Life is good, then it gets up and slaps a ton of reality right in the face with a message for us all: life is precious, so savor every moment and hold close the ones we love.
Joyce and I set out today to find the Equator, about 70 kilometers south of Kampala. We had planned a fun day, just enjoying the countryside and enjoying some shopping.
I'll start with the trip home. That's when, in the road ahead, we came upon a boda-boda (a motorcycle taxi also often used to carry goods stacked high) lying crumpled, its cargo scattered wide with broken glass serving as more evidence of disaster. Then, we noticed the body of a young man in his 20s, still as stone, beside the wreck, with a pool of blood ringing his head. No life to be seen and, at that point, no assistance from police or ambulance, just a few bystanders.
It was the trip to the Equator, though, that is seared in our memory. Forever.
About a third into our trip from our comfortable perch high atop Kampala, we came across a large crowd on the side of the road, the site of an obvious accident because the road was mostly blocked by vehicles. To our horror, we came upon it just as two white-uniformed traffic police officers were lifting, with little reverence or regard, in our view, the body of a lifeless young girl, about 7, wearing a white flowered dress, into the back of a pickup truck.
Our hearts, and the happiness that started the day, crumbled in that instant.
We could not stop, and not because the police were moving us past the huge tractor-trailer that lay on its side in the ditch a few yards ahead, but because we wanted to flee as fast as possible from that sadness, from that image, though knowing it will never leave us. We stayed silent, not able, not willing, to express our sorrow and dismay.
We drove on, finally reaching the Equator, obviously a much more subdued and meaningless event than first planned because of what we'd encountered.
We took a photo of Joyce in the southern hemisphere and me in the northern, but there was not much joy in doing so. We sat for a bit, again mostly in silence, at a nearby cafe, sipping an orange Fanta, for Malcolm, and, for Joyce, bitter lemon-flavored Krest. We wandered through the small roadside shops, more out of courtesy than desire, just buying a few little odds and ends for family and friends, and an oil painting from the AidChildren Project, devoted to providing assistance to orphaned children with AIDS.
Perhaps, we were drawn there, or even lured in some mystical way, in part because of what we'd seen. And that painting will always be a reminder, each time we gaze upon it, of that little girl in the white-flowered dress.
She will be in our thoughts and our hearts forever.
And may she be a reminder to us all.
sounds like a brutal day, malcolm--I'm glad you and joyce were able, at least, to make the trip safely.
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