We’ve spent a lot of time in the last few weeks driving around East Africa. Lots of time to reflect on just how great (and how relatively unexciting) the Oak Street Bridge is after a few freeze-thaw cycles compared to a normal day driving here.

Roads

First of all, be grateful there is a road. We were fortunate, our 900km round trip out to Safari #1 was mostly tarmac with only a few spots where we had to ford some rather large craters. In fact, the worst stretch was the last 200 meters before we got home.

Another note on roads: If you come across an unusually well-maintained road, chances are someone politically important lives in that town/neighbourhood. We happen to live a block away from the VP of Uganda, so the road out of the subdivision is very good. So then, why the bumpy last 200m? Easy: he doesn’t take that route to work. Your misappropriated tax-dollars at work.

Kampala is, as one radio station proudly announces, the Pothole Capital of the World. They range in diameter from 6 inches to several feet and, as a result, traffic is often at a crawl on particularly nasty stretches.

Funnily enough, on the few unblemished roads people have been conditioned now to speed excessively to make up for lost time. Solution to this (understandable) opportunism? Install speed bumps—giant ones—every 50 meters. So now, traffic is often at a crawl on the good stretches too.

By the way, this speed-bump scheme applies to highways too. That means a car will have to brake from ~100kph down to 5, every so often. Sometimes there will be signs warning you. Sometimes they like to keep it a surprise.

Vehicles

By no means limited to Uganda (as anyone who’s been to SE Asia will attest), economy dictates that you load as much stuff onto your boda-boda (scooter) or bicycle as you can. I will never get tired of counting how many bunkbeds fit onto the back of a moped (7, apparently).

This of course means overloading cargo trucks too. We quite literally ran into these guys a couple of weeks ago bound for Kampala, about 1.5 hours away (3-4 with the potholes). Factoring in their support staff, they may even have arrived by now.

The local bus-form of transport is the ubiquitous matatu, a 12-seater van-cum-shared-taxi. Again, you see these everywhere: dolmuş in Turkey, servees in Egypt, songtheaw in Thailand, and more surreptitious analogues elsewhere. Here, they all have names lovingly painted across their front and back windshields. As far as I can tell, there are few repeats, and they can all be categorised thusly:

Sports and Celebrities: King Fahad, Puff Daddy, The Destiny’s Child, Man Utd, O₂ Thierry O₂

Religious: Bismillah, God Bless You, Allahu Akbar, Fear God and Strive, God’s Judgement: No Appeal, and my favourite, Buganjani Boyz Thank U Jesus

Commercial: Kaki Investments, Fly Emirates

Conceptual: Obsessions, Success, Freedom, Grand Lucky, Promises, Law Enforcement, More Equal

Devotional: Thunderbolt #1, Cupcake, EverSmart, Challenger, Paul #1

Advisory: No Work No Food, Never Quit, and the ominous Silence Is The Better Revenge

Bizarro: Crowing Cocks, Target #6, Superman Digital World

In case you think some of the slogans were too long to fit on a little windscreen, remember: visibility isn’t an issue. But even with the open-pit potholes, random pedestrians Froggering across, fully stuffed, half-blind matatus careering around roundabouts, suicidal boda-men, and no functioning traffic lights, everything still seems to function: not well, mind you, but it does. What a ride!