Huckabee Hauler – Uganda Style

Most Sundays are pretty normal. We go to church. James preaches. I teach Sunday School. We talk to people. We come home. Nothing out of the ordinary.

This week was much the same, except many of our church folks are attending a Bible Institute class here in town this week. A group from Kabazana and another from Sangano left once they’d had a light meal after church. They took taxis — not the cheapest or most efficient method of travel, but it works.

In order to save a little money, we carried the people from Ngarama and Isanja that wanted to come to the class. We left all the kids at home to maximize space. We told the church people, “We really only have room for 6 more people, though we could maybe fit 7 if a couple of them are small.

9 people wanted to attend.

This was both a good thing and a bad thing. The Good: several new converts were coming to hear teaching from the book of Romans. A couple of them were youth. Two were the men who are preaching in these churches and have been for a long time. They need all the Bible training we can give them so they can rightly divide God’s Word.

The Bad: The vehicle is full with 8 people. Packed might be a better word. James and I took two of the spaces.

Our Land Cruiser turned into a TARDIS. Or maybe a clown car. It’s hard to know which. One blessing is that Africans don’t seem to mind crowding in and sitting that way over the rough road we travel. Somehow, they kept fitting and no one said one word of complaint. Well, except that James drives like a bus. 😀 (His goal was to minimize the amount of time everyone had to sit in discomfort.)

All went well. We had to slow down extra for all the speed bumps. A couple times motorcycle taxis pulled out in front of us. With all the extra weight, we couldn’t exactly stop on a dime, but nothing bad happened.

We were almost to town when we came around a bend, up a hill — and saw a taxi coming right at us in our lane, passing a matoke truck. All 11 of us made some sound of shock and horror: gasps, shouts, a cry of “eh!”

Without missing a beat, James pulled onto the shoulder (thank God there were no pedestrians!), cleared the bumps and pulled back onto the road. 

Everyone gave a nervous laugh. I took a few deep breaths to get over the adrenaline rush. We drove on without incident.

I snapped a picture when we got to church. As it is, you can only see 8 of the people in the back (one is behind the man on the right; you can see his hand). This totally would not fly in America! But I’m glad, for the sake of these folks who wanted to attend the class, that we could do it here!