Packing the car for six hours
Wanjiku shares her actual packing system for a long drive with three children, from the snack box within reach to the emergency bag by the driver's seat, plus two new games for the first hour.
The Ssemakula family and the breakdown near Jinja
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Show notes
When the trip goes wrong
The Ssemakula family set off from Kampala for a weekend at the source of the Nile and got as far as a hill outside Jinja. Grace and Peter and their three children tell the story, including the bits the children remember very differently from the adults.
- The moment the engine stopped and what Peter said
- Keeping three children calm with no signal and no shade
- The game the eldest invented that is now a family tradition
- The lorry driver who stopped and what he carried
- What they pack differently now
Send Wanjiku your own disaster story as a voice note on Witspeak.
Transcript
Welcome back to Are We Nearly There with me, Wanjiku Kamau. Today is a story episode, and it is one of my favourites. The Ssemakula family from Kampala, that is Grace, Peter and their three children, set off one Saturday for a weekend in Jinja, and their car died on a hill with no signal, no shade and no idea when help would come. Four hours later they were still there. What happened in those four hours is the reason I wanted them on the show, because the children handled it better than the adults, and because the game their eldest invented on that roadside is now played in their car every single trip. The whole family is here, and they do not agree on the details. You are listening on Witspeak Podcasts.
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