What it means to use public transport every day

The difficulty in using taxis daily

“My name is Dinah Mirembe. I used to live in Makindye two years ago. However, the public transport system was a lot of work. If I was to go to town in the morning for an 8am appointment, I had to be at the taxi stage at 7am. The moment I delayed for 15 minutes, getting a taxi would be a hustle, especially on Mondays; there would be more passengers on the stage than others days.

However, if I was to go to town in the afternoon, I would not bother going to my usual stage, because that means I would have to wait for a taxi for at least 20 minutes. So, I would go to the Luwafu stage where I would get a taxi and pay Shs700 fare to town.

I now live in Kasangati. The transport system is not any different. Right now, I have a job and I am expected in office by 8am. However, given the distance from Kasangati to Kansanga, my work place, I have to be at the taxi stage by 7.15am. It takes the taxi 30 to 45 minutes to get to Kalerwe because of the jam. Some drivers know how to go about the jam; some use short cuts and feeder roads while others create an illegal lane on the side.

But on more than two occasions, our taxi has been stopped by the traffic officers for creating an illegal lane and we were all told to get out of the taxi. The times this has happened to me, I have always been late for work because getting a taxi between 7.20am and 8am is hard.
I have never gone with these taxis to the taxi park.

I normally get off at the roundabout at Mulago and I pay Shs2,000 for the fare. I then pick a boda boda. Normally, I pay Shs4,000 from the boda boda stage to Kansanga, But on rainy days, they charge me between Shs5,000 to Shs6,000.

The reason I use boda bodas is because there is no way I can go to Usafi Taxi Park because besides it being very far, I will have to sit in the clock tower jam for about 15 minutes. So I have to take the expensive but fast means which is boda bodas.

I leave work at 5pm and I pay Shs1,000 from Kansanga to the park. But on some days, I leave later at 6pm. On those days, by the time I get to the taxi park, there are no taxis. So I have to either fight to get a seat in the few taxis that keep on trickling in or stand aside until 8pm when most passengers have boarded and I no longer need to fight.

Alternatively, I walk up to city square [Constitution Square] where I board taxis going to either Mpererwe or Gayaza and I pay Shs2,000. If I board one going to Mpererwe, it means we will have to take the direct route through Kampala Road, Wandegeya and Kalerwe. But when I get the ones going to Gayaza, they normally use a short cut through Kyebando, Nsoba.

One day, as we were trying to dodge the jam, the driver used the Kawempe Tula Road; then, the road was still under construction and it had rained. But because these men are impatient, the driver did not slow down when passing a pool of water.

So he splashed it on a man who was standing by the roadside. There was a slight jam so our taxi had to slow down. The man who had been splashed on used that opportunity to collect mud in his palms, walked slowly to the driver’s side and splashed his face with mud.

I thought the driver deserved it for not having apologised to the man but felt sorry for the two passengers who were seated in front because they were also affected.
Just like that poor man, I have been splashed with mud and dirty water on four occasions, the recent one was when I was riding on a boda boda.

The cyclist told me to first get off, and then he rode to the car that had splashed water on us as it had stopped in the jam. He gave the driver a piece of his mind, then came back for me and we rode off. He was very unhappy. Usually, I use three taxis and one boda boda every day. I need at least Shs12,000 for transport in a day.

In the different taxis that I board, I witness very many things from conductors fighting and having verbal exchanges with the passengers to conductors denying that a certain passenger has not paid their fare even when more than one passenger says they saw the conductor taking the money. While I can stand all this, I just cannot stand people who lock windows in a taxi. I think it is unhealthy.

I think if the public transport system was organised, transport fares fixed, roads expanded and conductors and drivers trained on how to manage passengers, we would have a smooth public transport system.”

As told to Sarah Tumwebaze

Special-hire cars are expensive but convenient

“My name is John Kashaija, and I own a retail shop in Nateete, a Kampala suburb. I started my retail shop in Nateete last year towards the end but I rent in Mukono where my wife-to-be and four-month-old baby stay. Renting in the city is very expensive so we decided to stay in my late father’s house in Mukono from where I commute to the city each day using taxi to come and run my business.

Travelling by special hire cabs, which take as many passengers as they can, is expensive but days when the competition for taxis is high, they are usually the only means to get back home.

I board from Nateete and to get to Mukono, the fares vary from Shs10,000 to Shs15,000 depending on the day. They can even go higher than that.
I use a special hire taxi cab once or twice a week and we are often about six passengers. There was one time though when I closed business late at around 10pm and the taxis that were connecting to Mukono were not available. I will never forget that day.

We waited at the stage for a taxi but none showed up. In the end, it was a Premio car that we squeezed into – we were eight people in the five-seater capacity car. There were three people at the front, the driver, a man in the middle and a woman in the passenger seat.

At the back we were five men, with the one at the centre – a young boy – sitting on the laps of another.

What was scary about that experience was that because the lady in the front was big, the man that was seated next to her was forced to push some of his weight in the space between the driver and passenger seat – where the gearbox for the car is. He separated his legs such that the gear lever was between them. So whenever the driver wanted to shift gears on the manual car, he reached out between the man’s legs. I got so worried, thinking we may get an accident if there was a swerve in a bend and his weight pressed against the lever.

I was also worried about traffic policemen pulling us over and getting stuck late at night on my way home. However, we were lucky and the driver expertly drove along the bypass.

We encountered some traffic jam around Kireka- Bweyogerere, and there were still no policemen in sight. He succeeded in getting us to Mukono when it was coming to midnight. I was thankful that day.
On the whole these special hire cabs are usually comfortable especially if you take the front seat. Passengers in the back seats are however always squeezed and uncomfortable.

I once experienced paralysis in my leg by after some time using them, I have now gotten used.
I would not say these taxi cabs are the best but they are all we have sometimes. The alternative is hustling to get into the commuter taxis that have to pass through the park first and if they do not, they are always stop along the way. The only issue with these cabs is that they are very expensive.

As told to Didas Kisembo

Travelling from Apac to Kampala by bus every week

“My name is Patrick Obua. I travel to Apac District from Kampala, twice a week. I am a businessman dealing in IT equipment. Sometimes I travel three or five times a week to Kampala depending on what I am going to do. I have been travelling for the last 10 years.

Although I have a car, I feel it’s cheaper to use the bus. I can’t use my car all the time when I consider fuel costs because it is expensive.

Sometimes I pay for the bus seats because I carry big items like photocopiers and computers. I have no other means for transporting the items. At some time there was no bus on this route for about two to three years, until this company, Comfort buses came.

Now there is always one travelling from Apac to Kampala. I think the company has been operating on the route for five years.
There was another company on the route but I think it got liquidated.

The journey from Kampala to Apac is about 300km which takes about five hours. However, a section of the road is in a bad state. The challenge I face is that the bus leaves so early at 6am, for Kampala. Previously, we would leave at 5am and reach at about midday or between 1pm and 2pm. I am charged Shs25,000 but looking at the distance covered and other places, that fare is exorbitant.

However, the fares can shoot to Shs35,000 when students are returning to school and during the festive seasons. The buses make return journeys because the operators claim customers are few so they use one bus. It is only during festive season that they use two buses.

There is also overloading during the festive season.
I have not witnessed any cases of theft, but there are those involving lost property along the way. These are common. There have not been any fatal accidents on the route for some time.

I want the operators to reduce prices of the fare and restructure the time. There should be only one bus going to Kampala and another making a return journey. In terms of service, I cannot say that it is very good since there is only one company on the route. You have no choice, so I can’t compare.

As told to Anna Katusiime

‘Bicycles should be allowed in the city’

“I am a trader at St Balikudembe market in Kampala. My name is Emmanuel Wamimbi and my main means of transport in the city is the bicycle. When I had just come to Kampala from the village, I must have gone through a serious culture shock. Everything about the public transport system here awed me.

For a low income earner, life in the city was set to be a hard one. Back home in Mbale, the bicycle was the typical means of transport in the village and in the town centre, hopping onto a bike was normal; actually it was the means of transport for those with money.

When I came to the city in 2009, after my Senior Six to try out life here, I was surprised that there were few bicycles in the city. I stayed with my brother in Kalerwe, a Kampala suburb and getting a taxi to Owino Market where I am a trader was hard. The conventional boda boda here (the motorcycle riders) was quite costly so I would always wake up as early as 5am and trek to Owino.

How could I spend Shs3,000 to Shs4,000 fare on a boda boda yet I was earning about Shs10,000 in a day? The whole thing just didn’t make economic sense.

On the other hand, getting taxis at the time around Kalerwe was quite hard as they would always be loaded by the time they reached my home. And even when I got one, with the heavy traffic jam around Wandegeya, I could barely report for work early enough yet my boss, a very strict one for that matter, wanted me at the workplace by 6am.

Life was hard. For an ordinary working class person, the difference of Shs1,000 is negligible but for low income earners like myself, it makes a world of difference. That is why when bicycles became common in Kalerwe, I was among the most excited men in this town. With Shs800 I would find myself in Owino market and in time. That meant that I saved shs2,200 for the journey to the market and spent only Shs1,500-2,000 for the journey back home.

I established a rapport with the rider so much that he would ride his bicycle to pick me from work around 9pm. Getting a boda boda from Owino to my place of abode would leave me Shs4,000 poorer.

The main challenge with this means of transport is that the bicycles are restricted, I don’t know if there is a particular law that forbids them from riding all over the city the way the motorcycle fellows do. So at times we have to use routes outside the regular traffic flow and sometimes it is dangerous. And of course the bikes can only lift so much luggage yet sometimes I return home with merchandise. That is quite challenging.

It is worse when rain falls and the roads get slippery and muddy. I have survived several accidents because of this, at one time falling off the bicycle and nearly fracturing my legs because the road was so slippery that the man could not brake. Sometime back in 2010, I survived a near fatal accident as we rode at the junction between Mulago, Kyebando and Mawanda road. As the rider struggled with the brakes, we came down, almost hitting a bus, which luckily was moving slowly thanks to traffic jam.

Such experiences have made me rethink the use of these bicycles but a poor man has no choice and for some reason, I might be addicted to them now. I only use a taxi or motorcycle if and when I cannot get a bicycle around. In fact, I personally think Kampala Capital City Authority should pass a law that allows these men to freely transact their business on the roads of Kampala as and how they wish so long as strict rules are put in place. By the way KCCA is acting like the proverbial ostrich on this kagali business because the trade exists and there are no regulations such as crash helmets and licensing, the way it is for the boda bodas. Bicycles are environment and pocket friendly so we should embrace them after all I am told in modern countries like Britain, serious men and women use bicycles so what is special about Uganda?

As told to Ivan Okuda