Mr Toad has nothing on Ronald...

Oct 29
...When it comes to wild rides.
Ronald was our driver from Lira to Entebbe, a minimum five hour, bronco busting, bicycle dodging, hair raising, heart pounding thriller of a ride.
He'd started his day at 4:30 a.m. in Kampala, about 4 hours south of Lira. Two hours into his drive to pick us up, his radiator crapped out. He sat in a gas station waiting for a replacement vehicle and made it to us about 4 hours late. We'd hoped to make it to Entebbe before dark but that was now not going to happen. (During our wait, we sat on the porch of the orphanage and talked with Tony and Mary Ann, two employees who had been among the first group of orphans at Otino Waa in 2003. They are now impressive young adults--well-educated, poised, warm and beautiful).
Ronald was tired by the time he reached us and only grew more so during his 12 hours of driving. He was hitting speeds of 130 km/hr on 2 lane roads that were really about wide enough for 1-1/2. I felt like we were taxiing for takeoff. There were lots of people on bikes, motorcycles and foot on the side of the road and we feared he'd pick one or more of them off. Oh, and then there's the game of chicken we played with oncoming traffic all the way as Ronald sped over potholed roads, passing cars all along the way. He was turning the 1-1/2 lane road into a 3 lane road as we squeezed between the cars we were passing and the oncoming traffic. It was like being trapped inside a bad video game.
He was stopped by police once and threatened with a large fine and we hoped that would slow him down. It did... For about 5 minutes. After one particularly close call when I expected to see the white light, I asked him to slow down.
Then we came upon a beer truck that was on it's side, beer flowing onto the road and glass from the bottles glistening in the headlights. As we crunched over large shards, I wondered whether we'd make it to Entebbe before all four tires went flat.
When we got close to Entebbe, I asked Ronald whether he'd been given the name of the hotel where we were staying. He looked perplexed. He thought we were catching a flight out that night and had been driving "crazy" to get us to the airport.