heading back to the hotel. Did I mention the driving was crazy? Well we see this truck swerve to avoid a boda and he hits a round-a-bout and launches into the air and over towards a group of people, and it seems like within 10 seconds there are 100 people surrounding the accident scene. I don’t think anyone is hurt but couldn’t really see, but I’ll assume the best. With a little additional caution we continue to the hotel, and as we’re walking a couple guys go by on two different bodas. One of them turns his head around, and tentatively yells “Beau…? Are you Beau?!”. This seems to be a common occurrence that day. I once again, confirm that yes, I am the man you speak of. Except I didn’t sound nearly that epic, it was probably more of a confused “Uhh yeah?” sort of tone. Turns out that these are the guys who are actually supposed to be looking for me, so we meet up and get to know each other and hang for a bit before we go to our rooms. I had arrived in Gulu around 3:30 and didn’t meet up with these guys until 9:00, but I am so grateful for those crazy 5 ½ hours where I really got to just hang with God and go through this crazy experience with him. I’m pretty tired and ready to go to sleep, but as I’m heading in the boy from the front desk wants to talk some more, so I reluctantly sit with him and make small talk for a bit. As we’re talking I witness yet another crazy driving event, this one a little more odd than the previous. There were some guys playing around with a bike carrying a trailer behind it, but no one on either, and no lights on either. They start pushing this vehicle and are running beside it (the Gulu version of Ghost Riding, (come one guys, that was so 2006)) and the ghost cart decides to turn into the other lane of traffic, where there was a motorcycle coming down pretty fast. In my mind, I’m pretty sure these people don’t see the ghost cart and they’re going to hit it and fly 20 feet through the air. Turns out it was two out of three of the film crew driving the boda, and they didn’t see it until nearly the last minute. They end up hitting it, but not enough for anything to happen. I was a little scared for them when this whole group of guys surround them, and in my mind they’re going to fight them, so I’m getting ready for action. And by action, I mean walking over and trying to get everyone to not kill each other and be peaceful, because let’s be honest, I’m not much of a fighter. Turns out they weren’t mad at my new friends, but everyone was just trying to find some scapegoat to blame it on. Classic. Well everyone was fine and went home for the night.

So that was my first day in Gulu. Pretty nuts, but everything has been much smoother since that first day, but I wouldn't have traded that for anything. How boring would this story have been if it went “Yeah these guys picked me up from the bus stop and I went to the hotel and hung out for the night”. You know what I mean? We were all talking about the idea of making stories memorable the other night, and one thing we talked about is having stories to tell your kids when they’re young little 7 years old, sitting in bed and waiting for their daddy to tell them about when he was a kid. It definitely made me think a lot about how I live my daily life and what sort of things have left memories in my life. So I guess one big takeaway from the first day/week is to be alright with not having everything planned out, take risks, pursue both life and God with reckless abandon, and to do things that are going to make memories, turn those memories into stories, and one day transform those into fairy tales to tell my kids. Dream big and live life without regrets!

Thank you all for your prayers, I know they were what were carrying me through that crazy day!