Going to Pajuule Part II

I AM WORRIED ABOUT LOSING MY WORK....go read part I first below -----------------------____________________________________________________________________ Okay so I had made the wrong choice of seats and was getting bounced around in the Ugandan night, but slowly we made progress and were soon at Lacekocot. Now maybe only an hour or so away, we kept getting closer and then in an attempt to avoid a pothole, Leoonsyo drove off the road and got stuck in thick mud on the side of the road. He tried to get out, but was unsuccessful, and in his final push the battery died. Leonsyo had talked about the expense of the battery when he had gotten in the car. The three of us pushed in different ways but did not have enough fire power to get it out of the mud. Leonsyo told Francis they would go find some people and they disappeared into the night. So there I was somewhere in between Acholibur (pronounce Acholi Boo) and Pajuule. By myself, I wondered where the lions were (this is a joke mom, there are no lions in Pajuule. The stars were out and it was a beautiful night, if you did not consider our predicament. I had not been able to eat any of my food, so I got the food out of the car and had a nice dinner on the hood by myself. I thought I kept hearing them return, but eventually they did. It was now 1240 about 40 minutes after we got stuck. I found out later that had gathered some boys from a school, but soon found a "bar" where the encourage the drinker to become our helpers. I had thought the 3 of us were close to getting it out, so I expected our replenished numbers to do the trick easily. I was wrong! We struggled and struggled, and were finally able to push it back about 5 feet. I wanted to keep pushing it back, but was overruled and we tried to push it forward to get it back on the road. We tried several times to start the car, the headlights were on! I really wanted Andy Bouerneuf there so he could bang on the solenoid valve and we would be off. I did bang on several things, but they did not work. Leonsyo was worried about the battery dying, but I told him no problem it was a brand new battery. He said no that he had bought a used battery! We started chopping down trees with the super hoe they use to do everything. We also used the Panga( a machete that was of course under my feet the entire trip) to chop off some shrubbery. We had many sticks under the tires, but to no avail. After each failed attempt that was a lot of conversation in Lwo that I, of course, did not understand. One of the helpers said, "Do not worry John, we are not going to let you sleep here." We decided rocks were needed to get under the wheels and all but 3 of us disappeared into the night to find rocks. Francis and one of the guys that stayed did an amazing job of digging out the entire road to make a track for the car. They came back with rocks and decided they were too big, so they chopped them into smaller rocks with the deft and strong swing of the hoe. Again no success! Somewhere in here I got a text message even though I most times could not get a signal. I was excited, help was texting. It was only later that I realized that anyone texting me could not help me. "Cards lose with walk off homer in the 10th" was the message from Dad. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!!!! WHAT THE HELL!!!!!! It was now past 2 am and it had been since midnight when we slid and we had not seen 1 car on the road. We continued to work, but nothing and then wait a minute we were on the main part of the road. There was celebration but not by me, as I realized we would still have to pop start this car on the road. I do not think I had pop started a car since 1985 or later. If you do not know what pop starting a car is --- you push as hard as you can, you have to get some real speed up, and then the driver throws it into gear and hopefully the car starts without using the starter or the battery. We got it going pretty good, but Leonsyo failed twice, and then I realized we were pushing it uphill. Seriously, isn't God supposed to be watching out for his Priests. I decided although we could not get speed up we should still push it up the hill, so we could do something the other way. Guess what we were able to pop start it in reverse pushing the car down the hill. The engine roared, and everyone was happy, we were on our way. The 2 Ugandans took care of paying ur new friends while I finally got it my camera and started snapping photos. 3:10 am and we were a half hour or maybe a little more to the parish. We drove for only 10 minutes as Leonsyo slowed to a stop per Francis' instructions. I thought we had missed a turnoff, but that was not it. Francis had seen a rabbit, and We were stopping to go rabbit hunting!!!! We were going to kill the rabbit, kill the wabbit, with the panga. Leonsyo missed with the panga, and oh by the way..in his haste to make the car quiet had turned off the car, and oh yeah kind of slid off the road. We tried several times to get the car back on the roadbut to no avail. By the way, now three and a half hours since we had seen a car on this road. They talked about sleeping it the car, but I wanted to walk. I knew somewhere between 2 hours and 3 hours there was a bed for me. Leonsyo and I started walking and Francis stayed with the car. We started walking at 340 am and at 510 am, Leonsyo announced we were here. Except his definition of we are here differs greatly from mine, as we were in the city, but still had 30 more minutes to walk. I am getting tired of typing and the way home is also fun. So blah, blah, blah, we arrived at the parish and no one away awake to let us in. finally 10 minutes later, we were let in and I was shown my room.......to be continued