Crossposted from www.BorderJumpers.org.

We've taken some long bus rides in Africa. We spent 8 bumpy hours on a bus from Nairobi to Arusha; another 8 from Arusha to Dar Es Salaam. The longest so far, though, has been between Kigali, Rwanda and Kampala, Uganda. I am usually looking out the window, admiring the crops growing by the side of the road, desperately trying not to think about how I have to pee, and trying not to panic about how fast our bus driver is maneuvering between other buses, cattle, and street vendors hawking roasted corn, bananas, and pineapples on the side of the road. Bernie, on the other hand, has a different strategy for coping--sleep.

During that 12 hour bus ride, here are the things he slept through: a commercial bus going 80 miles an hour on a one lane highway (even getting stopped for a speeding ticket, which is tough to accomplish on these roads), crying babies (including the seat next to us), the driver flirting via text message on his cell phone and turning backwards (sometimes for as long as ten seconds) to make conversation with the bus company staffer, blasting American hip-hop accompanied by pirated music videos on the television screen, and so much more...

I love him, but the man can sleep through anything..

Cross posted from www.BorderJumpers.org.

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The bus between Nairobi, Kenya and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, leaves at 5:30 in the morning - and takes fourteen hours. Kampala Coaches claims on their website to provide a safe, comfortable, and worry-free journey. Their mission is "to exceed customer expectations, all the time and everytime," and their vision is to "provide unparalleled services."

We arrived at the bus station at 4:30am--as instructed by the agent we called--to make sure we had a seat. Like most of the bus stations we've visited from New York to Nairobi, this one was in one of the shadier areas of town. By 6:00am the bus hadn't arrived. At 7:00am we were still waiting. Finally, at 8:00am the bus pulls out of their tiny Nairobi office. We'd pulled an all nighter the evening before, thinking we'd be able to sleep during the bus ride.

When the bus arrives it is crammed full with people continuing on to Dar from Kampala, Uganda. We're forced to squeeze into two seats in the very back of the bus, with people on either side of us.

The whole ride was a comedy of painful experiences -- a nearly 350 pound women sat next to us, the odor of people who had traveled all night hung in the air like a fog, we couldn't recline our seats and there was almost zero leg room. Welcome to traveling in Africa, we thought to ourselves.

Soon, the coaches staff realized they wouldn't be able to fit all the luggage under the bus, so they decided to pack the entire middle aisle with bags stacked on top of eachother. Keep in mind that we were in the back of the bus and the luggage prevented any sort of escape route if we should crash.

And just when we thought it couldn't get worse, it did. The driver drove so erratically that we later thought he must have been drunk, stoned, or completely insane. Danielle thought cocaine, I voted for alcohol. The bus was flying over the unpaved roads and because we were sitting behind the back wheels we felt every single bump and wild turn of the wheel. At times, the bus was airborn as it flew over bumps and up and down hills. Both of us were jolted out of our seats on several occasions.

We begged them to stop -- just to let us use the bathroom -- about four hours into the journey. Bernie had to tell the staff that Danielle was pregnant (she's not) to get them to stop. When they pulled off the side of the highway, they told her to just "walk behind the bus"--where any passing cars could see.

After that, we'd finally had it.

When the bus stopped in Arusha, Tanzania (the first feasible destination for us) about seven hours into the journey, we just got off. Enough was enough.

Kampala Coaches is one dirty, dangerous, disaster...

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I saw this today and that was my first thought. I wonder who thought this would "cleanse" the place and make it would make everyone forget the crimes committed in our name and on our dime.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg i?f=/c/a/2008/09/05/MN5G12O9L8.DTL&h w=abu&sn=001&sc=1000

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Obama: Marriage is a union between man and woman
Redwagon: Politics is the union of an idea and a strategy.

And our strategy in terms of communication is bad.

Once again, the left manages to get it perfectly wrong. Most of the progressives I know are clear-headed so why this foolish falling into the memes of the right?

Why would ANY liberal political say ANYTHING about marriage except this:

I support the freedom of religious institutions to define marriage as appropriate. I would NEVER support forcing an institution to perform ANY marriage with which they morally disagreed.

Why is this good?

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