Adventures on bodas

Saturday evening, after a long day of not eating, Lindsey and I decided to find a restaurant that was listed in my 2010 Bradt Uganda travel guide – Big Five, a Dutch-owned pizzeria that promised excellent food and beer. The only obstacle was its location – about 5km out of town, definitely too far too walk. The guide said you could take a “special hire” – cars and vans used for transport – from the city center for about 3,000 Ush to get there. We decided to be adventurous and go for it…

As we began to walk, we started discussing more of the logistics of getting there. We really didn’t know much about special hires – how to find them and how they really worked – so our thoughts turned to boda-bodas (or just bodas for short). Bodas are one of the main ways people get around here. These small motorbikes are a ubiquitous sight on the streets and roads all over the country; you’ll also see riders sitting around in various spots waiting to pick up potential customers. Because of their erratic driving (compared to US standards) and how dangerous it seems at first, we always joke that “oh, we’ll have to ride on a boda before we leave.” However, we soon discovered that walking everywhere gets tiring and that they might be a pretty good, cheap option to take advantage of.

There are always boda riders on the way to town, so we approached two of them parked under a tree. They barely spoke English and had no idea what Big Five was, but said they could get us downtown to High Street; we knew the restaurant was on that road eventually, so we figured we could tell them to just keep driving. That didn’t work. We got downtown and they stopped and our communication ceased to function. They called a man over, who looked like some sort of public worker, who spoke better English but also didn’t know of the restaurant. We gave up, paid the boda riders 1,000 Ush that we agreed to and started walking.

Once you pass the larger downtown buildings, the land gets more flat, open and dusty. Tons of buses, boda riders, and other vehicles line the roads here. At least 4 people asked us if we needed to go to Kampala because the road we were on leads there. We might have been able to jump on a ride and then jump off down the road at the restaurant, but we were hesitant to do so - and we also didn’t want to ultimately get stuck there. We found 2 boda riders who at first didn’t know of Big Five, but then asked around and reapproached us saying they could take us there. We hoped on and were off on our 2nd boda ride.

This one was fabulous; everywhere around me was beautiful countryside and gorgeous views of large hills. I actually felt safe and balanced on the boda and started snapping away with my camera. My rider and I exchanged names and conversation, as he told me about the sights we were riding by. We passed a Coca-Cola plant and a large soldier housing area before finally arriving to our destination. There it was: Big Five, in all its glory – dark and completely empty. There was a huge, uncovered entrance and as we wandered in, a man who was sleeping on a couch near the back jumped up. Our boda riders came down at this point and after speaking with the man, we realized that it definitely wasn’t operational (they tried to explain to us exactly why but we never really figured it out). So, it was back on the boda ride, right back to near we began at Hotel Agip - one of the few restaurants we know has reliable food and service. The boda ride out was 2,000 Ush – and we didn’t get a courtesy ride back because of our bad luck.

Looking back, I wonder if the riders knew all along that Big Five was defunct. It probably was an easy way to make 2 bucks off of ignorant foreigners. Several lessons learned (possibly) about bodas and travel guides. Still, I got a magnificent, new desktop picture from it.