Of Mechanics and Yangas
From punctures to complex engine repairs, there’s a long list of fixes needed by a boda rider that take us to the garage. While these repairs can be costly and take riders away from money-making rides, garages are motorcycle hospitals, saving them from critical and dangerous breakdowns and nursing them back to life — but their service can be made more erratic by young apprentices and commercial linkages to boda theft.
By diagnosing and troubleshooting issues, performing repairs and improvising spare parts, the mechanics play a vital role in extending the lifespan of the motorcycles as well as managing the end of life of those popular machines. The motorcycles that have broken down into disrepair, such as those in the boneyards at each of the police stations across the city, are often collected by mechanics who either bring them back to life or reuse their parts to fix those that are still up and running. However, while this is a cheaper way of ensuring availability of spare parts, the mechanics who deal in used spare parts have often been implicated in theft rackets where boda riders are attacked and their motorcycles stolen.
“My motorcycle was stolen one night, and I informed a mechanic who told me that there’s a garage in Makindye where I could have chances of finding it,” Stanley, a boda rider in Kampala narrated. “Early in the morning, my friends and I visited that garage and the first thing I saw was my jacket hanging in one corner of a spare parts shop. Getting closer, I saw my helmet! I alerted my friends who hurriedly called the police. When the police arrived, they checked and realized that my motorcycle had already been dismantled into spare parts.” In this case, Stanley was fortunate — the thieves were arrested and forced to buy a new bike for him.
While Stanley was able to find the thieves and secure a compensation, stories of boda riders losing motorcycles to thieves have been so common for a long time and they don’t often have a happy ending. Worse still, depending on the style of the attack, some boda riders are left permanently disabled, and others dead. The nature of demand for cheap spare parts, however, can mean mechanics often ask few questions of their sources.
Yangas
The presence of the numerous motorcycle garages across the city makes the repairing experience easier — unless the boda rider meets a novice mechanic.
“I once got a loan of 220,000 UGX for repairing the engine but the mechanic who repaired it was just learning on the job,” said Kakooza Frank, a boda rider in Kampala. “When he finished replacing the new parts, the motorcycle could hardly move. The newly replaced parts were spoiled and had to be replaced again. The mechanic could not even compensate me.”
Kakooza’s complaint is a common occurrence. Garages around Kampala often have young boys learning to fix motorcycles, commonly called yanga — meaning “younger”. These boys, who are usually school dropouts, join the garages through friends and relatives’ connections and learn from them — starting with easy-to-fix parts such as adjusting brakes and slowly graduating to more complex parts such as the engine. As soon as they join the garages, they are encouraged to take on tasks from which they must earn sustenance. If they see that a customer brings a mechanical problem within their abilities, they may try to solve it. If they realize it requires expertise, they either try their luck or ask their seniors to handle it. A brash or unlucky boy causes losses to the motorcycle owners, leading to now common grudges at the garages.
“I fell off a mango tree and my hands were so injured that I needed months of nursing wounds. I ended up missing my Primary Seven exams,” said Sharif, a 15-year-old mechanic. “After healing, my mother took me to a local garage to learn how to fix motorcycles. She bargained with the owner and agreed to pay 300,000 UGX. The owner allowed me to start but in about a month, because mum had not paid yet, the garage owner stopped me. So I looked for another garage myself and I ended up here. The owner of this garage asked for 100,000 UGX and a toolbox to be used by myself. I was able to pay this money and buy the tools because I had earned some money from the previous garage”.
Sharif was once given a task to fix a puncture on the rear tyre of a motorcycle but during the process of removing the tyre, the damage was made much worse, and he was asked by the garage owner to buy a new tube for the customer.
According to Steven, a senior motorcycle mechanic in Kampala, a junior mechanic who spoils any of the customers’ parts must pay for it. Steven, who also owns both the garage and a spare parts shop, has a way to amicably solve the grudges. In case a junior mechanic spoils a customers’ part, Steven replaces it then allows the junior mechanic to pay in instalments until the total cost is covered. “This helps keep the customers happy,” he said, despite using their bikes as training equipment for the future senior mechanics.
Motorcycle mechanics are the backbone of the boda industry, but sometimes the backbone is slightly out of alignment. Nonetheless, mechanics continue to hold their position high in the bodaboda industry as they work day and night, rain or shine, to make sure the motorcycles keep running, riders get paid, and passengers get home.
Lubyanza’s View
To help improve the situation, interventions such as
- licensing at low cost, linked to free or subsidized training programs
- sensitisation on the benefits of proper mechanic training
- standard operating procedures for garages and yanga apprenticeships, to have a set of rules around learning and losses
can go a long way to reduce conflict and loss at the garage.
