Public-Private Partnerships

At Anna and Mike’s school we are in a fairly remote area of Uganda. In order to get anywhere, especially 45 minutes to the nearest town to get internet access, you have to flag down transport on the side of the road. This is so foreign to me coming from Pakistan, where I would hitch hike about as readily as I would shave my eyeball with lemon juice. But here, you can’t get anywhere without it.

There are two types of transport in Uganda, Public and Private. Generally, you’re going to flag down a public taxi. What this means is that you will squeeze into a Toyota Corolla with more people than you thought possible. Fuel prices are so high right now (almost $1.60 / litre) that overloading is the only way for drivers to make money. The most people I’ve ever been in with was eleven including the driver, which makes for a real clown car. First, you’ve got four people squeezed in the back, which is normally okay, since people here are generally thin, but you do get some big African Mammas which can be a real squeeze play. If there is room, they will also pile smaller people on top of each other. The front, is even more interesting. Two people sit in the passenger seat, if you’re lucky, it’s someone you know. The person to the inside has to squeeze in by the gear shift, which makes second gear an intimate affair between you and the driver. Then, just when you think you can’t fit anyone else in, the driver will put someone in beside him. In that position, you must be cautious to stay out of the way of the clutch. And since the driver reaches across your lap to shift into the crotch of the person next to you, second gear becomes a delicate ménage a trois. To cap it all off, there is no guarantee that the overloaded driver won’t find out from an elaborate system of signals that there is a road block ahead and make people get out and walk through the fields to be picked up on the other side.

Otherwise, "getting a private" is when you pay for your own taxi. This of course, is much more expensive. A public taxi here to Mbarara costs us about 2000 shilllings each, whereas a private hire home will cost us 20 000. Sometimes though, after a hot day of shopping and blogging, the prospects of cramming into a sedan with 9 other sweaty Ugandans makes a private car look like heaven. Plus, it helps to remember that it’s only about 15 bucks, a fact that’s easy to lose sight of when you’re bartering like mad with a taxi driver over 45 cents.

If you are very lucky, you might wave down the best kind of private drive, which is just some guy on his way to town who wants some extra gas money. These rides are luxurious when you’re used to the public taxi. For me, the best part is the conversation. The other day, we asked a man how many children he had, and he replied that he had ten, which is a little uncommon for a professional man, but not unheard of. But when he listed them, I noticed that many of them were around the same age. As if guessing what we were thinking, he said, “You see, somehow, I found myself with two wives.” I was desperately curious as to how you find yourself with two wives, but could think of no delicate way of asking. Anyway, the best thing about these types of rides, is that once in a while, if you entertain the driver with facts about Canada, he won’t charge for the ride.

There are also full size public busses that fly along these roads at suicide pace, crammed to the gills. This is part of the rules of the jungle, everything gets out of the way of the elephant. Buses are amazingly pleasant because you generally have a seat to yourself, and if you aren’t looking out the front, watching the death defying driving, you are generally pleased with the speed of your arrival. Otherwise, there are mini-buses, which I’ve already talked about. They’re basically the same as public taxi’s but with a good 30 people crammed in. They are extremely dangerous and uncomfortable, and we only take them for medium length drives because they're cheap. The only benefit, if you can call it that, is that for whatever reason, on mini-buses I’ve seen enough wide open breast feeding to make me reminisce about the days when when National Geographic was the dirtiest magazine we had access to.