Picture Me Walkin'

I'm not sure where we went wrong. Maybe it was overconfidence. Maybe it was just bad luck. Either way, Nairobi, you got the best of us. It started out well enough. We decided that we would try to just cover the 500 miles between Mombasa and Mbale in one day. It would be a long day, but with not too many days left, we figured there was no sense in wasting two days on super long bus rides. These were deluxe buses, too. I mean, given the typical local conditions. We left Mombasa at 8am, were supposed to arrive in Nairobi "no later than" 5pm, well in time for the 8:30pm bus to Mbale. About halfway between Mombasa and Nairobi, we took a mysterious detour into the mountains. No problem, we got time. Then we took another, even more mysterious, detour to pick up the passengers on a broken down bus. Again, no biggie. But we dawdle in the mountains for a while. Sun goes down. Dawdle a bit more. We're really getting "down to the wire," which wouldn't be a big deal...

[Part One of a two part epic] (Scenic Gulu) Last week we were extended an amazing invitation from a friend of a friend of a friend. He runs a project for war-orphans in Pader, which is way way way up north in the "war-torn" region about as far from somewhere as one can really get. Normally this would immediately go into the "thanks but no thanks" pile, but this one felt different. First off, it's not everyday that we get chance to go see that area with someone with real business up there- if the stories are true, you can't up there and not see some real wild ish. Second and perhaps most relevant, dude was a Rasta. You know like Bob Marley, dreadlocks, red, black green bracelets. The Rastaman is a friendly people, and if you can't trust a Rasta then who can you trust in this world, right? So anyways, we went to Kampala to talk with him and iron out the details. All seemed to be ok, we agreed to help split the costs up to but not exceeding x shi-shi's...