Encounter with Ugandan Police

After a evening of shopping and browsing as a family at Oasis Shopping Centre last night, we drove home in the KCM 4WD to the Jesus House.

Little did we realise the 'fun' we were about to experience.

About 3 minutes into our return journey a young policeman (probably not more than 20 years old) stopped us in the middle of a round-about and asked us to pull over - which I reluctantly did!

To be honest, I was a little curious about the reason behind this inconvenience - was it a random breath test? did they realise that we didn't have working indicator lights on the 4WD? was I speeding? was it illegal to drive a child without a booster seat?

When I asked the policeman if there was a problem, he said he watched me turn at the lights at Jinga Road. When I asked him if there was a problem with the manner in which I did this, he said that I had broken the law. When I asked him how I had broken the law he pronounced that U-turns are illegal at traffic lights in Uganda.

I promptly apologised and explained that I was a new driver in Uganda and that in Australia it was a common practice to execute a U-turn at traffic lights (except if there is a sign disallowing it).

As the young policeman asked for my licence and started to write out a ticket, including a 40,000 shillings fine, a higher ranking policeman appeared at my window. I explained to him that we were new to Uganda, that we were here to help build a school and medical clinic at Kyampisi and I thought it was very unfair to issue me with a ticket for making a U-turn at traffic lights when I didn't realise it was illegal.

To cut a long story short, as the first policeman was checking out the KCM 4WD for defects, the second policeman issued me with a verbal caution.

Interestingly, the first policeman asked me to reverse back into the round-about (which I thought was very dangerous) to help get back into the flow of traffic. When I had executed the U-turn earlier at the Jinger Road traffic lights, there was only one other car at the intersection as it was about 9pm (which I think was a lot safer than reversing back into a round-about).

As we were discussing the infringement with the two policemen, a young boy scooted past on a pair of rollerblades hanging on to the back of a Borda Borda (again, very dangerous).

It seems consistency isn't really a big part of police enforcement in Uganda?