Stage Guys Part II — Stage Relationships
This is Part II of a series on boda boda stages in Kampala. Find Part I on how stages are created here.
Across Kampala, groups of boda boda drivers gather and wait for passengers at busy intersections, by shops, near schools, churches and supermarkets. From the stage, as it is known, boda drivers most important relationships are with local business owners, residents, passing drivers, and authority figures. To better understand the services that boda boda stages provide and how stages are a critical part of this web, these four categories of relationships deserve a deeper look.
Business owners
From downtown historic Owino Market to the outskirts of recently suburbanized Kira, local businesses and boda boda drivers depend on one another. The dominant entrepreneurial livelihood in Uganda is small retail shops, which dot every neighborhood and offer the basics from flour to candles to sodas to diapers. These shops typically purchase stock from wholesale markets in the downtown and use boda drivers to transport their merchandise, which is never too big for a boda boda to carry. More specialized business owners also use bodas to make customer deliveries, moving freshly butchered meat, iron rods and cement, and greasy street food. Conversely, boda drivers also patronize local businesses around their stage for drinks, food, maintenance, and airtime, keeping money circulating in the local economy.
Residents
Relationships between local residents and drivers at the nearby stage can pay off in regular income for drivers and high-trust trips for passengers. When drivers are known to the neighborhood, residents are able to send high-value goods with someone they trust. Women, who are typically in charge of household upkeep, benefit from trusted relationships with boda drivers for conducting shopping trips and sending and picking up children. Women also might prefer stage boda guys they know to avoid the potential harassment of drivers on the road they don’t know.
However, sometimes the familiarity allows residents to feel more comfortable asking for rides on credit, leading to boda drivers feeling taken advantage of. While this helps passengers financial flexibility, it has also been a hot topic for complaints by drivers, with several telling Lubyanza that they refuse to take certain local passengers, or stopped making deliveries for local businesses that racked up debts and refused to pay in full.
“When they take a trip to Makindye and I have to go back to my stage, everyone knows this return trip is happening and they want to use this to get a free ride back, especially if they have a short errand,” said Joshua, a boda driver. “Then people want to pay only for trip there and not back. Yet people should be paying for this.”
Lubyanza
Hanging out under the shade of a tree outside a collection of small shops, Kalinaabiri stage, like nearly all other stages, stakes a territorial claim to nearby passengers within around 5–15 meters of the stage. Passing lubyanza — drivers who either don’t have a stage or are not at their stage — who poach potential clients represent a threat to the stages monopoly over nearby motorcycle transportation. As this author found out when he picked a driver from the road in front of Kalinaabiri stage members years ago and was later chewed out for it, this is frowned upon. Thus, many stages in Kampala have defense members, — whose job it is to intercept lubyanza picking up passengers near their stage. Once caught, encroaching boda drivers pay fines set by stage leadership, typically around 5,000 UGX ($1.4), but more if they are resistant or are unable to prove they have a stage.
However, not every stage enforces claims on the territory around the stage. Members from one stage on Nasser road, in the heart of the central business district, told Lubyanza they do not interdict lubyanza in their area because the trespassers only take cheap passengers the stage drivers have no interest in. Nasser road is a busy area and members of the stage reported deriving significant business from shops around — mostly printing and stationary stores, who pay them well and trust them.
The Police
The police — boda driver relationship is often acrimonious with police viewing bodas as an easily exploitable nuisance and drivers viewing police as a danger and obstacle to their work. However, having a stage near a police post can actually help create more positive relations. Once a relationship between the two is developed, stage drivers find they can get away with more transgressions such as not wearing helmets and carrying multiple passengers. In exchange police can get free or cheap rides.
Police will then also serve as mediation in internal stage disputes, mostly by preventing physical conflict and urging reconciliation. When stages arrest lubyanza drivers, police can also back up the stages and enforce fines — taking a cut for themselves as well. They also harass visiting bodas, which protects the stages territory.
Feeding each other
From the stage, as it is known, boda drivers most important relationships are with local business owners, residents, passing drivers, and authority figures. As Lubyanza writer Geofrey Ndhogezi notes, boda drivers and their surroundings feed each other. These relationships deliver benefits for boda drivers in the form of repeat customers, territorial protection, and meaning in the social fabric of the neighborhood. In return, stage drivers help local passengers and business owners run their households and conduct business, creating convenience and operating trips that might not otherwise be possible.
