Transportation

Oh transportation in Uganda...How difficult you can be...Hah

(I would like to preface this by saying I love Uganda. Even though this is a rant I love this country and am very happy I am here. After my last frustrating post I remembered all the awesome kids I am here for! Anyway I digress.)

So in Uganda there are several different types of transportation; Bike, Motorcycle (illegal to us), Private Hire, Matatu Taxis, and Huge Buses. And well feet, I guess, but that is not the point today.

Bike transport is awesome and convenient. Tony and I both have bikes to ride around site and when we are away in other towns we could utilize Bike Bodas or Bike Taxis. These are nice and you can actually talk with the Boda men about there day and what is this or that.

Motorcycles are illegal for PC Volunteers to use and ride on.

Private Hire cars are nice sometimes, but can be expensive. We don't use them much but they can have competitive prices and fits lots of people. For example, another PCV learned that ten people can fit into a manual Toyota Corola car. Impressive.

Matatus are what we take most often. Imagine a van in the US but with more seats. Usually you have three people in the front, driver included, and 4 rows of 3 seats in the back. Legally they can carry 14 passengers, the driver, and conductor (the money man). The seats farthest on the left fold down and swing to the side to make an instant row. The matatus are often in varying degrees of disrepair. In our area it is not uncommon for the doors to only open from the outside, the main door to fall off its hinges, windows to be stuck open closed, metal poking out of the far left seats (watch your clothes!), I think you get the idea.

Plus depending on where you live matatus have “bonuses”. On average there are 5 chickens and several rice sacks of posho flour. Monthly we ride with goats. And because we are lucky in Teso, instead of carrying 14 passengers we typically have 20 passengers. Oh yes, bonding time is had by all.

The Buses are roller-coasters. Depending on the company you travel with you could have a bus that is falling a part without any suspension (or a driver without concern for pot holes) or a nice bus. Some even have movies! Poorly dumbed over movies but still movies! These bad boys often have sweet horns as well. High pitched musical squeelings happen a lot. They are just something you need to hear.

Safety on these things is pretty self-explanatory; don't be stupid. Don't take a Bike Boda on a really busy street. Never get into an empty matatu. Never travel at night. Never sit in the back of the bus (you will bounce so high your back will hate you for days).

So today, Tony and I were traveling from Kampala back to our site. Overall the trip went well. It took a long time but that is not uncommon and the bus driver was pretty safe.

This bus was supposed to travel to Soroti; a town past our site and we were going to get off early. Well we got to Mbale (thirty minutes from site) around 7, it was getting dark, and the bus emptied. It was about to over heat. So in light of this new situation our bus conductor made arrangements for a matatu taxi to take the rest of us out to Bukedea, Kumi, and finally Soroti. This didn't sound so bad because there were enough people going that direction to completely fill the taxi. We could have taken off right away. We all wanted to take off right away because it was getting dark. Literally the whole taxi was full and just waiting for the conductor and driver to get there butts in the taxi and leave.

We waited.

The conductor brought 8 pineapples into the taxi because he wanted to take them home. Imagine the annoyance!

We waited.

After our bus conductor made arrangements with the taxi driver and conductor they came over. We thought we were going to get going. Nope. They decided to have all the people going to Soroti get out of our full taxi and get into a different one going to Soroti. They wanted to fill some other one!

Tony, me, and one other person were the only people not going to Soroti! They pulled everyone out and tried to tell us that now our taxi was only going to go to Kumi and would leave right away. Mind you there would be a total of 5 of us in a taxi that usually has 22 people in it on a regular day. BS! I was so mad they didn't just leave with our original group.

Then Tony and I got out of the taxi because we didn't feel safe at all. I mean two white people all alone in an empty taxi at night driving with who knows what people. Bad news. Either they would rob us or once we got to Bukedea make us pay for the empty seats. My gut said they would rob us.

The conductor and driver were not happy. They tried convincing us that they would leave then and the driver said he would “eat the cost” of an empty taxi. We still refused. The conductor then tried to pull over another taxi to take us to Bukedea. We still refused. Now this meant that the conductor had to give us our change back. Which he did and was still trying to convince us to go in the taxi but we kindly thanked him for his efforts and then headed to a hotel.

Frustrating, yes.

Overall good transport, yes.

Glad I listened to my gut, yes.

Had a drink, yes.

Love,

Me

PS – More blogs to come!