THERE was that bloodcurdling rattle, that enraging, vexing bang to the opposite direction as soon as Nancy and I trod out of the pick-up-truck for some restorative window shopping inside a super market in the heart of Moyo, a town in Uganda’s West Nile sub region.
Frightened to the bones, I found myself stuck on this West Nile Queen as
though I were her spoilt child. I grew up in the North and Karamoja at the peak
of gun violence and so such a sound naturally brings back recollections of
broad daylight cattle raiders or those bizarre arrivals of the Lord’s
Resistance Army attackers.
In the case of what perforated my nerves, such a terrifying sound would
be instantaneously succeeded by screeches, and melees of; men, women and
children looking for hide outs or temporal barricades against the scattering
live ammunitions. This is how some of us grew up anyway, up there, far there.
Ashamed of what I was doing on this chilly morning and in the presence of people who seem
unbothered, I let go of Nancy’s golden arm and slowly joined everyone by protracting
my neck towards where the sound came from.
No panic registered here, no commotion, no more sound, just a build-up
of people; quiet, agitated men, women and children.
Traffic was interrupted for some 10 minutes on this dusty marram street,
yet not a voice could announce the problem. The point of attraction was an entangled
lifeless body of a young man, a teen-ager held tightly to a SENKE motor bike that twisted itself on
the boy like a living thing. “This is a love making spectacle”, I told myself.
It took stretched muscles of two fellow boda-boda men to unlock the
seemingly enraged automobile from the boy and guess what! The boy’s eyes were
alive and bright and streaming with clean tears; his neck could struggle hard
but his limbs were dead.
There is something excess about the young men who drive motorcycles in
most West Nile districts except Arua, the city. The districts of; Moyo, Koboko and Yumbe take
the day. Firsts, I noticed that at least 8/10 boda-bodas in these districts do
not have driving (side) mirrors at all, we can't even talk of a driving license; second, they are always rushing even if they are
going to a 100-meter destination. Most of them are always chewing something
throughout the day, could this be some sort of drug? The other attribute shared
with their colleagues countrywide is their right-of-way assumption. This kind
of pointless impudence has killed many riders and including their innocent passengers.
World Health Organization estimates that road traffic accidents in
Uganda account for close to 30% deaths per 100,000 people. Statistics at Mulago
National Referral Hospital confirms that some five (05) to 20 victims of traffic
accidents get admitted on a daily basis and that 41% of these victims are
linked to boda-boda. A study by Makerere University School of Statistics and
Planning established that 32.5% of motorcyclists use alcohol or psychoactive
drugs while on duty; moreover 54.6% of the boda-boda men learnt how to ride
casually through friends or relatives and another 37% taught themselves how to
ride.
There is an urgent need to bring commercial motorcyclists in this
country to order through an intense behavioral change intervention before their
conduct turns into a critical public health phenomenon for the Country.
