Riding Bodas in 'outside countries'



Riding Bodas in ‘outside countries’
Recently when a friend of mine learnt that I was spending a night in Juba waiting for my connecting flight, he said we cannot fail to meet, for it is unforgivable to not meet fellow Ugandans when one is in ‘outside countries’. I laughed so hard but somehow I actually knew exactly what he meant. There is something so special about meeting a human piece of home when one is away, even if it is as close by as south Sudan. This reminded me of a boy I met on that fateful journey.

Angel and I had decided to just sit and watch people as we waited for the police to check our bus and it was taking longer than we had anticipated. Then we met him, and he told us his name was Robert Ndahura. He looked reserved, but when he greeted me and stood next to me, I thought he was rather interesting. Angel and I later sat next to him when we moved closer to the bus, hoping they would notice how impatient we had grown and finish whatever was delaying the set off from Nimule.

Robert is one of the many Ugandan youths that leave for Juba, in search of is it also called greener pastures? He dropped out of school in S.3 and rushed to Juba to look for money because his friends apparently told him there was more money in Juba than he would get in Uganda even if he finished school. I wonder what that says about our education system or our people’s hopes in the system, but I’m not really writing about systems, so I will leave it at that. Except of course that I have to mention that my belief in education is not limited to the capability to find jobs, but to make oneself a better person. Still, there are many factors influencing people’s choices about education, and sometimes in the struggle to make a living, the urge to be better can seem to be rather trivial, and no one can blame them. Perhaps survival is more important. Everybody chooses, and sometimes, there are not enough choices available.

He looked rather young. But as he told us tales of how he got to Juba and how he managed to survive and hustle through it all till he bought himself a motor bike, which he turned into a boda (taxi), I could only marvel. The one thing that Robert does not forget though is the first night he came to Juba. He could not find his friends. And he had no mobile phone.  He was stuck. Just when he thought he had run out of ideas, he met a kind Ugandan woman who gave him food, a place to sleep and some warm blankets.
“You see us fight in Uganda”, he said “but when you reach here, any Ugandan you meet treats you with utmost kindness. That woman kept me at her home for so many nights until I found my friends.”

However, even after such kindness Robert found it hard to settle in Juba. When he got on his own, he had no place to stay. He and his friends worked during day and slept on the streets at night. They could not afford an apartment on the expensive streets of the city.
“Even some Sudanese friends slept out with us” he recalled.
But as they say, nothing lasts forever, and especially not for a determined young man who works hard day in day out.
From fetching water for Juba residents, Robert started out doing all sorts of odd jobs, but he never lost sight of his dreams, he worked very hard. At the time we met, he owned a motorbike which he operated as a Bodaboda and earned about ugx1.5 million per month.

He said he did not regret leaving school.
“After all,” he said, “even graduates in Uganda end up riding bodas because of unemployment”. He looked away, somewhere towards the horizon, and I kept whatever comments I could have made, for I admired his brave, hardworking spirit. He later mentioned that he sometimes misses his family very much, so he travels back to Uganda to see them and as such he was from one of those visits. Soon after that the bus driver finally climbed on to his seat, and we all rushed to enter the bus, ready to go face our own assignments, in all their different kinds.

We arrived in juba later that evening, and got off the bus soon after crossing the Nile, as we entered the city. He waved to us as we waited for our ride to the guest house where we were going to spend the night while he continued with the bus. We were very tired, and our feet had swollen due to sitting in one place for two days, on that unforgettable bus. We could not wait to walk around and hit the showers. Part of me thought that the worst part was over. How wrong I was!

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