Adventures in the little blue car

Last weekend we set off to drive to the other side of town to pick up our friend Michael Fardella who was here with the Sister School group from Seattle. We have been driving a fair amount and feeling pretty smug about it, but we haven’t spent much time in the part of town where the group was staying. So I propped the map book on my lap to direct Bill; the map is kind of a joke, there are NO road signs in Kamapla (or very few), and often the roads on the map don't really exist. Everything was fine until we got to a very congested roundabout and I couldn’t tell which road we should turn on. (As always, the word “road” doesn’t really apply – more like dirt track.)

We turned on a dirt track and found ourselves smack in the center of Owino Market. Now, Owino Market has a reputation for black market operations, pickpockets, unsavory characters -- no mzungus, in other words. We have been planning to go there with our money hidden in all our REI "secret" pockets, just to see it. But not this way!

There was no room to turn around. We were instantly plunged into a crowd with kiosk-style shops on all sides, hawkers and shoppers pressed up against our car. Men carried huge sacks of something inches from the bumper. Boda-bodas flew by, even though there was no room on either side of us. Trucks came lumbering toward us, swerving to avoid the potholes. (Let me repeat – there was no room.) Bicycles squeezed between the trucks and us. Bill inched us along, miraculously keeping the side mirrors intact, begging me to find a way out on the map. There was supposed to be a road at the opposite end of the market, but we couldn’t see anything except chaos. We had no choice but to be pushed along with the crowd regardless. At one point, Bill said, “Is your window rolled up?” Yes, my window was definitely up.

We have seldom felt unsafe in Kampala, more on our guard sometimes. But here we felt like interlopers – two pink and pale white people in a little blue car, one of those people with a map on her lap, obviously lost. When we thought about how we looked to the people in the market, the only thing we could do was laugh, which I imagine they were doing too.

Eventually we turned onto a side dirt track, drove into and out of a pothole the size of Crater Lake, and saw a big billboard that could only be on a big road. It was like a lighthouse indicating a haven, no matter how rocky the shore. We found the bigger road, and eventually (totally by accident) found the place we were supposed to be.

Later, Bill saw Elias, who has driven us often and still does when we need him. He told him about Owino Market, and Elias said slyly, “Owino Market! Mr. Bill, you need a compass in your car.”