“No,” said Austin. “The country has a lot of misguided groups who are doing some really crappy things in the name of religion. The Lord’s Resistance Movement is the one you hear about putting kids into sex slavery or forcing them into their army. They think these street kids are sinners or unclean or something. Dad, they caught him and castrated him. They left him in the street.”
“Jesus.”
“He bled to death.”
It was Paul’s turn to fake a cough to cover his emotions. “Are you okay?”
“Not at first. I’m okay now, I think.”
“I’m really proud of you for helping the kid,” Paul said again.
“Thanks.”
“Do you think you’re in any danger?” Paul asked.
“How’s that?” Austin was wondering if he’d been wrong about his dad being a worrier. Perhaps his stepmom had converted him. Not good.
Paul said, “Maybe from the gang that killed the kid. Do you think they’ll come after you for taking him to the hospital?”
“No, they pretty much leave mzungus alone.”
“Mzungus?”
“Sorry. It’s their word for white people. They kind of have special rules for us. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay. Don’t tell your mother about this until you get back. You know she wasn’t jazzed about you going to Uganda in the first place, and now that she knows about this Ebola thing in Sierra Leone, she’s kind of freaked out.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Don’t trivialize it,” Paul said. “You know how much she worries. She’d go nuts with you there for another month, thinking you could get hurt.”
“I won’t say anything.”
“When was the last time you talked to her?”
“A couple of weeks ago.”
“Call your mom when you get off the phone with me, okay?”
Austin glanced out toward the street. Rashid was shuffling and looking around, making a show of his restlessness. The impatience of the Ugandan man beside him looked real. “I can’t. I think my boda guy won’t wait.”
“A boda, that’s the motorcycle thing, right?”
“It is a motorcycle, a motorcycle taxi. You know, they have those long seats like you used to have in the seventies so they can squeeze more than two people on them.”
Paul ignored the dig about his age. “You did get that email from your stepmom, right?”
“Heidi sent me a bunch. Which one?”
“Probably one you didn’t read.”
Austin chuckled. “I didn’t read most of them.”
Paul laughed. “Look, I know how she can be a pain, but she did find a lot of good information about Uganda. You really should read them.”
“CliffsNotes?”
“I’m not going to summarize her emails.”
Austin laughed. “Why not? She’s your wife.”
His dad laughed, too. “Just be careful on the bodas. The State Department or wherever she got the information said to stay off the bodas because people always get hurt on them.”
“Everybody here has a boda scar.” Austin laughed again.
“I feel so much better.”
“Don’t tell Mom about the boda then.”
“I’m not saying anything to your mother. The less she knows, the happier she’ll be. Is the boda guy taking you back to Kapchorwa?”
“Yes.”
“How far is it?”
“I don’t know. An hour and a half?”
“Super.” Paul said it with plenty of sarcasm.
“Anyway, we need to get going. This is the first boda driver we found that’ll make the trip. The others don’t think they’ll get back here before dark.”
“I feel so much better knowing the accident-prone motorcycle taxi driver will be in a hurry.” More sarcasm.
Austin laughed—the laugh of someone who was twenty years old and still believed that bad things only happened to other people.
“Keep in touch okay? At least email me every week so I know what’s going on.”
“Is Heidi bothering you about not hearing from me often enough?” Austin smiled.
“I do tend to pick ‘em.”
Austin said, “I don’t have the Internet or phone service in the village.”
“I know, you’ve told me. But you come into town every week, right?” Paul asked.
“Maybe not next week. We’re supposed to go camping in the mountains again.”
“Let me know when you get back, okay?”
“Yeah. I gotta go.”
Chapter 2
Austin walked out of the shade of the little restaurant’s thatched roof and waived a thanks to the proprietor.
Rashid pointed to a spot in the center of the boda’s long motorcycle seat. “You’re riding in the middle.”
“No, I’m not,” Austin answered. “I’m paying.”
“This is your friend?” The boda driver asked.
Rashid told him, “He’s got the money. You want it or not?” To Austin he said, “I negotiated. You should sit in the middle.”
“You can get your own if you want,” said Austin. “Your dad’s got, like, a bazillion dollars, right? It’s not my fault you’re always broke.”
Rashid’s brow furrowed. He shook his head and raised a finger to his lips. He leaned in close so that only Austin could hear what he was about to say. “I told you, keep that quiet. You could get me kidnapped.”
“Sorry,” Austin whispered back. In his normal tone, he said, “Get on, let’s get going.”
The boda driver said, “It’s a long way to Kapchorwa. Money first.”
Austin paid him.
“Something you should know before we go,” Rashid said.
“Yeah?” Austin asked.
“The road is blocked.”
“It is,” the boda driver said. “My cousin told me.”
Rashid continued, “The military closed down that road and a bunch of others in the eastern districts.”
Austin wondered if the driver was steering the conversation toward a renegotiation of the price. “Why?”
“Ebola,” answered the driver.
“Here?” Austin didn’t want to believe it.
Rashid shook his head and shot the driver a look that told him to be quiet. “Rumors. The Ebola outbreak is in Sierra Leone. Just rumors.”
“So, what are we doing, then?” Austin asked.
The boda driver pointed north. “I know a way on a trail.”
“How close can we get?”
“You’ll see the village from where I drop you,” the boda driver answered.
Austin said, “I can see Kapchorwa from the top of Mt. Elgon and that’s, like, ten miles away.”
“A kilometer, maybe less,” said the driver.
“Okay. Let’s go.” Austin walked toward the bike.
The driver threw a leg over his motorcycle.
To Rashid, Austin motioned, “You’re next.”
“I hate being in the middle,” Rashid complained.
“Trust me. It’s just as uncomfortable for me, but it’s what we can afford.”
Chapter 3
Forty minutes on the dusty, bumpy, red clay road was bad, but the single-track through the bush was worse.
The boda driver turned to yell over the whine of the engine, “Hold on.”
They bounced over a hump in the trail and Austin nearly went off the back.
Rashid looked over his shoulder at Austin. “Not so tight.”
“I don’t want to fall,” Austin told him.
Rashid sneezed.
“Damn, dude.” Austin wiped his face on Rashid’s shirt. “You got that all over me.”
“You should have let me ride in back.”
“What? You sneezed on me on purpose?”
Rashid sneezed again.
“Damn. Turn your head, Rashid.”
“I did!”
“Turn it the other way. I’m on your left.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”