Short African Thought
Uganda is the land of Toyotas. Seriously. Nine out of ten cars, at least. The Matatus are all the Toyota Haice model. Taxis are all Corollas. Seemingly every muzungu who drives a car drives a RAV-4—it’s really funny to see the streets outside a mostly muzungu event (think art showing and pizza in the backyard of a family’s home).
All the cars come from Japan and have been reconditioned to be sold in the African market. License plates all begin with UA and another letter followed by a dash and a letter and number combination, the third letter represents the year the car came over, A for the first year and so on. I think I’ve seen as late as UAP.
As a result of the cars being from Japan, the preinstalled radio dial only goes as far as 90.0 FM. In Kampala and most of Uganda the station that has this frequency is called Radio 1, “where the car dial stops.” There are radio stations here that exist beyond 90.0, but unless a new radio console is installed in the car, the manufactures radio will not get to those other stations.
