On a wet, Thursday evening, I make my way to the Uganda Railways headquarters on Station road in Kampala. A lot of people are going in; so, I too make my way inside – why had I never noticed the amount of human traffic in this place before? I am first asked to sanitize by the security officer at the entrance, who also takes my temperature.
I make my way to the booking office, where two people are selling tickets at Shs 2,000. If you have boarded a coronavirus-era taxi to Namanve, then you know how cheap these train tickets are. I am told until the recent social distance measures, the tickets used to go for Shs 1,000.
After purchasing my ticket, I am waved down a hallway and then take the stairs that are still wet due to the evening downpour, to the platform where a five-carriage train is stationed. A man is heard on the speakers advising passengers to ensure they are wearing facemasks and that they should hurry up and Namanve station find their seats.
The passenger train has five coaches and according to my ticket, I am assigned to the first coach labeled P123051 and I board, hand my ticket to the conductor, who swipes it through machine and slightly rips it before handing it back to me. I sanitize my hands again and head in.
The coach is almost full, but I manage to find a seat next to the entrance, which I later give up for a pregnant woman, and I stand in the aisle, holding onto a pole. The train is fitted with brown, old leather seats that are surprisingly comfortable, and each coach has seven fans and lights, as well as thin steel poles for those who find all the seats occupied.
Of course, if you have taken a train ride in Europe or more developed countries, you will find our humble train as ‘ghetto’ as they come, but it is, nonetheless, a pleasant surprise. The seats are assigned numbers and a passenger sits according to the number on his or her ticket.
In my coach, most of the passengers are busy on their mobile phones; a few regulars converse with one another, while others doze off, tired after a long day of the hustle. At 5:25pm, the train blows its horn to alert the last passengers trickling in, and at exactly 5:30pm, the engine rolls us out slowly as it exits the station, but later picks up speed.
It is quite a bumpy ride and not the smooth one I had expected, and if you are standing like I was, you have to brace yourself and hang tightly on to the poles. Even though there is no social distancing to write home about, the conductor ensures that everyone is putting on his or her facemask properly.
The first stop is Nakawa near Makerere University Business School (Mubs), where a few passengers alight and the second one is still in Nakawa after the Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) headquarters. It is a very speedy ride as we zoom through Mbuya and the ghettos of Kireka where onlookers are mesmerized by the passenger vessel and many stare with smiles on their faces.
Forgive them; many Ugandans still are unaware that a regular passenger service on the route is back. Roadside vendors can be seen removing their merchandise from the railway tracks, only to put them back as soon as the train has passed. The third stop is at Kireka, where most of the people alight, leaving a lot of space inside that everyone gets to sit down finally.
Here, a vendor selling pancakes, soda and mineral water jumps into the carriage and persuades passengers to buy from her; she manages to get some customers as the train rolls on with its journey. The train makes its fourth stop at Namboole, where more passengers get out, leaving only a handful to continue to the final destination in Namanve, where it reaches at exactly 6:15pm and we all step off here.
It has been a seamless ride, one that leaves me pleasantly surprised at the unusual timekeeping and punctuality of any service with a Ugandan government label! But make no mistake, this is very much still a ‘Ugandan service’. While the railway service had stations with platforms dotting the country in far-flung places such as Namasagali, Nalukolongo and Tororo, at Namanve a small, two-roomed building seemingly from the colonial era is all that remains of the station.
I go in to ask where I can purchase my return ticket to Kampala from, but I am told to just sit in the train and wait for departure. After a 15 minutes break at Namanve, at exactly 6:30pm – right on schedule – the train sets off for Kampala with only a handful of passengers; the coach I am in has five passengers.
The conductor walks up to me and I give him Shs 2,000 for my fare and he hands me a ticket. A woman going to Bweyogerere/Namboole is heard complaining after she is told she still has to pay Shs 2,000 no matter the distance. The train makes the same stops, and while at Kireka, a young man outside is heard saying: “The people who use this train really enjoy the ride. I think this is one of the speed trains that the government promised to bring.”
I can’t help but smile to myself. When an actual, standard gauge railway service begins operations in Uganda – not to mention the speed train the young man mentioned – I pray for good health and life to witness the euphoria.
At 7:15pm, the train rolls to a stop at the Kampala station and even before the engine dies, we get off as other passengers who had been waiting immediately jump in for their journey home.
PASSENGER EXPERIENCES
David Ekobu is a resident of Seeta works for a security company in Kampala. Like me, it was also his first time using the train to head home. He says although he had known of the train services before, he had always been reluctant to use it but that evening after seeing the heavy traffic on the roads, made worse by the evening rains, he decided to catch the train back home.
“My friend this is also my first time using this train but I am amused at how efficient it is. I cannot believe that in less than an hour I will be home. I have always been using taxis and mini buses, but after today I do not think that I am going to use them again. By this time I would still be around Lugogo, but look, we are now in Kireka!” Ekobu tells me.
He alights at the Namanve station and says goodbye to me as he happily heads home to family. Monica Namubiru, a resident of Bweyogerere, has been using the train since 2019 for her journey from home to her workplace in Kampala and back. She says the train has saved her the troubles of reaching home late and tired due to being stuck in the usually heavy traffic on Jinja road, not to mention how much it has reduced her transport costs.
“At 5pm, I leave my workplace and hurry to catch the 5:30pm train. I am now able to get home early enough to engage in other duties around the home and in the morning, I wait for it at the Bweyogerere station and it brings me to Kampala,” she says.
Since she is a regular now, she recognizes fellow regulars and is among the few that engage in conversations and have a good laugh as the train snakes through the suburbs and in some places, slums.
THE TRAIN SERVICES
The passenger train resumed services in February 2018 after Uganda Railways Corporation (URC) reclaimed management from Rift Valley Railways (RVR). Many a millennial may frown at the use of the word ‘resumed’, but yes, three decades ago, a crowded passenger train snaking its way through Kibuye, Katwe and other parts of Uganda was not a strange sight.
Then government privatized it and in many places the sleepers were stolen and sold as scrap, and the tracks were vandalized, which is why the service is not going to all the places it used to go to. Even now, the improvisation is clear as at some stops passengers alight using short, metallic step ladders, as opposed to comfortably walking off and on to a platform.
According to Patience Baita, the commercial officer in charge of Customer Relations at Uganda Railways Corporation, the train makes four trips a day from Monday to Friday and prior to the Covid-19 period, it would transport about 4,000 passengers daily, but because of the pandemic and the need to observe Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that include operating at half capacity, it now transports about 1,500 people daily.
Each coach has a capacity of carrying 200 passengers, seated and standing. The first trip is from Namanve station at 7am to Kampala, where it reaches at 7:45am. The second trip is from Kampala at 5:30pm to Namanve, where it reaches at 6:15pm.
The third trip is from Namanve at 6:30pm to Kampala where it reaches at 7:15pm, and the fourth and final trip is from the Kampala station at 7:30pm to Namanve where it reaches at 8:15pm.
“We mainly target the rush hours where people are either coming to work or going back home, because these are the times when the traffic jam is too much on the roads and we want to save people that trouble. All the trips take approximately 45 minutes, including the stops we make at Mubs, URA, Namboole and Kireka,” Baita says.
The tickets cost Shs 2,000 – up from Shs 1,000 before the pandemic – yet a taxi ride on the same route now costs between Shs 5,000 and Shs 6,000, one way. The tickets can, however, also be purchased online on KaCyber, where one pays using mobile money and is given a code that is scanned at the station.
However, Baita says, this service has not yet been widely embraced by passengers. Currently, the passenger train only operates on that one route, but plans are underway to expand it to reach Mukono, Port Bell, Nalukolongo, Kyengera and Bujuuko.
“Our mandate is to reduce traffic in the greater Kampala metropolitan areas and have already finished doing the feasibility study to see which route we should start with and in the next two years, we will start expanding our routes gradually,” Baita says.
She says there are also plans of adding more coaches to accommodate more passengers; the train’s engine can haul up to nine coaches.
