At the beginning of this year, I retired from bodas the same way retired soldiers leave war zones: traumatised, hyper-alert and suspicious of sudden movements.
After seeing one too many friends looking like they had just lost a UFC fight with gravel, my spirit quietly retired.
These days, unless I am aggressively beating Ugandan time, I use taxis.
Safer. More responsible. Spiritually mature transport.
And honestly? Something deeply suspicious is happening inside Kampala taxis.
Every single time I enter one, the gender ratio looks like somebody accidentally deleted men from the national simulation.
Out of fourteen passengers, you will find maybe three men. And one of them is the driver.
Sometimes even the conductor is a woman.
Meanwhile, the taxi is fully packed with women headed to work. Women making business calls. Women carrying laptops. Women discussing land titles with dangerous confidence.
The entire commute feels less like public transport and more like a leadership summit sponsored by estrogen and determination.
Naturally, I started asking questions.
Gentlemen… where exactly are you people?
Because clearly, you are not in taxis.
You are barely visible on the roads.
Yet somehow, every serious boardroom meeting remains suspiciously full of men arriving with confidence and expensive opinions.
Which means there is clearly a hidden transport system operating in Kampala that ordinary civilians have not been informed about.
Theory Number One: Men have invented teleportation
There is simply no other explanation.
Men wake up, shower, wear blue office shirts, announce dramatically, “I’m heading to work,” then vanish into some invisible wormhole.
Next thing you know, they are already in Bugolobi discussing strategy over black coffee like transport never existed.
No traffic. No dust. No taxi conductors screaming stage names into your soul.
Just instant arrival.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are sweating in traffic wondering whether Kampala roads were designed by enemies of joy.
Theory number two: Men have become emotional vampires
This one makes a lot of sense.
Men now operate at strange hours.
They move at 3am, conduct mysterious business meetings under darkness, then quietly return home before sunrise pretending they have been productive.
This would explain why some men seem permanently irritated by daylight.
It also explains why your neighbour’s gate opens at hours normally reserved for witches, bakers and people with unresolved financial decisions.
You hear a gate creak at 4:17am and suddenly somebody in a checked shirt is entering quietly like a government secret.
No greeting. No explanation.
Just vibes and hidden responsibilities.
Theory number three: Work from home has captured the male species
This one might actually be real.
Most brothers are no longer commuting.
They are sitting inside apartments with three computer monitors, one gaming chair worth school fees and suspicious confidence in cryptocurrency.
Their daily commute is six steps from bed to laptop.
Their biggest traffic jam is weak WiFi.
Lunch break means opening the fridge and staring into economic disappointment.
By 2pm, they are arguing in WhatsApp groups about football tactics while pretending Excel sheets are open somewhere.
But jokes aside, there is something genuinely interesting happening.
Women are visible everywhere.
In taxis. Offices. Businesses. Meetings.
The roads are full of women driving cars that were once marketed exclusively to men with unfinished gym memberships.
Those aggressive machines normally advertised with mountains, dust and deep-voiced narrators saying things like:
“Built for the wild.”
Now they are being driven calmly to office by women in sunglasses discussing quarterly reports and school pickup schedules.
Kampala huns are confidently reversing V8s into parking lots while some of us still panic during simple reverse parking.
Banange, things changed.
Where did the bros actually go?
Because somehow, men still appear where power exists.
Key meetings? Full.
Tender discussions? Present.
Golf clubs? Overflowing.
But ordinary transport?
Vanished.
Like government accountability after elections.
So until proven otherwise, I remain convinced Kampala men are either teleporting, working mysterious night shifts or secretly attending underground conferences nobody invited us to.
Because there is no scientific explanation for why taxis now look like unofficial women empowerment conferences with occasional male guests.
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