Boda-Boda?

The streets in downtown Old Kampala are the worst, and thus the best example of what traffic can look like in Kampala.

When talking about Kampala it is inevitable at some point the traffic comes up. As I mentioned earlier, we’re greatly enjoying our location and the fact that the office is only a two/three minute walk away. Traffic in Kampala (and I guess in the rest of Uganda as well) is fairly horrible. Except for Sunday, the streets are flooded with vehicles. Short distances can easily take a long while when the streets are busy, and parts of the old city center (Old Kampala) are permanently jammed. The most notorious are the boda-bodas, motorcycles that operate as means of public transport. You can hop on a boda-boda, tell the driver where you need to go and he’ll bring you there for a fairly cheap price. This is indeed one of the most dangerous modes of transport, particularly in Kampala (city center) where the streets are busiest. In times of traffic jams however, boda-bodas are ones best option to keep moving while everything thing else is stuck, but their escapades around other cars and buses or wherever there is space for them on the road makes them indeed look rather unsafe. I'd say they're fine in less busy environments, but here in Kampala... I'm not sure if we will use them much!

On the right the 'Old Taxi Park' in downtown Kampala. (I feel like the lay-out will change completely and this photo won't be where I think it will be...

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The second most popular option to get around is by taxi. In Uganda a taxi in reality is a little van that can seat up to 15 people and drives a certain route. It is thus essentially a small bus. The only problem is that you have to be local to understand how the system works. The theory is simple. They drive along and one person hangs out of the window trying to convince you to get in. If the taxi goes into your desired direction you get in and when you approach your destination you say ‘conductor, stop at the … please!’. You get off and pay the guy that hangs out of the window your money (within Kampala the price is either 500 or 1000 shilling). If you got off to transfer into another taxi the process repeats itself. The problem we face: how on earth do you know what taxi to get into?! They all look identical, none of them have destinations or whatsoever written on them and although there are two large taxi parks, there’s no official stops along the way. They stop when people need to get out or when people want to get in. The guys yelling the direction is your only clue, but having rather limited knowledge about areas in Kampala, this is often a useless clue for us. As a result, we have only taken a taxi together with people from the office, who know which one to take and how much to pay. Keep in mind, we stand out and the general thought is: you are white and in Uganda, this must mean you are rich. Thus they all try to make you pay more, and unless you know the price or a fixed price is given, it can be hard to say if the price they tell you is the ‘real price’ or the ‘mzungu price’, the ‘foreigner/white person price’.

There's space for 15 in a taxi, but they'll try squeeze to fit 17 or more!

Enfin, long story short: we mainly walk from A to B. If you think that sounds straightforward or even safe compared to using public transport, it’s not as simple. Most of the roads are paved and except for occasional holes in an okay state. Pavement, however, is usually in a not so good state, if present at all. In the city center there’s space for you to walk, but in areas such as the one we are living, a little outside of the center, for pedestrians there is no pretty pavement. On the sides of the road there is sometimes a little asphalt left, sometimes there’s some stones, sometimes there’s grass and most often a combination of the two. To provide for rainwater drainage and, to a degree, to provide sewage, there are a sort of ditches along the roads. Usually there’s enough space to walk between those and the road, otherwise you just have to make sure cars, trucks, buses, taxis and boda bodas don’t hit you! But to really understand what I mean I guess you have to experience traffic here yourself… it’s best summarized by a continuous test for your attention and an occasional near-death experience, particularly when you have to cross the road (although we’ve gotten better at that!). There’s also no street lights on our road, which, combined by warnings that you might get robbed or worse at night when the roads are less busy, has resulted in us often being ‘at home’ before dark (19.00).

#Kampala #Traffic #Uganda #BodaBoda #Chaos