Another Year in Africa: A road trip

This is the promised rant on roads and religion – if that's likely to offend you stop reading now!

Steve and I have spent the last three weeks driving from one side of Uganda to the other and back again. We have travelled on roads that range from excellent to unbelievably awful and seen driving that defies belief. We have seen very little scenery en route as both of us have had eyes firmly on the road monitoring traffic, pedestrians and other hazards coming from all directions. Steve has decided to turn the experience into a video game that can be used as training for tourists and vetting for NGO drivers. We travelled north-west to Lake Albert (border with DRC), Masindi and Murchison Falls NP, then south-west to Fort Portal and Kibale NP and lastly east to Sipi and Mt Elgon NP which borders Kenya. You can see from the map that there is still a lot of the country we’ve yet to tackle!

Our recent perambulation

As a student of social geography the things that catch my eye are schools, hospitals and places of worship. They’re everywhere! You wouldn’t be in the country very long before recognising ‘Eddwaliro’ as the local word for health clinic. They often have catchy names – my favourite is “The Hope of Life”. These small clinics offer consultations, laboratory investigations (code for malaria and HIV testing), minor surgery and often family planning, ante-natal and maternity services. Quite a few are run by various Roman Catholic social services and we wonder what family planning advice they proffer! On the plus side regarding sexual health there are posters everywhere promoting STI and HIV transmission prevention and condom use and also contraception (“Injectaplan – for a small manageable family”). Regional hospitals here are sad looking places – dilapidated buildings and families milling about or waiting, sitting on the grass, for news. USAID has had quite a bit of input – their motif is everywhere – so I guess that would mean therapeutic abortion is not an option.

There are signs everywhere for schools too – mostly private and often boarding schools, right down to Nursery School level. I’ve talked before about the Ugandan Government ceding provision of education to the private sector. The Ministry of Education and Sport licences the schools, for a fee of course, and administers the National Exams. There are also some Government Aided schools run by parents committees or one of the local churches or mosques. The MOES minister is Janet Museveni, wife of the President, and no-one gets to meet and have discussions with her because of security concerns! The system is a shambles but is not my topic for the day.

Under resourced government school system

Take money offered by anyone

Today’s topic is Roads and Religion. Facebook friends have had an earful already. You can never relax while driving or even being a passenger. Being on the road is about the most dangerous and stressful thing you can do. The roads are crowded with mini-bus taxis, motorbikes, overloaded and unroadworthy trucks, small Toyota sedans and large, expensive 4WDs. Drivers are impatient and discourteous – they all drive as if they are the only one on the road. In town traffic jams are inevitable as cars, bikes and trucks fill every available square centimetre of tarmac looking for a way through and hence blocking everyone’s path. Gridlock is common at roundabouts and intersections. On the open road drivers take incredible risks overtaking over double lines and on blind corners to get around usually overloaded trucks which cannot reach highway speeds, often forcing other vehicles off the road or into other evasive action. We often see the consequences for the vehicles, which end up deposited outside the local police post. So far, luckily, no blood and gore!

Link buses are the worst offenders.

Light entertainment

So road trauma is partly due to appalling driving and partly due to unroadworthy vehicles but also due to, you guessed it, roads and religion.

We’ll tackle religion first. East Africans are still quite medieval in belief structures. Christians and Moslems have fundamental understandings based on literal interpretations of their respective books. Their God is the micro-managing type and has credit and blame for everything. People are not responsible for their health, exam results, fecundity, car crashes … - it is all down to God’s Will.

I will happily put my hand up to being Christian (believer in the goodness of our world and adherent to the social justice principles of Jesus) but the Christianity here – be it Church of Uganda (Anglican), Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist or Born Again (Pentecostal Assemblies of God) is not one I subscribe to. We have driven past so many Healing Ministries and Miracle Centres where pastors prey on people’s desire for health and well-being. Declaring yourself a Pastor can be the road to riches but heaven help the pastored as they are well and truly fleeced. All you need is a tent and a sound system – uneducated, superstitious and desperate people will flock for the entertainment and hand over cash in the hope of being rewarded either now or in Heaven.

Plenty of money for building churches.

There is little hope for change when the school curriculum includes Religious Education where fundamentalist principles about creation and miracles are taught as fact.

Yesterday there was a story in a local paper about a high level civil servant – presumably educated and intelligent – who wanted to be buried with all his wealth so he could buy his way in to heaven. His wife, also a senior civil servant, went along with it.

So in big and small ways the lives of East Africans are ruled by an all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful being they may be able to influence in their favour with stickers on cars and trucks (“In God we trust”, “God is able” and “Allah Akbar” are popular), attendance at worship and gifts of money to His earthly representatives. And their reckless driving and other behaviours are neither here nor there as God is in charge! There is total abdication of responsibility at a personal level leading to all sorts of tragedy and religion can take the blame.

And the state of the roads doesn’t help – a pictorial essay follows.