The Unique Manifestations of Road Accidents in Uganda

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Last month, a wave of carnage on our roads visited my country and it reminded me of the kind of related incidents which seem to happen once every year in a unique and baffling manner.   Two years ago, in the month of November to be precise, a wave of  fatal accidents took siege of our roads in nearly all directions. There was a bus plying the western route of Uganda, which got involved in a gruesome road accident that nearly killed all its 80 passengers. Then on almost the same day, along the Eastern Kampala-Jinja Highway, a fuel tanker, laden with petrol overturned, killing the driver and the truck assistant instantly!  In Ugandans, when accidents happen, the crowd that come to the scene are not necessarily people coming to render help,rather, they are usually poor Ugandans who want to get back home with some spoils. These are men and women who don’t care dipping their hands into the blood socked pockets of accident victims to pull out bloody money instead of trying to resuscitate the seriously injured people. On this particular occasion, they found the fuel truck heavily spilling out fuel and they thought they would make quick money out of the tragedy. Within minutes of the accident, locals were seen siphoning fuel from the tanker; others were simply helping themselves to the spills that were pouring out from the Tanker.

    What followed was a secondary tragedy, which left close to 100 poor Ugandans dead. Someone who was at the scene of the accident had already filled his 40 liter can and was so content with his heroic deeds that he thought, relaxing with a stick of cigarettes in his mouth was a very fancy idea. He lit his cigarettes and like a thunderbolt, he set the whole area on fire. The poor locals who thought they would be rich from the accident, instead died before they knew what happened to them. By the time the fire brigade got to the scene, over hundred Ugandans had been burnt to ashes-these were children, fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers! There was mourning in the air everywhere you went that day.

   Just last April 2009, this trend of accidents hit my country again. This time it started at the Uganda-Sudan boarder in Northern Uganda. A speeding passenger bus from Juba to Kampala failed to negotiate a dangerous corner on a bad road and the next thing that happened was a deadly accident that left 25 people dead on the spot. The following day on Kampala-Jinja Highway, another bus and several other vehicles suffered deadly road accidents that saw many lives lost in succession on three consecutive days. Many Ugandans believe, and am almost a subscriber to this kind of belief, that accidents are triggered off in this country by some super natural force-there seem to be some force that lets lose accidents on Ugandans, otherwise, how else could you explain a lull in accidents only for it to appear rampant as soon as one gets started? These are happenings I find very difficult to explain via sciences.