Saved by a boda boda; She rode the boda boda out of poverty and hardship

Mariam Alida is an unusual boda boda rider. She is careful, chatty and has all her gear; gloves, helmet and clean jacket. When our journey comes to an end, she smiles. When I ask why, she tells me that I am unlike many of the customers she transports.
“Some of my clients keep ordering me to drive a certain way and at a certain speed. They think I am not good enough as a rider but I disprove them. I am careful on the road because safety is paramount,” she explains.

There are a few pessimists. However, many people are surprised that Alida can ride a boda boda, an occupation which has for long been a preserve of men in the city. “There are customers who I transport and when it is time to pay the fare, they give me a tip. This has given me courage to go on,” the 30-year-old adds.
She is not only trusted by customers, her colleagues at the KCC Flats stage, off Kira road elected her their stage chairperson in 2013. She continues to lead fellow riders who think highly of her, and say as much.

In the last four years, Alida has been able to clear the two loans she acquired when starting out in the boda boda business. But before she decided to switch jobs from security guard duty to riding motorcycles, Alida’s life had taken many turns and twists.

Where it all began
When she was nine, Alida’s mother told her she did not have money to support her past Primary Three because she did not have a stable job.
Her mother could also not fend for her and two siblings. The teenager who missed having a father often clashed with her mother over the identity of her father. It was a topic her mother was uncomfortable discussing and at the height of the tension, mother and daughter went their separate ways. The youngster moved out, with no specific place to go. She spent most of the day in Kimaka Trading Centre in Jinja where she sat by makeshift merchandise stalls and in temporary local bars.

Whenever customers left the bar, Alida searched for a warm corner to spend the night. The people who operated the stalls and bars were people her mother had worked with or those who were kind enough to let her in.
“I did not have the luxury of bedding. Before long, I made friends who introduced me to mairungi (a local, illegal stimulant). When I could not find food to eat, I would chew on mairungi,” she recounts.

At 14, she crossed paths with a man who promised her a bright future. He invited her to move in. She only discovered it was all lies when he impregnated and abandoned her in the rental they occupied in Iganga town in eastern Uganda.
She was lucky not to be thrown out of the house. Out of sympathy, the landlady took care of her throughout the pregnancy until her baby was a few months old.

One sunny June morning in 2000, while she combed Iganga in search of a job, she met her mother’s friend who told her of an opportunity to work as a housemaid.
She decided to give it a try because she would have a place to stay with her child and also earn money for self-sustenance.
After a year, a friend interested her in working as an askari (security guard).

When she visited the security company’s offices in Iganga, one of the requirements was an O-Level certificate; the Uganda Certificate of Education (UCE), which she did not have.
She had to use someone else’s papers in order to get the job. A friend helped connect her to someone who was willing to share her academic papers. And that is how she started living life under a different name.

The security company offered her training but when she completed it, the manager said she was too young to be enrolled. She left but was glad to have been trained.
She moved on to another security company where she worked for two years. When she was recalled to work at the first company, she used academic papers from another friend.

How she came to Kampala
One day, she left the gun locked in the toilet and went in search of a meal. When she returned, her supervisor asked where she had kept the gun. Before she could respond, he slapped her.
Alida reported the matter to the company’s head office and the supervisor was suspended. She was transferred to the head office in Ntinda, leaving Iganga for Kampala. “I made friends with one of the people I met at head office and she offered me room at her place in Mbuya. When my mother heard that I was in Kampala, she came looking for me,” she recollects.

Alida adds, “I asked that we stay with her too but she started picking quarrels with our host, accusing her of taking my money. Fed up, the lady asked me to leave her house. My mother cost me an opportunity to stay with a woman who had become a better mother than my biological one.”

Alida soon left the security company and joined another security firm. Her next duty station was Kololo, a suburb of Kampala at a residence of a strict client.
She was not allowed to interact with people outside the home but her stubbornness led her to fling the gates open, to chat with someone across the road.
Another chance led her to someone she had known before. He now worked with another security company and convinced her. to join them.

The new company offered a better salary than her previous workstations that offered Shs70, 000 and Shs85, 000 respectively, per month. This one paid Shs120, 000. She applied for a job there.
“I knew I was disadvantaged as the rest of the trainees had academic papers. Once again, I had to enrol with fake papers but I displayed good skills in the training session at Lweza Training Centre. I was humble and readily available to run errands, clean toilets and polish everyone’s shoes,” Alida narrates. But when it came to parade, loading and unloading the guns, she amazed her tutors and fellow trainees.

Frustration paves way to opportunity
However in 2013, while at her guard post at one of the universities in Kampala, Alida’s frustration with her job reached its peak. She leaned against the stock of her gun, broken within. She was tired of the daily struggles with her supervisor who found fault with almost everything she did.

When the persecution became unbearable, Alida considered quitting her job. Sadly, she did not have an alternative source of livelihood.
One afternoon, emotionally drained and feeling low, Alida decided to share her pain with the university principal. The two had chatted and she felt she could open up to her about the struggles she was going through.

Alida asked the principal to lend her some money so that she could buy a motorcycle and find someone to ride it who could remit money on a weekly basis.
The two talked at length and at the end of the conversation, the university principal spared a few minutes to write Alida a letter of introduction to one of the banks in town.
With the letter, she was able to acquire a loan of Shs3m. The principal also lent her Shs3m. “I contacted a friend, Samuel Ogwal, who went with me to buy the motorcycle. Next, we identified someone to ride the bike and remit money on a weekly basis,” she recounts.

However, the rider did not duly pass on the weekly collections which left Alida frustrated. As they talked it over with Ogwal, he asked her to start learning how to ride. During breaks in her day, he would take her to Kololo Airstrip for riding lessons.
“The advantage was that I knew how to ride a bicycle. I learnt how to manoeuvre the gears and I learnt very fast,” she adds. As her riding skills improved, Ogwal asked her to raise some money to process a riding permit, which cost Shs300, 000.
Looking back, Alida is thankful for the frustration at her guarding job, which eventually pushed her into becoming a boda boda rider, a decision she does not regret.

What others say about her

“Women fear to take on certain things in life especially those that require more physical input. Mariam is extremely inspiring. She is breaking new ground as a cyclist in the city, showing women that there is nothing they cannot do. Nothing is impossible in the world.”
Taga Nuwagaba, customer,

“She is a colleague at our motorcycle stage. She is a good rider and customers always give good feedback about her. She enjoys working. She has served as a security guard before and she is now a boda boda rider, in a male-dominated job.”
Francis Pimundu, colleague at the stage

“She is a friend, who is hardworking, cooperative and strong-hearted. She is a good leader too and the chairperson of our boda boda stage here at KCC Flats stage. She knows how to handle us. We always talk through our up and downs. At a personal level, she is a happy person. We have been working together for three years.”
Ronald Oting, boda boda rider