Rough Roads

Scott was born to drive in Africa. Maybe it is all of that Emergency Vehicle Operation training with the Seattle Police Department. He is aggressive and fearless. Tentative drivers don’t fare well in Uganda. Any one of 10,000 nearby boda (motorcycle) drivers will fill every available inch of space on the road, including in your blind spot or the 20 centimeter area your right front tire will occupy 2 seconds from now unless you slam on your brakes.

But I have to drive here too. I didn’t take all those police courses. I’m a 61 year-old white suburban US mom (there are very few of us on the roads here) who views her car as a 6,000 pound steamroller. As frustrating as the bodas, pedestrians and other drivers are here, I do try to avoid squishing them. Sometimes I seem to care more about their lives than they do.

Driving has been the biggest adjustment back to life in Kampala. Even a 1.5 km trip to the grocery store spikes my blood pressure and gives me the sweats.

A running joke among the expatriate women here is that when the couple is in the car together, the wife drives. Not because they want to but because preserving one’s marriage is important and that is difficult with screaming and gasping coming continuously from the passenger seat. I would rather have Scott constantly tell me to go faster than I would press my right foot through the passenger floorboard trying to slam on the imaginary brake pedal that I wish were real.

Most folks in the diplomatic community have drivers. The driver helps keep them safe, especially if there’s an accident. Scott has a driver for his work but actually prefers to drive himself. I drive myself but would prefer to have a driver.

With the Ugandan economy fully reopened from COVID lockdowns and kids back to school, we are now getting a sense of the rhythms of traffic.

There are not any. Traffic is totally unpredictable. Sundays are typically pretty quiet but any other day is a free for all. Two lane roads become 5 lanes when taxi vans and bodas use opposing lanes, shoulders, driveways and sidewalks to move a few feet ahead of where they were.

Roads are mainly tarmac in the city but meteor sized potholes are frequent. The edges of the road are washed away from the frequent rains (and because construction materials and methods are shabby) so a two-lane road can become a barely one-lane road. Many roads are edged with stone-lined “gutters” that are two meters deep and drop off right from the edge of the road. A few-inch swerve to avoid a boda or oncoming car can dump you right into the ditch, swallowed up in a sinkhole of stone and runoff. Bad in a car, awful on the back of a boda.

Bodas and taxis (14 passenger vans) are the worst offenders. Rules of the road are not rules, because everything is part of the “road.” One spends as much time watching the mirrors as looking at the road ahead because swarms of bodas are everywhere, all around you and moving in every direction. It is a bit like being a rock in the middle of rapids. If the water was stinging, angry wasps. And if you were naked on a raft. Covered in molassas.

Just when things calm down, you hear the approach of a military or police escort. For these vehicles, everything is an “emergency” requiring full sirens and lights. They may be accompanied by a pickup truck full of teenagers with machine guns. You never know who could be behind the tinted windows of the government car. Is it the President? The Minister of Education? The Assistant to the Undersecretary for the Advancement of Badminton? The Vice-Senior Technical Advisor to the Judiciary for Farm Equipment Maintenance? They all get cars and escorts at taxpayer expense! But no matter the title, if you have an escort convoy, every trip is a critical emergency that requires all other vehicles to get out of the way.

Some civilians have purchased sirens and light bars and installed them on their personal vehicles. Scott is seriously considering that. In the meantime, if he doesn’t think the lights/siren is legit, he doesn’t move over. Until the police start waving machine guns around and yelling. Then he does. Reluctantly.

The irony of this is that most Ugandans don’t own a vehicle. They walk or catch a boda or taxi. Yesterday I was heading home around 5:30 pm and thousands of uniformed school kids were walking home. In traffic. Across traffic. Older siblings holding the hands of younger kids. They would dodge in and out of cars. They would stop in front of your car before peeking around from your front bumper to see if that sea of bodas was coming, before darting across to the next lane. Just before my final two turns for home, I stopped traffic to let the cutest group of four girls in their red plaid uniforms cross in front of me. That’s a very Muzungu (white person) thing to do. The people behind me showed their deep appreciation and admiration by “hooting” (honking) boisterously in support.

A friend who has lived here for 15 years likens driving to a video game. To me its more like bumper cars. Bodas frequently hit your mirrors or bumper. Bumper bars help absorb some of the shock. We get tapped, bumped and bashed all the time. This seems – shockingly – to happen to Scott a lot. Because speeds are so low, our car is rarely damaged. But there have been some more significant bashes in the year we’ve been here. We’ll have to write an entire blog post about accidents, or as Maggie and Anna’s Drivers Ed teacher called them, “Crashes – it isn’t an 'accident' when it is someone’s fault.”

Driving at night is especially stressful. There are NO street lights, few sidewalks and everyone seems to favor dark clothes. Many bodas and vehicles have no working lights. It feels like driving totally blind. I drive with a lump in my throat.

So, to ease my nerves, I turn on the one available radio station. Its local with a great variety of music and news. Scott describes the playlist as the result of an earthquake that knocked down a CD shop and they created a playlist with songs from the handful of albums they randomly scooped up off the floor. Lots of 1980s country, some reggae, hip hop, African pop, and US Pop. Today’s artists included Whitney Houston, Kenny Rodgers, Kanaan, Taylor Swift, Roberta Flack, Akon, Bette Midler and Kenny G, as well as many more that I didn’t know. It soothes me, a bit and I’m beginning to understand the traffic reports the more I listen.

All in all, it’s still a white-knuckle experience for me. On each of the last three turns before I get to our street, I can feel me shoulders relax. When I reach Sserunkuma Road just 20 meters from our gate – I usually let out a huge sigh of relief.

We can hardly wait for you to come visit – the ride to and from the airport is the most harrowing of all!