Mzungu! Boda?

You know that feeling when you want to do something just because someone told you not to do it? I have that feeling every time I walk on the streets of Kampala. Even though you can get anywhere in the city on foot, I’ve really wanted to ride the boda bodas, the crazy motorcycle taxis that weave in and out of traffic lanes, speeding down Kampala Road as they dodge both cars and pedestrians alike. It doesn’t take long to see that for them, traffic laws (and common sense) are mere suggestion. Roads are rollings black seas of endless automotive possibilities.There’s moving traffic at the next intersection? We might get hit if we just go through? Okay, hold on. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that part of operating any vehicle in Kampala involves defensive driving against the bodas.

The word on the street is that roughly half the patients in the city’s hospitals at any given time are there because of boda boda accidents. A guy at our hostel said that there are about five boda boda related fatalities a day in Kampala. If the drivers don’t like you, they’ve been known to lean a little too far one way or the other so that the nasty nuisance in their backseat gets hit by, say, a car’s mirror or a conveniently-placed pole. There are stories about the drivers dropping off their mzungu passengers in back alleys at night so they can rob them of all their clothes and shillings and beat them senseless if they don’t have enough. And those aren’t warnings from paranoid travelers with lots of pocket change. No, those are the things I’ve heard from straight-faced Ugandans who said they walk if they can and avoid boda bodas after dark like the plague.

So when Jade, Heehyun and I were in Kampala on Saturday and split up to run some errands, I didn’t think I would ride a boda boda. The voice of reason in the back of my mind told me it wasn’t the greatest idea. Besides, I’ve ridden motorcycles before. Why were these any different? But when you have that itch to do something that you’re not supposed to do, it doesn’t take much to push you in the wrong direction. It’s like a plant. It takes just a little water to get that seedling to grow, and that seedling was definitely there. As soon as Heehyun tossed out the idea of taking a boda boda to get lunch at 1000 Cups of Coffee, well, that was the end of that.

A couple minutes later, the two of us were cruising around Kampala on our very first boda boda. Our attempts to bargain a cheaper price from the driver had failed, and Heehyun telling the guy “Safety, please” set quite an interesting tone. I was half-expecting to fall off the back when he ripped out into the street and did a quick U-turn across a couple lanes of traffic. Against all odds, our driver heeded our plea to make it to the other side of town without any scrapes or metal objects lodged in our skulls. He actually went pretty slow by comparison to some of the boda bodas I’ve seen, which was great because it made it that much easier to get on the second one later that afternoon.

So there Heehyun and I are again with this driver wearing a black leather jacket and racing sunglasses. Heehyun’s “safety, please” trick didn’t work as well the second time, but I have to say it was a lot more fun going a bit faster and we still made it there sans body mangling. I guess it’s not all that great that we had such good experiences because now we joke that it’s all just overhyped.

I’ve really become so much more comfortable here than when we first arrived. Looking back, I think I had a little air of apprehension everywhere we went. I wasn’t so much worried that we were going to find ourselves face to face with the Ugandan Godfather, but we were in a pretty unfamiliar place and there are so many taboos that just don’t translate from culture to culture; it’s easy to walk right into an otherwise avoidable sticky situation. After having been here for a bit, I’ve noticed that I’m much more at ease walking around Kampala with my big satchel of mzungu goodies at my side. I’m okay with going against the boda boda horror stories and taking a joy ride with a guy whose name I can’t pronounce. I hope by the end of the summer, I’ve done at least a few more things that two weeks ago, when I stepped off that plane, would have completely surprised me.

Maybe for now though I should stop trying my chances and take a break from the motorcycles. You know, just commit to walking around the city? We’ll find out this weekend when we go back for the Kampala Street Art Festival. Seeing all the Ugandans have crazy fun boda boda adventure time won’t make it easy.