KAMPALA, Uganda — He is young, no older than 19. “My name is Yoweri,” he declares, “like the president.” I learn this detail only after I’ve climbed on his motorcycle and weaved through traffic in silence for five minutes.
Yoweri decides to strike up a conversation mid-swerve around a rotary, as he snakes by visibly frustrated drivers in rush-hour congestion who are forced to abide by traffic laws in their larger, relatively cumbersome, and decidedly safer vehicles. I respond through gritted teeth as I clutch my purse and hold onto the seat like my life depends on it, probably because it does.
Yoweri is a “boda boda” man, one of tens of thousands in Uganda. The term was christened in the small eastern town of Busia, which spills across the border with Kenya. Legend has it that the passenger bicycle operators used to call, “border, border” to communicate as they ferried their customers across. Over the years, the “boda boda” phenomenon has spread throughout the country as an independent and unregulated transit system.
While “boda bodas” are ubiquitous up country, there they are often of the humbler bicycle variety. In the overcrowded capital, where virtually all operators cruise around on motorbikes, the passenger vehicle is an entirely different beast.
For commuters, the “boda boda” ride is an indispensable daily ritual. But despite their utility, operators like Yoweri occupy a position among the most universally reviled inhabitants of the city center, hovering somewhere near corrupt politicians and prostitutes.
In fact, when I first arrived in Kampala, a Ugandan friend gave me a tutorial on living here. The number one warning: beware the “boda boda.” She recounted harrowing tales of drive-by purse snatchings, gory hit-and-runs, and lecherous propositions. For many in the city, the term “boda boda” man suggests an attitude as much as a profession.
And the same tactics that render the “boda boda” the most convenient transit system in Kampala also make it the most dangerous. To wary city drivers such as my friend, “boda bodas” are rogue marauders careening around the congested traffic like an accident waiting to happen. And they do happen. Often. “Boda boda” crashes are the second leading cause of admission to the city’s main hospital, Mulago.
So at first I avoided them. I found myself begrudgingly paying premium for special-hire taxis or taking hour-long hikes up Kampala’s unavoidable hills, while turning down dozens of “boda boda men,” who have a habit of driving up to every lone pedestrian and expectantly saying, “We go?” “No,” I would say, “we don’t.”
But about a week into my time here the inevitable happened. I had a meeting across town and 10 minutes to get there. It was 8:30 a.m. and I knew it would take at least a half hour in traffic—there was only one choice. I saw Yoweri driving by my apartment on a Yamaha and flagged him down.
Soon enough, I became a regular customer. I’ve had a few drivers who see the sidewalk as an extension of the street and some who find the speed limit impossibly slow, but I’ve yet to meet the lewd thief I was so sternly warned about. Though I’m sure he exists, over two months I’ve met many more Yoweris, young and earnest men from up country, just trying to make a living in the city, and perhaps cutting a few corners in the process.
Asli A. Bashir ’10, a Crimson magazine chair, is a history and literature concentrator in Currier House.
