Strategize and Plan Your Journey

Traveling up country is one tedious journey, especially where the destination is so many miles away. A journey, especially to the north is riddled with long travels across majorly a good road with some bad stretches.

Living Luwero and headed towards Nakasongola up to river Kafu Bridge, the road is exceptionally good by East African standards but after Kafu on ward, the road is narrow, mapped with potholes up to Karuma falls.



Karuma Bridge overlooking the falls



One does not see the greater danger of the road until there is a heavy truck with a stubborn driver who cares nothing about other road users and drives right in the centre of the road. Often one is forced to swerve off the road to redeem ones soul from a calamitous death.

Depending on your destination, often, after Karuma, you either travel through the Murchison National Park towards West Nile or to the northern Uganda districts of Gulu, Lira, Kitgum, Apac through Kamdini.

Such long distance travels can be tiring but when one is travelling especially by private means, it becomes rewarding chiefly when you set time lines and particular places where you can stop, refresh yourself, rest, besides the pleasure of eating the delicacies from these major stops, they are major points to always start all over again.



Vendors selling merchandize at Kafu



Normally when travelling from Kampala, a major stop can be at Luwero where you can purchase some fruits like pineapples and bananas. Some other major stop is at Mijera just after Nakasongola, a fuel station and a supermarket where most long distance public buses stop. Here people normally purchase first foods, packed beverages and ease themselves.

Another major stop is river Kafu. There is a T- junction of the road branching to Masindi. Here, vendors of various roasted edibles ranging from muchomo for beef or chevon or chicken are found. The major delicacy at this stop is roasted cassava. There are these amazingly long white fresh cassava often sold when hot to travelers through the windows of the vehicles they are in.



Pakwach Bridge



Bweyale and Karuma are also other stops majorly for roasted maize or even fresh maize. Other stops are Pakwach, majorly known for angara (salted bonny fish) and other types of fish for those traveling to West Nile and what is normally called corner Kamdini for gweno (live Chicken).

These stops are not just famous for the items a voyager could find and purchase while travelling; they are markers of progress, accomplishment and a celebration of the triumph as kilometer after kilometer each traveler approaches their destination. They are an unconscious strategy or plan of movement; a goal of sorts that the travelers seek to attain as they fulfill their vision of the journey.

Life is a journey, a long one at that where each of us must reach our destinations. Great achievements in this journey ought to be celebrated, marked and clearly rewarded. You will not realize how far you have gone when you do not strategize and plan your life’s journey. Sit down and strategize and plot the journey of your life.

The boda boda spirit

Boda boda is a major transport means in Uganda. It normally is a motor cycle or bicycle used to offer the haulage services. You must have used them or seen them all over the country running up and down the streets and nearly all village paths.

picture from google photos
 

Bodas as they are commonly called, are handy and quick to use especially when one is on a hurry to go somewhere during rush hours. They have information of locations and it is alleged that some also act as intelligentsia or at least informants for the state security organs.

On an iniquitous note though, they are notorious for breaking traffic rules in their attempts to save time and thus are among the leading causes of deaths and orthopaedic complications in and around the whole country in the transport sector.

In jams they are always looking for the next available opportunity to breakthrough and forge forward. When stuck in between cars, they manoeuvre and squeeze their way out sometimes scratching people’s cars and hitting side mirrors. Whenever there is an opening and one manages to get through successfully, the rest follow almost thoughtlessly and effortlessly through.

It was a Thursday morning; I was caught up at the Jinja road traffic lights. There was a swam of boda bodas convergent on all the four junctions; everyone focussed and some with as though a foolish curiosity ready to take off.

From an onlooker’s standpoint, a semblance of a suicidal mission at the verge of execution could be gathered from the vestiges of facial expressions of concentration and alertness of the riders and the general traffic.

The daringly energetic approach to their work, with almost insurmountable courage to try even amidst riskily blunt obstacles; the faith that I can breakthrough if I try; the positive attitude of always looking out for the quickest and available opening are some of the nuggets to learn.

So it is with life. One always just has to have a boda boda spirit to go on. Never looking back but forging ahead, making the most of every window of opportunity; being willing to take risks, even life threatening ones at times, is the only way you can be of relevance in Life.