One of the challenges of living in Kampala city today is how to get the hell out of this shit hole at the end of the day.  The daily struggle of the working man and woman in this city is nothing compared to the eveningly struggle. That’s why you need this guide. How To Fight Your Way Into A Taxi.

Equipment

1. It is redundant to tell you to identify the stage where you can find the taxi that heads to your suburb. Of course you know where that creased and crinkly and crowded and cockroach-infested contraption pauses to feed. That’s the place where you spend two hours of every evening in a sad huddle with fifty equally forlorn and frustrated bastards staring at exhaust fumes and hating  your life. But You have to mark this post. It is a starting point.

1. Measure 200metres from that spot. Uphill if you trust your calf muscles, although the organ you should be most concerned with is not down there. It’s a bit higher up. We’ll get to that later.
2. Measure four hours from the time you  are supposed to be at the stage. Four hours is the average time it takes for an onion/garlic byenda /green pepper sandwich to find its way into the perspiratory system of the average human male. If you are female, make that three hours. Women can stink faster. The fact that they don’t means they know how to hide it. But it is a biological fact that they can.
3. For every foot above five-eleven and every five Kg above 70 add fifteen minutes. For every foot and five kg below, subtract five minutes. But eat that sandwich.
4. And then wash it down with crude waragi mixed with aloe vera gel. Then digest the whole thing. By digest, we mean, allow the worst elements of this noxious concoction seep through the walls of your belly and into the blood vessels which will carry them up to that most vital of bodily organs: the sweat gland supreme.
5. Now, it’s time to go to the taxi stage. Remember that place we spoke about in point two? When you get there, start sprinting! RUN as fast and hard as you can towards the stage.
6. By the time you get there, you will be sweating profusely.
7. And when the taxi arrives, and everyone surges towards it in a bid to squeeze into the single limited scratchy door before the taxi gets too full
8. And when everyone has poised their elbows and handbags and in some cases that we have all experienced, their baseball bats in place to beat away the competition as they struggle to enter the taxi
9. When this happens, raise your hands upwards and shout. Shout anything. It doesn’t matter.
10. Shout: Urban Legend Kampala Dot COM!! No harm in us getting some free publicity out of this.
11. You will be immensely gratified to see the crowd in front of you melt away. They will grab their noses and run away, probably in urgent search of the nearest church. Those around you will not run away. They will collapse into unconsciousness and maybe die.
12.  This leaves the taxi empty and the doorway clear. The driver and conductor will be out looking for the police so you will have to drive  yourself home, but I don’t think that’s a disadvantage. They usually leave the keys behind.