The chicken in the room

When we returned from Lamwo and spent the night in Kitgum before going to Gulu, Grace bought a chicken that she decided to leave in the van overnight. Anyone who knows me knows that I could not possibly leave a chicken in a van overnight. So I put it in a box and it moved into our guest house room. So instead of the elephant in the room, we have decided to talk about the chicken in the room.

My chicken in the room is called corruption. I am not talking about big C Corruption in politics, I'm talking about the little day to day corruption thats we encounter. In the past month, we have had two incidents with traffic enforcement officers looking for money.

Usually the time when school fees are due or at Christmas, the traffic police pull more cars over and "find" major infractions that should be ticketed but for a small monetary donation to the school fees/christmas fund, the ticket is waved and just a warning is given. Everyone jokes about it but it continues because people continue to pay these bribes.

Today, we are driving home from Jinja and there is a section with construction where all traffic comes to crawl and possible stand-still. As we were crawling along in our lane, a mini-bus comes in the magical centre lane that is often invented when someone feels traffic is going too slowly and creates this new lane.

There we are, crawling along, and this mini-bus comes along and decides it wants to come in front of us. Apollo continues to move along slowly but the mini-bus continues to move forward. This is often how traffic moves along. One moves and then another tries to squeeze in and eventually everyone gets into the appropriate lane.

Suddenly the mini-bus pushes forward faster than the regulation squashing into a lane speed and Apollo has to move onto the shoulder to get out of the way. At that exact moment, a police officer turns and sees us on the shoulder. He flags us over.

"Why are you driving on the shoulder? Trying to pass on the shoulder? Why are you not in the lane to drive?" And on and on and on.

Apollo, Andrew and Corey attempt to make the portly piggy eyed man understand that we had actually been pushed into the lane.

"Why move over? If he is pushing you, you are not allowed to move into the shoulder lane. It is not a lane for driving."

"So you would have him knock us? Then we must stop and spend five hours of your time trying to determine who is at fault."

"You cannot drive on the shoulder."

Then Apollo switches to Lugandan to try to explain what happened.

"Don't speak Lugandan to me. I don't speak Lugandan. You speak English."

Well, this is BS because they all speak Lugandan. So Andrew and Apollo continue to explain what happened and the officer continues to say we were in the wrong. What he is hoping for is for an "I'm sorry, here's a little something something for your trouble." But he picked on the wrong van of mzungu.

He could see that he was losing this battle. His enthusiasm was waning and luckily, a truck decided this was a great time to drive in the oncoming lane to try to get further forward instead of waiting in the line of traffic. The officer blew his whistle and waved that truck over. He then half-heartedly waved back at us to continue on our way.

"I will say sorry if I am wrong and I will pay a ticket but I will not if I have not done anything wrong."

No sir, you are not getting any of our money.

Let's now move to another incident that happened about 3 weeks ago. We had just bought the 16 sewing machines and the tables for Lamwo so the van was rather full of boxes. We turned a corner and were flagged over.

"Yes Sir?" Apollo asks as we all say good afternoon and smile sweetly at the officer. This usually works to be waved on our way.

"Let me see your license." Apollo takes out his license for the officer to look at. The officer mentions Apollo's last name which identifies him as being from the central region. The officer then switches to Luganda.

This set off warning bells in my brain because the officer obviously did not want us to understand what he was saying. The officer then starts to tear a strip off Apollo.

"What's going on?" I asked Andrew.

"We have boxes on the seats. The officer is showing our permit that says we are a PMO vehicle, people mover only. So no boxes."

"Honestly? We can move people but no boxes? You have got be kidding me."

The officer continues to berate Apollo and point to the sticker on the window.

"Can I speak?" I ask Andrew.

"Just keep your mouth shut."

"Give me a ticket," says Apollo. "We will go pay it."

"You should not have boxes on your seats!"

Apollo eventually got out and went to speak with the officer from behind the van. However, he did not give him any money. Eventually the officer gave him a stern warning and said he would be watching for our van in the future.

When Apollo came back into the van, we said to him, "That man wanted a bribe!" He laughed.

"You know," he said, "I told the officer to give me a ticket and I would go to pay. But he does not want to give me a ticket. He wants to keep yelling at me and saying he will give me a ticket but he does not because if he gives me a ticket, I will go to the station and pay. He will not get any money."

Are those boxes on your seats I see?

Is that a bribe on your mind I detect?

Banange Uganda.

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