This is a story about trust.
– Andrew
About trusting strangers and trusting yourself.
It also happens to be a story about our first-ever encounter
with wild elephants in Uganda.
You’re gonna wanna read this one.
Stranded
I crawled out from underneath the broken car and wiped the sweat from my forehead as the realization slowly washed over me as hot as the blazing sun overhead: We were stranded.
My mind raced as I tried to block out some of the less productive realities of our situation. We’re in lion country. In the middle of nowhere, Uganda. We haven’t seen another car in ages. And we’re just a couple kilometers from an area of the Democratic Republic of Congo that’s seen a recent uptick in terrorist activity. Fantastic.
“Okay, okay” I thought. “How do we fix this?”
James was keeping it together, but underneath I knew that he, too, was struggling. Queen Elizabeth National Park is huge and empty. The only solution I could come up with was to walk back the way we’d come and hope we ran across a ranger outpost. We fully appreciated the risk in this plan, but after an hour of tinkering with the car, we saw no real alternative.
Luckily, right as we were about to abandon the car and set out on foot, a glint of metal caught my eye. I looked up and saw the unmistakable outline of a silver Toyota Landcruiser making its way toward us. Hands outstretched, we flagged down the car. The occupants turned out to be a helpful pair of German tourists who offered to drive us the six kilometers ahead to the ranger station we didn’t know existed. I speak no language besides English fluently, but the one language I do know a bit of is German. This was just the first in a string of small miracles.
Ranger Margaret
At the station, we met the ranger on duty, Margaret. She was dressed in her standard-issue Ugandan Wildlife Authority fatigues, AK-47 slung over her shoulder. She offered to call a couple of friends – including a mechanic – and she assured us that everything would work out. For some reason, as I laid down in the grass to decompress, I believed her. After all, the adventure doesn’t really start until things go wrong, right?
I woke to the sound of a motorcycle engine and saw three young men riding up the dirt road towards the station. Yes, that’s right. Three men on one small motorbike taxi. When they pulled up, they were surprised to learn that we weren’t with the car, but that it was actually a few kilometers back down the road. After a few moments thought, the head mechanic looked at me and told me I’d have to come with them back to the car. In case you’re keeping track, that’s now FOUR people on one motorbike. Lord.
An instant later, I found myself a regular Mzungu sandwich, speeding along the dirt road of the savanna on the back of a motorbike with three other guys. I loved every second.
The waiting game
My buoyed spirits didn’t last long. The hours quickly ticked by, as every piece of Apetimus Prime was pulled out, thrown onto the dirt road, then re-installed while our mechanic tried to diagnose the problem. I sat on the back seat of our car – which had been removed – and watched a troupe of monkeys playing in the road a few meters away, anxiously keeping track of the ever-drooping sun.
Finally, James met me at the car. The sun was setting, and my anxiety was reaching a peak. The mechanics hadn’t solved the issue. This led to a new, much bigger problem: where were we going to stay for the night? Ranger Margaret had warned us against staying in the car, and camping on the side of the road was absolutely out of the question in lion country. FUN FACT! Queen Elizabeth National Park is one of only two places in Africa where lions climb trees, so we didn’t even have THAT option. Once again, fantastic.
The only solution any of us could come up with, was for the boys to drive us back to the ranger station, drop us there, then come pick us up again in the morning when they had the proper parts to repair Apetimus. Seems like a simple proposition, right? Well… not really.
Red alert
This solution meant James and I would have to give our keys to the mechanics to hold onto overnight. They couldn’t just hang out on the savanna while the driver returned us to the ranger station. Between the lions, poachers, and terrorist activity along the DRC border, it was far too dangerous. They’d have to stay inside the vehicle until the driver came back to take them into town for the night.
All our internal alarms were blaring at red alert. Leaving the keys to our rental car with three strangers we’d just met and had no way of keeping in touch with? Just HOPING they’d return and make good on their promise? That was a tough pill to swallow. But even worse, they wanted payment before leaving for the night. James and I looked at each other frantically, but what choice did we have? We agreed, with a catch. James did some expert haggling, paid them half, and promised them the rest if they fulfilled their promise.
Then, we tossed them the keys, confirmed an 8 am pick-up time and… rode off into the night, en route to a ranger station that wasn’t expecting to see us again.
The Night of Our Lives
Concerned faces greeted our re-arrival at the ranger station. It was pitch black. The campsites a few kilometers down the road were full, and our boda boda (motorbike) driver was nearly out of gas anyway. The rangers had nowhere for us to stay.
A man who we’d officially meet the next morning walked us over to a shed and set out two chairs for us to sit on while they figured out what to do with the two stupid Mzungus.
Finally, someone came over and told us they had a place for us. We could spend the night on the floor in the storage shed we’d been sitting in front of. Hallelujah. Over the next 20 minutes or so, the rangers went out of their way to give us the most comfortable bed they could given the circumstances. They found a mattress and rigged up a mosquito net fit for a couple of princesses. Tonight would be a snuggle night for James and me, but we were deeply, deeply grateful. Exhausted and burnt out, we fell asleep almost instantly.
The Next Morning
We awoke a full ten hours later to the sounds of goats bleating and children running and screaming. We opened the door of the shed to see Ranger Emmanuel doing his morning calisthenics. He was the man we’d “met” the night before. And let me tell you, this guy was the best. Outgoing, kind, and with an infectious laugh. We spent the next hour getting to know each other with countless African handshakes as punctuation.
But in the back of my mind, I couldn’t shake the nerves. WE’D GIVEN OUR CAR TO COMPLETE STRANGERS!
The agreed-upon time came and went. It was 8 am. Then 8:30. 8:45. 9 am. Okay y’all, this has been great and fun and all the jazz, but now I’m really starting to stress. I know African Time is African Time. I know things run more slowly. And I know meeting times mean little in this part of the world. But with our whole trip riding on it, I couldn’t shake the fear we’d be stuck here much longer than one night.
The Elephants
Then, as my anxiety reached a fever pitch, a familiar voice rang out across the grounds of the ranger station.
“Hey, you guys want elephants?”
Margaret, in her red polka-dot day-off dress, was waving to us from the doorway of her home. James and I looked at each other and jumped to our feet, thoughts of broken cars temporarily forgotten. We raced out to the road and… there they were: the very first wild elephants either of us had ever seen, marching single-file across the savanna. Fifteen of them.
We were speechless as the grandeur and serendipity of the moment washed over us. The big, brash Alabamian next to me didn’t bother holding back tears. No words I can write will adequately prepare you for seeing these majestic creatures in the wild for the first time – especially after such an emotional 24 hours. We stood in silence and hung onto each other as we watched the parade from afar.
And then, as if scripted for a Hollywood movie, the very moment the last of the elephants lumbered out of sight, I heard the familiar hum of a motorbike engine coming up the road. I turned my head, and a huge smile broke across my face.
Faith.
When I think back to that day, I can’t separate it from the word “faith”. But not that kind of faith. For me, it isn’t a God thing. It’s about having faith in people. Having faith in myself. It’s an almost blind, nearly reckless faith that things will work out if you’re willing to unlearn what you have learned, let go of the controls, and surrender to the adventure. We gave our freaking car keys to complete strangers on the African savanna, with no ability to contact them and no guarantee they’d come back to get us in the morning!
But they did.
Not only that, but the rangers didn’t even ask for payment for their hospitality. They knew we needed help, so they offered it. No strings attached. Emmanuel and James exchanged contact info, and we even became friends with the mechanic on Facebook. How cool is that?
I’ll always be grateful to that stupid terrible lemon of a car for breaking down where and when it did. Apetimus Prime was a trash bucket of a vehicle, but if it hadn’t been, we would’ve missed the very best part of the adventure.
And the elephants. We would’ve missed the elephants.
I love this post. These stories are what the Internet needs. Will be following you guys 😊
Thanks so much for the kind words, Joanna!