It's all fun and games...

...Until you hit someone on a boda boda with your big, blue, behemoth tank of a truck. Which we did. It was awful.

But first, some context. Miss A and I, along with 7 Aussies, 1 Kiwi, and our driver, guide, and cook, have been making our way through Africa on a billion-ton truck of dubious mechanical ability. And since we set out from Nairobi a week ago, we have been pulled over twice, plus had a boot put on our tire for illegal parking. All of these incidents have been resolved by paying off the coppers with bribes. I have no idea how much. I think there's a lot of shady dealings with the police here. Anyway, we had set the precedent for a run-in with the law at least once every 36 hours.

Cut to yesterday afternoon.

We are literally just turning into our camping area when there's a lurch, a thud, and the most horrific, heart-wrenching scream I have ever heard. "We've just killed someone," I think. It's total chaos. A huge crowd of very angry men have gathered around our truck, and a lot of yelling in Swahili and broken English ensues. I'm feeling like I may puke and/or cry at any second and am afraid to look out the window to witness the carnage for myself. Luckily, my traveling companions do it for me, and say that the man is not, in fact, dead. But he does seem to have a broken leg.

Out of all of the yelling, I start to piece together that they aren't so much trying to help the injured man as to determine whose fault it is and who will pay.

In defense of our driver, I honestly do think it was the motorcyclist's fault. We were making a turn and he tried to zoom past us on the inside rather than going around or simply waiting like a rational driver would do. But rational driving is a foreign concept here.

Anyway, our guide and driver put busted-leg-man on the back of another boda boda and send him to the hospital with a hot 10,000 shilling Ugandan bill in his bloody pocket. Seems like a lot, right? Wrong. 10,000 Ugandan shillings equal approximately five American dollars. $5 for a broken leg. That's how much I just paid for lunch. It really illustrates the gap between the haves and the have-nots in the world.

I actually just heard that the average Ugandan makes less than $600 per year. Knowing this, I'm shocked that we don't get more hostile looks than we do. In fact, if anything, people have been overwhelmingly nice and welcoming here. Especially the children who never fail to smile and wave as we're driving by.

But back to the story: our driver and guide ended up having to go to the police station to give a statement. We didn't hear anything further about the man we hit. And that was the end of it. Like it never even happened. I think that's the part that makes me feel the worst of all.