More Words on Taxis

Last weekend, I decided to steal away from site for a night to meet up with a few other PCVs in Mbale. It took about 20 minutes for a taxi to drive by right past my house. I yell at the top of my lungs from my front porch for it to stop. It does. Nearly empty, I jump in the front seat. Yes! The front seat! Best seat in these death carriages. The least bumpy, the least cramped.

We roll down the road about one mile and proceed to stop at a junction for 20 solid minutes. Nothing is happening, no one is boarding. We are just sitting. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

We roll down the road another two miles to the next trading center and proceed to wait for another 20 minutes. Each time I see a hint of a vehicle coming down the road I try to flag them down and hitchhike the rest of the way to Mbale. Fail... fail fail.

After standing outside the taxi in the middle of the road for a few minutes, I walk up to the driver. "Let's go." I say.

"No customers." He responds.

I'm in no particular hurry on this particular day but I really don't feel like waiting two hours to reach Mbale if I don't have to. This is the westerner in me. I tell him I will give him 10,000 shillings if we make it to Mbale by 1:30. The time is now 12:38. No taxi has ever made it that distance in less than an hour.

The normal price is 3,000 shillings, these days that's just over a dollar. So I was offering him over three times the regular price. For a 40k trip. When I got back in the taxi I wasn't quite sure if he had accepted my proposition or not. All I knew is we left then and there. Slowly accelerating. More and more. We start going really fast. Like, uncomfortably fast on these crappy dirt roads. I begin to think he has accepted my challenge.

Honestly, I have never seen Ugandans move so fast in my entire 19+ months here. I kept telling the driver and the conductor 1:30 and not a minute late. I would deduct 1,000 shillings for every minute we were late. Everyone in the taxi was bursting out laughing at my remarks. They were all happy because I was incentivizing these guys to move faster and they were also enjoying watching them struggle to move as fast as they could.

The freaking driver and conductor were yelling at Ugandans on the side of the road to get into the taxi as fast as possible. They had a deadline. These passengers were so confused, they had no idea what was going on and certainly weren't used to this sense of urgency and dare I say, quality service. Time in money!

"Mzungu you add more ten!" The conductor yells as he's helping a woman carry her bag into the taxi. I'm guessing he meant ten more minutes.

We barrel on down the road. The driver and conductor are trying to find a perfect balance between stopping and picking up as many people as possible and making my 1:30 deadline.

The crazy bastards made it! We rolled into town right as the clock hit 1:30. They were so happy. I was a bit hesitant because I didn't want to pay the hefty toll. But I had to keep my word. I passed them a 10,000 shilling note and departed the taxi, happy to be here a little earlier.

On the way back, I crammed into the second row. Designed to seat three people, we had six, plus a child. It was not enjoyable, to say the least. The taxi was slow. Every time the conductor opened and closed the door it looked liked it was going to fall off. It wasn't connected at the top.

Midway through the journey. The door jams. And we cannot get out of the taxi. It takes about ten minutes to resolve this issue. I'm miserable. Hating life.

They resolve the door jam issue and the journey continues. A few people have exited the vehicle and the guy that was sitting in between my legs twenty minutes ago, head in my crotch, is now seated comfortably next to me. I'm jamming out to Kanye West's album "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy". I offer him one half of my headphones and we jam out together. I have no idea of his name or if he even enjoys the music. But I take pleasure out of the experience anyways. Life is good.

I arrive at my stop. Exit taxi. Breathe air. Come back to life.

Tuesday. I get a call from Pallisa Post Office saying I have a package. Thanks MOM!!! I get excited. Flag down taxi, which passes almost immediately after I get to the main road. Shocking. This taxi, with a legal capacity of 15, is loaded with about 22, plus multiple children and infants. The back is exploding with rice sacks full of... whatever. Twenty minutes later, tire blowout. Everyone out. Find a new lift. Delay, delay. Surprise!

Such is life in Uganda. One minute things are going amazingly, the next... disaster, preventable disaster. Certainly does build your mental endurance. Hoorah!!!