Transportation

While clinging, side saddle, as the boda-boda careened around a truck then bounced off a pothole, I realized I needed to do a blog post explaining transportation in Kampala.

Bodas are the generic term for two wheeled transportation: motorcycles, scooters, dirt bikes and bicycles. For the most part these are the most effective way of getting around the city. They weave in and out of traffic jams, and pedestrians leap for safety when they drive down the sidewalks. On more than one occasion I have yelled to my driver, pedestrians on sidewalks don’t have to move for us, we are in their space. They are cheaper then the special hires (taxis), but more expensive than a taxi (bus).

The do come with serious risk: scrapped body parts, broken legs, and death. While moving around Kampala you are bound to see a boda bumped or half stuck under a taxi. Sometimes there is a passenger holding their shoe, which is bloody. But, during the hours of traffic jams the boda-bodas are a necessary evil.

If you are travelling a long way, or if there is a lot of you, the special hire is the way to go. You call your driver; he picks you up and takes you wherever you need to go. This form of transport is out of reach for the average Ugandan. Good news, my driver, Rogers, has stopped calling me fat, so I am back to riding with him.

The taxi is a 14 passenger van than fits up to 26. It is the cheapest form of transport, go everywhere (except the expat areas), and run all the time. Most of the time, and like most Ugandans, I rely on them. Each day I head into the New Vision office, I take a taxi from Mengo to the Old Taxi Park then transfer to one of the vans running to Nakawa and Jjinja. You know which one to catch as the drivers yell their destination over and over again. “Nakawa and Jjinja” for the trip there and “Mengo/Rubagga” for the trip back.

The taxi’s present a different type of danger. They are a fire trap, with people wedged in and a bar (to hang on to) across the window. If one is in an accident, I am pretty sure it would just go up in smoke. And they fill the streets it reminds me of those national geographic videos with the wildebeests that are moving about. They are all headed in the same direction but there are thousands of them so they bump into each other, and fight.

So you pick your poison and head out to wherever you are going.