Two things Ugandans hate to use are condoms and helmets.

Yet these two items could greatly reduce the strain on the country’s healthcare system since a high proportion of our hospital beds are occupied by people injured in boda boda bike taxi accidents and those suffering from HIV-related illnesses. Only last week, the country’s donors declared that they are drastically cutting funding for health in the coming budget.

Logically, whoever hates helmets should not ride on boda bodas, as one who hates condoms should avoid you-know-what. But Ugandans simply hate barriers and ignore campaigns to popularise condoms and helmets, with disastrous consequences.

This year, an NGO called Cross Roads is spending seven hundred million shillings (about $235,000) to provide tens of thousands of helmets for Kampala boda boda passengers. But most boda boda drivers end up keeping the helmets for themselves as passengers simply refuse to put them on.

Popular musician Bobi Wine was co-opted by Cross Roads to distribute the free helmets, but passengers remain unresponsive.

Observing the growing number of street preachers in Kampala as they target boda bodas at junctions can be interesting. When the traffic lights turn red, the preachers have a couple of minutes to reach out to travellers.

If a boda boda cyclist agrees to be blessed, the preacher puts his hand on his helmeted head and calls on the Holy Spirit to descend on him. The boda boda boy must have his helmet on at the junction for fear of police nabbing him if he doesn’t wear it.
But the passengers who agree to be blessed have the preacher touching their head directly or “live,” as they say in Ugandan English. I don’t know which blessing is more effective, the one that passes through the helmet or the “live” one.

Now as the helmet campaign faces an uphill struggle, another product is growing in popularity. It is a tablet called Truvada.
Rich Ugandans call it the wonder tab, because they supposedly no longer need to use condoms if they swallow it daily. The tab costs about $30 a pack of 30, or one dollar each, in Kampala pharmacies.

It is said to protect its users from catching HIV from an infected partner. So secretly popular has Truvada become that medical researchers have offered it to 400 volunteers who have been given the tabs in the Kasangati suburb of Kampala and at another upcountry trading centre in Western Uganda so they can be monitored for five years.

That is a whopping $1,800 supply of Truvada per person. But many more rich people are buying it from commercial pharmacies.

Unfortunately for boda boda passengers, there is no tablet to protect your skull from a crash if you don’t wear a helmet. So for now they have to rely only on the blessings they get at road junctions when the preacher touches their head.

But condom haters are also not 100 per cent safe as scientists say Truvada’s effectiveness stands at 75 per cent. It would appear then, that the Truvada users also need a preacher to touch them somewhere before they embark on activities where they face a 25 per cent chance of catching HIV.

Let us wish good luck to everybody, Amen!