From Kampala we drove the 4 hours to our project in Bududa which is near Mbale in eastern Uganda. For the entire 4 hours of driving along the highway there was a constant stream of people and rickety old bikes along the side of the narrow highway.
Along the way, I learned some new rules of the road that seem to work just fine in Uganda.
1) If the space for your vehicle seems too small to fit through, immediately rush to that space and the normal laws of physics are suspended and you will fit through it and, while you're going through, a motorcycle is likely to pass you...
2) It is perfectly safe for 4 and 5 year old kids to dodge in and out of speeding traffic.
3) If people are walking along the side of the road, it is their responsibility to get out of the way if you are driving on the shoulder of the road.
4) The faster you go, the quicker people will get out of your way.
5) Passing Procedure: Speed up to 120 k/hr (on tires that are threadbare), put your outside corner inches from the inside bumper of the car (or semi-trailer...), honk your horn and go. It seems to be the responsibility of the oncoming car to slow down but there is also a suspension of the space/time continuum in this situation as well as item #1.
6) There is absolutely no need to reduce your speed on gravel roads that have tight corners, giant pot holes, wide enough for only one vehicle and is filled with people, children and rickety old bikes wobbling along carrying things like ...oh, what are some of the things I've seen... a bedroom armoir, 60 or so planks carried sideways, several hundred pounds of bananas,...
7) During driving in the night, headlights are a nice developed world luxury that work great if you can afford to fix them.
8) Notwithstanding the above, there is again no need to reduce your speed during night driving.
9) It is not necessary to bother with the expense of maintaining your vehicle in minimal working order (shocks, tires, working headlights, axles...) when the person responsible for evaluating your vehicle every year can be bribed for much less than a new set of tires. Legal liability is not a concern to 99.9% of the population. Note: this rule does not apply to horns. Car horns must be fully functional or you will not live a day on Ugandan roads.
What blew me away was watching all the 5 and 6 year old kids walking along the side by themselves with cars and trucks speeding by. We would go through crowds of kids that were in villages and nobody even slows down. It would be like doing 120 through a school zone except there would be hundreds of kids along the side of the road at once without any parents or teachers to watch them. It was terrifying. Chickens and goats are more or less free to wander and one chicken paid the price for that freedom on our bumper. Sometimes, the van would have to drive on the shoulder (See item 5 above vis a vis the responsibility of oncoming cars) and he would lean on the horn to make people and bikes jump into the ditch.
With the grace of the Almighy we arrived in Bududa , without any accidents (or heart failure)... except for the aforementioned chicken. The staff and several villagers jumped up to us and hugged us and insisted on carrying our bags up the hill to our house. We immediately sensed the love and joy that surrounded us, in spite of the severe poverty.
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