trip. It's not very large, but it's dense. I still haven't quite made
sense of the bus station. There are four taxi, minibus, and "large
bus" stands within a few blocks. They are surrounded/connected by a
maze of markets and 3 columns of minibuses snaking around the block
that never seem to move.
Traffic is mostly paralyzed. I'm used to taxi drivers occasionally
turning off their cars to wait in traffic, but here they seem to be on
and off about six times a minute. As a result most people get around
on boda-bodas (motorcycle taxis).
I've seen motorcycle taxis in Africa, but never like this. They weave
in and out of cars through any space available, drive down the wrong
way of one way streets and take short cuts through gas
stations/sidewalks/medians etc. Kampala is built on a series of hills
(like Rome!) so the boda-bodas appear out of no where at the top or
fly on the downhills. And there are thousands of them.
Most of the drivers are from the villages where a bank gives them a
loan for the bike. With what they make in a day, the drivers can get
some food, gas, and maybe beer, but the rest of the money goes towards
the loan. If the driver is ever able to fully pay it off, they become
the owner of an old and overused motorcycle.
Today I took my first boda-boda.
I picked the first driver I found who would give me a good price and
didn't look like a teenager. When he put on his helmet (I didn't get
one) I noticed the bottom half of the plastic windscreen had been
broken off. Good sign!
To sum it up, it was the first proper adrenaline rush I've had in a
long time. The route he decided to take included main streets, side
streets, dirt paths and long steep downhills. We almost hit two other
boda-bodas and were about 4 inches from slamming straight into an SVU
that cut in front of us (seriously I almost fell off). The entire time
I had a stupid grin on my face, saying out loud into the wind, "Weeee!
We're going to die!"
And that was my day thus far.
Oh, and I also had some really good coffee.
I bet you can buy a helmet for like, 50 cents. that's what I would do. there are ways to get an adrenaline rush without risking your life, you can, say, date girls in brooklyn for instance, unless you count dying inside as actual death.
ReplyDeletewiki has a gigantic pic of kampala
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Kampala_from_old_mosque.jpg
looks nice! boda-bodas!
You're going to have a lifetime of story from this one adventure. Some day, your grandchildren will make fun of you for telling the boda-boda story again.
ReplyDelete"Whee!!!" they'll say, mockingly giggling at their smoking, coughing grandpa.
"Good for nothing rugrats," you'll mutter under your breath, knowing that the scariest thing they've ever done is World 3-4 in Super Mario Bros Redux Limited 4D Superstar Edition.