A Trip to Jinja

On New Year’s Day, we began making arrangements to travel to Jinja for the next phase of our adventure. Jinja is situated on Lake Victoria at the headwaters of the Nile River. It is about 300 km from Mbarara to Jinja, passing through the capital city of Kampala. Travel to Jinja would be by private hire (AKA taxi).

The Mbarara mission team frequently uses a gentleman by the name of Charles for their private hires. He does not speak English very well, so the arrangements are made through his wife, Deena. Also because of his poorer English, he typically subcontracts with other drivers for the team. He was contracted first to move some things back to the Betsy and D’rae’s apartment from the home where we were staying. Late in the afternoon, Deena arrived with a driver who apparently was not Charles because his English was quite good. We agreed on a price which was much higher than we had anticipated to simply move suitcases and tubs of food between dwellings. Then we spoke about our trip to Jinja. The driver’s name was Goma. He was a pleasant enough fellow, but wanted about twice as much as we had originally contracted with Deena for this trip. But this is Africa and things change, sometimes by events seemingly unrelated to where one is.

Enter the elections in Kenya… The Kenyan government had recently held its presidential election. There were two ethnic factions who had candidates running; and each of their candidates declared themselves the victor in separate ceremonies on the previous Sunday. The former president may or may not have won the election. He asserted he won by twenty thousand votes; his opponent declared he had won by over a million votes. Violence erupted, the borders were closed, travelers were stranded, hundreds died. With the borders closed, that meant that no petrol (gasoline) could come into Uganda. There was an immediate shortage, and price gauging was common. The price went from around 2500 Ugandan Shillings per liter to around 10000 UShillings overnight. We had now learned why the price was so much higher for moving things back to the girls’ apartment and for the trip to Jinja.

Back to the driver to Jinja… Goma told us he was Charles’ brother and that he would be driving us for Charles to Jinja also. That was fine with us, because it was what Charles typically did for “mozumbu” - white people. That evening, Goma called, and Deena called. There was a conflict. We presumed it was for more money because of the fuel shortage. Turns out, Goma was NOT Charles’ brother, and that he was only an acquaintance whom Charles arranged to take the tubs back to the apartment, not drive us to Jinja! Because of the business that the team has given to Deena and Charles over the years, we wanted to honor our agreement with Deena. However, Deena was fearful of what might happen. She and Charles came over to talk about it face to face. They left saying they would call us in the morning to let us know who would be driving us. She would call us and she would call Goma. There was not a lot of restful sleep that night.

Wednesday morning, Goma picked us up. The price was set and held; the trip was fairly uneventful, except for concerns about finding petrol on the return trip. When he dropped us off in Jinja, it was at a Shell station that had gas. The price was 10000 UShillings. He still had about 3/8 of a tank so he was unwilling to pay that price and would head back and get fuel in Kampala. We had not seen any gas in Kampala. (Sidebar: on Friday, we saw lengthy lines in Kampala for gas.) We were grateful for the safe journey God had granted us to Jinja, and for the peace that should exist between Charles and Goma.