It all started in Kamuli. Visiting the small town for the first time, I took a boda boda from the taxi park to the house of the friends I was visiting. A distance of no more than half a kilometer, the ride took less than two minutes. “How much?” I asked the driver as I climbed off. “Seven thousand” he replied with a straight face. Laughing, I handed him a five hundred shilling coin and he smiled as if to say “well it was worth a try” as I walked away. I have become used to bargaining and the perception that all whites are supposed to be flush with cash so I did not think much of the incident, only that seven thousand was a much higher amount than others had tried on me.

The exchange rate is around 1850 Ugandan shillings per dollar. Most boda boda rides for any distance that takes less than 10 or 15 minutes cost 500 to 1000 shillings, and the rates outside of Kampala should be cheaper.

It happened again two weeks later, as I went to visit Jinja, which lies about 50 miles from the capitol of Kampala on the shores of Lake Victoria, the source of the Nile River. But this time there was no mutual laughter. I was driven from one of the roundabouts outside of Jinja to a small hotel near the center of town in about five minutes. Once again I asked how much, and to my surprise I heard the same price: “seven thousand.” My initial laughter at such an exaggerated quote was quickly tempered by the positively evil look I received from the driver when I said “My friend, I live in Kampala, I know the prices and it shouldn’t be more than five hundred. Why are you trying to cheat me?”

“No,” he responded with a glare, “seven thousand.” This was new. I have written before that my treatment by Ugandans has been consistently wonderful, and until now this had even extended to price negotiations. But I was not going to be cheated. I refused to pay. Looking at me as if I were Satan, the driver tried four thousand as an offer. Knowing that even five hundred shillings was probably too much I offered one thousand as I wanted to leave. He refused to even touch it until I said “this is it, take it or not,” at which point he snatched the bill and angrily drove off.

After dropping my things in my room, I set out for Jinja on foot, deciding that I’d had enough of boda bodas for one day. As I walked to the center of town, I brushed off attempts by people on bicycles to give me a lift, determined that it really wasn’t very far and suddenly skeptical of anyone who wanted to charge me for something. A boda boda pulled up alongside me asking if he could take me to town and I asked “how much” somewhat sarcastically, expecting a ridiculous charge that would shortly be followed by my rejection.

Instead, his opening bid was seven hundred shillings. I couldn’t believe it. I was too shocked to even negotiate down to the three or five hundred that it should have been since I had already walked part way. As I slowly regained my senses, I asked his name which was Henry Ssenyonga, and age, which was 22. Not only was Henry honest, he was also helpful and incredibly nice. While I grabbed a bite to eat in town, he went and checked several stores for the map of Jinja that I had been unable to find and he knew I wanted. On a whim, I asked if I could hire him to take me around to see all of the tourist sights in Jinja as he was from the area and also had better English than many drivers.

Henry proved to be quite the tour guide and took me to landmarks like the Source of the Nile and Bujagali Falls as well as a number of smaller places like the dams that I didn’t know I wanted to see but really enjoyed. He even saved me from sure trouble as soldiers in military uniform ominously began jogging over to have words with me as I photographed the new dam. I didn’t see them coming, but Henry did and whisked me away, avoiding the confrontation that he told me would probably have ended in either a bribe or the loss of my pictures.

Grateful for all of his help and mindful of the fact that he wasn’t blatantly trying to take advantage of me, I insisted that Henry join me for dinner and asked him why he was different than the other drivers and didn’t try and fleece me for all he could. He told me that first, he was a born again Christian, and second that he knew there was more to life than a few thousand extra shillings today.

“The problem which you are having with some of us boda boda guys is education. Once you have small education in your head, it can help you. If you don’t have it then from the roundabout to where you are sleeping, seven thousand...Some of them never covered P7 even P5.” Henry had made it through S3 he told me, before he ran out of money to pay the fees. I was impressed that he was even able to make it that far as he is one of 20 children by his father’s four wives.

Uganda follows the British model of school systems with primary and secondary schools instead of elementary middle and high schools. Primary goes through grades 1-7 (P1-P7), Secondary goes S1-S4 which is ordinary levels, (O levels) or more general classes and then in S5-S6 students take what are called A levels where they specialize in a few areas and from there go to university with admission based almost solely on how high their scores on A level tests are. In the university here (modeled after the British system), you take one subject (e.g. mass communication or engineering for three years without any broad general requirements).

“I missed the chances of schooling so the only chance I have now is to get friends,” Henry said. “It is better to get a friend who is going to help you...as we are together now.”

Describing the attitude of most other drivers he tried to translate what he said was a proverb in his language. “You don’t know whether you’ll eat or not tomorrow so it is better to eat today.” Meaning that if the other drivers saw a white person they would try and charge an exorbitant amount on the chance that it might be paid.

Because he was honest and I ended up hiring Henry as a tour guide for two days; he made far more money than the seven thousand the first too drivers might have gotten if I hadn’t known better. I paid him what I decided was appropriate for such a good tour, over 40,000 and took him to one of the nicest restaurants in Jinja for dinner. Tell that story to someone who says honesty doesn’t pay.

Henry truly wants to save up to buy his own bike and go back to school without taking advantage of people, even dumb mzungus, to do it.

“There’s a song, ‘Different Colors but One People,’ I’m going to buy for you that tape,” he told me as I got on the bus to Kampala the next day. He will be the first person I look for when I go back to Jinja, and I look forward to hearing the song. If more people behaved like Henry, there is no telling how much progress Uganda can make.

Michael is spending the summer as a reporter at the Daily Monitor in Kampala. He can be reached at mwilkers@ stanford.edu.

Background:

The Boda Boda

Boda boda are the ubiquitous cyclists that are for hire as personal transportation. They are like makeshift taxis in the sense that one pays to go from one place to another. The vehicles, which are actually called taxis here, are actually small fourteen person minibuses called matatu that run along certain routes with no schedule and pack as many people in as they can. You get on and hop off as close as you can to where you are going, but they won’t go out of their way on your behalf.

Boda boda can take the form of bicycles, scooters or motorcycles. More popular than taking taxis or even driving cars, they can skirt in between cars stuck in the constant painful traffic jams and deliver you directly from one destination to another. They are more dangerous because the rider is fairly unprotected from other cars and more likely to take as spill because of potholes. (Peace Corps workers are forbidden from riding on them at pain of being sent home.) There is also some paranoia about being robbed by the boda boda drivers who reportedly might take a confused white person off to a dark alley, but the occurrences are extremely small, and in fact, it is the boda boda drivers themselves who are more often robbed by their fares, losing the cash they are carrying or sometimes even their bikes.