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Science trumps myths as Kyaliwajjala truck is towed away
A motorcyclists rides past the low bed hauler truck at Shell Kyaliwajjala on the Kireka-Namugongo road. Photo/Stephen Otage
What you need to know:
- It turns out that all that was needed was to disengage the trailer truck’s air brake system to free its wheels.
It’s not every Saturday that the noun Buni gets to trend with another noun, truck. Yet that is precisely what happened today. A country deeply steeped in superstition had on Friday given a long, doubting look to Christopher Buni’s promise that a low-bed trailer truck grounded at Shell Kyaliwajjala on the Kireka-Namugongo road pre-pandemic would be towed away.
The trailer truck had managed to stay put on a raised passageway in Kyaliwajjala thanks in small part to urban legend. On Friday, Mr Buni had posted a selfie with the dust-ridden trailer truck backdropped.
“By the end of the weekend, we shall know if witchcraft is stronger than the state,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
The post was liked hundreds of times and shared thousands more. The comments numbered in the hundreds, with doubting Thomases hardly in scant supply.
“Tomorrow at this time your body will be taken to Mulago for postmortem,” one Ugandan posted, referring to the country’s top referral hospital.
“Buni have you signed your will before you start?” another asked rhetorically, pointing out how Buni had his work cut out.
Shortly before the turning of afternoon into evening, Buni well and truly had the last laugh today. It took, he revealed, half a dozen hours of planning. The execution took just slightly over five hours under the punishing June 22 sun.
“Job done! No more truck!” the computer scientist said in a video he posted on X.
It turns out that all that was needed was to disengage the trailer truck’s air brake system to free its wheels.
Buni is a car enthusiast who has actively participated in the staging of two Auto Show Kampala events at Kololo Independence Grounds. The third edition of the event has been penciled in for the second weekend of July. Already, there are rather strong demands that among the cars on display between July 13 and 14 be a certain trailer truck that had gained notoriety for casting a spell on anyone who dared to tow it away.
"We tested each wheel at a time, and tested the freewheel movement on each of the tracks, running each of the tyres. And we did that for all the four sets of wheels that the tractor head has," Buni disclosed what it took to tow the trailer truck away.
It remains to be seen whether the trailer truck that attracted quite a bit of human traffic in Kyaliwajjala today will return to the public domain during next month’s Auto Show Kampala event in Kololo.
