Lost!

I guess an adventure isn't an adventure if at some point in time you don't lose your way.  I had actually come to terms with the fact that I would have to find my way back to the training site all on my own when one of my fellow volunteers called and told me that we should meet up and ride back together.  I didn't mind the company so I said okay and we agreed to meet up at the taxi stop in the major town between our two villages. (The taxis here are buses btw, kind of like Greyhound in America).  Our first bus took us to Kigali, about 2.5 hours away and then we had to find a taxi company that would be able to take us the rest of the way.  When we got to the ticket counter of one company, the volunteer I was with asked for a ticket to Kamonyi, which is the sector of our training site.  I interjected and told her that we needed tickets to Remera, but she said sternly, "No, I want a ticket to Kamonyi!"  I said okay and that I was going to get a ticket to Remera, which is a stop within Kamonyi.  (To say you want to go to Kamonyi is like saying I want to go to New York...well, where in New York??)  She stuck with her ticket and since the place we were at didn't have any tickets to Remera, I went around to about 3 different taxi companies until I finally found one that sold tickets to Remera.  When I got to the cashier to ask for my ticket, I was told that they didn't have anymore tickets to Remera.  Upon receiving this news, I decided to just go ahead and get the same ticket that this other volunteer got; afterall, it would be better to be lost with two people rather than alone.

Once our bus arrived,

we hopped on and I hoped we would make it to our training site without a hitch.  Of course this was too much to ask.  After being on the bus for about one hour, I noticed we were coming close to our stop, however, the bus didn't seem as if it were going to stop any time soon.  As we got closer to our stop...and then PASSED our stop, I just looked out my window and thought to myself, and the adventure begins. The bus ended up stopping a few villages past ours and at this point I was very unhappy because a part of me just knew that this would happen when I couldn't find a ticket to the stop that we were originally supposed to travel to.   So my fellow volunteer called her brother and had him talk to the woman at the ticket counter.  He was somehow able to talk her into letting us onto the next bus for free since we passed our stop and didn't know where we were or how we would otherwise get back to our training site.  We stood and waited for about 30 minutes for the next bus to come.  When it finally came, we hopped on, the ticket lady told the driver where we needed to get off, and once we finally made it to the correct stop, we hopped on a motorcycle taxi, which took us the rest of the way to our host family houses.  We actually made it back *whew*  It was a 6.5 hour trip that should have only taken 4 hours, but oh well, at least we made it.

Love and Peace Corps,

Dametreea