Kabale has one form of transportation- bodabodas. These are either a motorcycle (50 cents per ride) or a bicycle (10 cents per ride). No matter where you go, you will see a group of guys standing on the streetcorner with their bikes waiting for a customer- there are hundreds of these things all over town and really, everyone uses them, and you rarely see just one passenger sitting on the back. In Kampala, I saw a motorbike boda with 7 people on it- driver, mom, dad, two big kids, and two babies strapped to their backs. Parents send them to go pick up the kids from school (can you imagine your three toddlers piling on to the back of a teenage boy’s bike, speeding down a busy road? Seems…dangerous.) and everyone knows that to get anywhere, you should just hire a boda.
At first, everyone here was surprised that I wanted to walk everywhere. The only really far walks were to my favourite grocery store, the post office, and the bakery on the other side of town. It is about 3 kilometers from my house to there, so a perfect “let’s get out of the house and kill some time” activity for a lonely Saturday morning. I enjoy the walk, but the ladies from work tsk tsk at me. The expectation is that if you can afford it, you pay someone to ride you to wherever you need to go.
Recently, I started being more busy. I don’t really know how this happened- I have been going to the music team meetings at church, and I bake more than I used to, but I don’t know why I feel busy now! Maybe it is because I’m coming home in 3 weeks. Anyways, this busyness has resulted in less time for walking. So I have started taking the bicycle bodas when I have to go across town.
Now, to summon one of these…you have to be tough. Else they’ll think you’re a stupid mzungu and try to cheat you. So, I walk past a group of them, make eye contact with the best-dressed one (my logic is that if he can make enough money to dress well, he probably gets hired a lot, and is therefore a more experienced driver…maybe a bit of a stretch, but how else do you pick?) and give a little nod and say “Royal Supermarket-y”, climb on to the seat (sitting sideways since I’m wearing a skirt) and off we go. I’ve learned that bargaining with them before you get on is useless, because I know exactly how much it is supposed to cost, and they’ll tell me it costs double that. So, we zip through town, going way too fast -then you can say “mpora mpora ssebo!” which means “slowly by slowly mister!” and he’ll slow down for a few seconds. Once we get close to where I am going, I start saying “Yego, aha! Aha!” (Okay, here. Here!) and he stops to let me off. I pay him my 10cents and he bikes away. Done. What a great system- convenient and cheap enough for most people to afford. So environmentally friendly!
