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| Uganda News 6 - Taxi experiences |
Uganda News #6
A Report by Cynthia Margeson
Arlington Academy of Hope
November 12, 2006
Taxi Experiences in Uganda
One of the main modes of transport here and about Uganda is the taxi. These taxis are old, Toyota vans with bench seating for fourteen passengers (clearly written on the outside of every vehicle is the statement, this vehicle licensed to carry 14 passengers). Every single time I board one of these, I truly feel that I am putting my life in the hands of a reckless driver who is in command of an ill-repaired vehicle. In other words, there’s not a taxi in the country that would pass VA state inspection! To that effect, I have copied two pages from the book about Idi Amin which is entitled, The Last King of Scotland (now also a movie I have heard). This is an absolutely accurate portrayal of these vehicles. Following this copy I will list some of my most memorable taxi rides. I hope you enjoy these words.
“Filled with silky-haired goats, chickens and what must have been nearly thirty human bodies – in a space meant for about ten – the matatu didn’t feel like a vehicle at all. With its windscreen cracked and browned, several of the door handles sheared off, one of the wheel arches missing and a general weariness distributed throughout the whole structure, onto which various bits of wood and steel plate had been tacked it seemed less like a machine than an ancient artefact, something to worship or view at an exhibition.
Walking around each minibus, wherever you might have expected a number to have been, there were brightly lettered messages instead: “Travel Hopefully”, and “Go With God”. Elsewhere, “Africa Superstar Express” and “Arsenal”. Inside the van, stencilled above the driver’s head, was yet another sign: “No Condition is Permanent” it said, whether warning or comfort I could not tell.
My seat, under which I had stowed my luggage, was only partly covered. The springs came through, poking up between fibrous stuffing and remnants of plastic. I moved about uncomfortably, listening to the thumps on the roof as they loaded up the cargo. I saw crates of Fanta and Coca-Cola, bundles of newly planed wood, heavy sacks of rice or grain stamped with an inky logo, a long tower (almost as long as the bus itself) of red plastic washing bowls, the inevitable stalks of matooke, or green banana – and so much more being passed up, that I wondered how we would ever manage to travel.
By the time the last of the freight had been humped up and the tout, who also doubled as conductor, had given his final catcall and grabbed his last fistful of grubby notes, my thighs were beginning to hurt a great deal from the metal coils in the seat. As we roared off with crashing gears and a cloud of dust and exhaust, I folded my jacket underneath me. This action disturbed one of the goats, which was doubled up next to my suitcase under the seat, its shanks horribly tied with wire flex. It also caused a certain amount of merriment among my neighbours. The old woman next to me said something loudly. I caught the word “muzungu”, meaning white man, I’d already worked out. A titter went around the van, everyone looking at me as if I were some kind of zoo animal.
I just grinned back awkwardly, as we bumped along the potholed road out of the city – grinned at the mixed bunch of merchants, mainly women, with their goods and animals (one had live chickens squashed into a basket on her knee), farmers and crying babies. All were very poor, although I notice that there was one passenger who seemed, by virtue of his smart blue worsted suit and the hard brown Samsonite-type case on his knees, to be more prosperous than the rest. He was reading a newspaper-with some difficulty, as the crush meant he could only open it a fraction.
My thighs were still hurting as we carried on into the country-side, in spite of the folded jacket. We passed clumps of banana plantations by the side of the road and open lorries going in the opposite direction, most of them piled high with the waxy fruit – it’s eaten green, in a savory dish, not yellow like at home – and belching out clouds of black exhaust. There were boys with banana, too, the large bunches of forty or fifty balanced precariously on the back of their old-fashioned bicycles.
-From The Last King of Scotland, Giles Foden
And now for my a few of my own memorable journeys:
There was the time that we ran out of gas so many people got off the taxi. However, we had little knowledge of where we were, or where we would go, so we stayed aboard. Lo and behold, once the driver had walked to get and put in another half litre of gas (drivers never want to leave the vehicle for someone else with any of their gas in it), we continued along the road only to pick up those people who had walked a bit to where they could imbibe in the local brew: waragi. They were feeling no pain, so the rest of the trip was rowdy and merry.
One time I was one of the first to enter so I headed for the back of the taxi; I discovered why they had wanted me to sit further forward. There was a side of a cow, freshly butchered in a strong plastic bag under the back seat where I sat temporarily.
Last week, we were driving through the market after some heavy rains. The vehicle got stuck. Many got off (I started to but they insisted we stay on), some started pushing, the car was swerving as a car would in snow, we got to where the car was leaning at an angle of 30-40 degrees and I feared that I would soon be deposited (through the window) into some vendor’s pile of wares (plastic shoes, charcoal burners, dried fish, matooke, or mounds of cabbages; you name it). Once again, somehow disaster was averted.
Another time (in a space made with three seats) there was a lady and her baby, Catherine with the lady’s little girl sitting on her lap, me and one other man . There is no such thing as an unspoken 18 inches of personal space. If you are not literally sitting in or on someone’s lap, there is still room for one more. We are riding along, the lady is nursing (very common here) and the little girl starts throwing up into her jacket, rolling it up and continues to sit on Catherine’s lap. The lady finally got off before we reached Mbale and offered her thanks to Catherine.
Again, remember that this taxi ride that we usually take to Mbale is 35 kilometers (about 15 miles) and takes from 1hour minimum to two and a half hours for the fee of 2000 shillings (just over a dollar). Sometimes when we have done vegetable or bottled water shopping we splurge and get a private hire for 40,000 shillings (about 23 dollars but worth every luxurious cent of it) for our return trip. As long as it has not rained, this trip will then take about 50 minutes.
The drivers race from place to place, trying to find riders before the next taxi comes. They come to a screeching halt and a cloud of dust, pick you up and then barrel down the dusty road to get ahead of another driver who may have stopped to pick up someone. There is space for two passengers in front and sometimes they invite the muzungu to sit up there. Otherwise you get in through the sliding door where the “conductor” is in total control of starting and stopping, where you will sit and collecting the money (towards the end of the trip). This is usually done without any words exchanged, just a look and a nod.
There is a charade of not overloading these vehicles except for the fact that the more customers you have, the more profit they make. There are certain known spots where some sort of patrol, sometimes uniformed army men and sometimes, plainclothes toll collectors is waiting. Some taxis will download their customers onto bicycle transport, known as boda-boda. The boda bodas will carry the people a few hundred yards past the patrol and then voila, we pick them up again! Another trick is to pick a branch along the roadside and display it in the front grill of the vehicle and that is apparently a sign that all in the taxi are going to attend the same function (like a burial or some such).
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