Day Four: No money is worth risking your life
By Joe Walker
What a beautiful start to day four of the #JoeWalker Kampala to Fort Portal road safety awareness walk. We kicked off the day with an interactive session with the pupils of Kyakatebe Primary School. We taught the children the ABCs of road safety and armed them with a few tips to cross the roads safely and #GetHomeSafe.
At 7:57am, it was our turn to put those tips into action as we hit the road heading towards Mubende. The first thing that hit me was the writing on a truck, “No Money is Enough”. It stayed with me as we navigated that broken stretch of the road. The traffic was a bit light – few speeding taxis, flying buses, loads of overloaded boda bodas and extra hot temperatures.
As I continued to reflect on that statement, I came up with mine, “No money is worth one recklessly risking their life”. The boda guy overloads the bike because he wants to make an extra buck from stranded passengers. The drone taxi guys are speeding and overloading because they want to make an extra round trip to make more money for self and taxi owner. And so are the bus guys. But is it worth it?
As we took a lunch break at Kalonga, we had some interactions with the roadside community, and we found them getting ready to go for the burial of their colleague who was killed in a road crash here yesterday. They all raised issues of speeding in built up areas, reckless drivers overtaking in the corners, rampant drink driving and riding, cost of quality helmets, broken roads and lack of any speed barriers. They mentioned many people who have lost their lives around this area. It was sad to hear.
After our brief conversation, we walked on. As we strolled down, we almost witnessed all their challenges in real time, a Link bus overtook a truck loaded with timber and almost rammed into a drone coming from the opposite direction. It’s pure madness.
At this time we’re dealing with extreme heat; temperatures are reaching highs of 31. So we had to carefully manage our pace, hydration and keep a close eye on each other. As we did this, more motorists slowed down to cheer us on and wish us good luck, others stopped to share a bottle of water like Dr. Jodrio a vet at Mubende District, who like Kityo Alex and Kalaama Kiganda when he heard about our mission of creating awareness for safe roads to save lives had no further questions and turned to his car to give us bottles of Rwenzori mineral water.
The journey to safe roads will take efforts from each one of us. Keep safety at the heart of your actions and ensure we all #GetHomeSafe because we are #TooYoungToDie.
Check out more scenes from day four below;
