Nakabuye on touring East Africa twice, on a bike

When a group of 15 cyclists reached Kasese town, barely 48 hours to the Rwenzori Marathon on August 24, one slender body sporting a red helmet, black veil, nose ring and a multi-coloured jersey, stood out like the national flag she was waving as she leisurely rode before she parked. Few could believe that Shamal Nakabuye had done the entire 360km or slightly more, in three days, just like the men.

Yet to Nakabuye, whose mileage is in the tens of thousands and the only Ugandan woman to tour East Africa twice, on a bike, “this was nothing.”

Nakabuye tried bicycles when she was only five— around the time her father died. “We rode our neighbours’ bicycles in turns,” she recalled. “There was also a man who gave me his bicycle whenever he returned home.”

In Primary Seven, Nakabuye could save Shs1000 to hire the neighbours’ bicycle the whole weekend.   

She also played football but preferred cycling. Yet her mother, who also rode as a girl, was unhappy. “Leave those things for boys,” Rahma Kabuye told us how she discouraged her daughter. “I was very negative.” Nakabuye became crafty. She started riding far away from home.

No more lies

While in Senior Three at St. John’s SS, Nakabuye often rode from her sister’s home in Kazo to her mother’s home in Kawempe.

“One day, I had no sooner parked the bike than I saw mom home. Scared, I turned away, but she called me back.” Her mother’s disappointment bordered on heartbreak.

But Nakabuye just couldn’t quit cycling that soothed her mind like serene sleep. “Would you prefer me joining gangs and loitering in the ghettos?” Nakabuye challenged her mother with teenage adamancy. But those words, backed by her sister’s, took some time to tenderise their mother’s heart.

Stereotypes aside, she was also concerned about her daughter’s safety.

But Nakabuye was now addicted. With unlimited access to a classmate’s bicycle, she was unstoppable. They shared it like co-owners. “We painted his name and mine on the bike.”

Soon, Nakabuye was using the Mountain Cat more than its owner. And when he wanted to sell it, she said: DON’T. It had become hers, and cycling a lifestyle.

Every day, Nakabuye rode 18km between Kazo-Kawempe and Muteesa I Royal University in Mengo, where she did her diploma in hotel and tourism management.

Finally, her mother surrendered. “I couldn’t pay her transport fare. So, I let her ride,” Nakabuye’s mother said. “And upon graduation, people were surprised. They thought she’d been riding for fun.”

And during the lockdown in 2020, she and her little brother often rode to Mukono to visit their grandmother.

However, the reckless, sometimes vulgar comments by, mostly boda-boda riders, almost knocked Nakabuye off the road. “But my sister told me ‘if you listen to everyone you won’t accomplish anything in life.’”

That thickened her skin against bullies and naysayers. When they provoked her, she ignored them. Sometimes, she fired back. One wondered whether she had a mother. Nakabuye responded: “My mother knows what I do and is proud of me.”

Fame backfires

In August 2019, NTV ran a story of a young woman who had embraced cycling as a means of transport—navigating nasty traffic from her sister’s home in Kazo-Kawempe to Coffee At Last Restaurant in Makindye, where she served as a waitress, daily.

The story made Nakabuye a celebrity, and soon she was on an all-expenses-paid vacation in Accra, Ghana. “The Ugandans in Accra were thanking me for embracing cycling. When they first contacted me I was suspicious but my brother Okayed it,” she remembered. “It was my first time on a plane and you can imagine my excitement.”

She told her boss the day before her flight but he gave her the two-week break. When she returned, she got gigs training children in cycling. At the restaurant, almost every client wanted to be served by “that girl who rides a bicycle.”

She enjoyed the fame. Her daily returns almost tripled. But her workmates saw her as an existential threat and plotted her fall.

“They started messing up my orders. If I asked for chips and chicken, for instance, they could serve chips and liver. I incurred losses for those cancelled orders.” She loved her job but had to quit in mid-2020.

Speed merchant 

Nakabuye always dreamt of riding crazy distances and touring the continent on a bike. But as a solo rider, she knew nothing about long routes and suitable bikes for epic tours. Being a girl, she also feared for her safety, alone. 

In 2019, Nakabuye joined Fun Cycling Ug, a group founded by Ras B Ssali, whom members fervently call Papa “because he’s like a father to us.” Nakabuye's dream became a possibility.

According to the group’s profile on X, it rides for fitness, health, tourism, charity and safety.

When Nakabuye led the group to Ssezibwa Falls, roughly 40km from Kampala, she was nicknamed a speed merchant. Ahead of the 200km ride to Hoima, she used one of Papa’s bikes. Then they did 220km to Mbale, 300km to Fort Portal, 270km to Mbarara, Jinja, Kalangala Islands, 134km to Masaka, several times and recently Kasese—with Nakabuye the only girl on these upcountry tours.

“The other girls only join us on the Sunday rides which are 50km, 60km. So, I create impact because people think I’m challenging the men, meanwhile showing that girls too can do it,” Nakabuye smiled with pride. 

“So, when I said I wanted to try GACS, Papa was fully supportive.”

Touring East Africa

Ahead of the 2022 Great African Cycling Safari (GACS), Fun Cycling raised funds for Nakabuye and Peter Kajumbula.  

In 2021, the group bought Nakabuye a new bike, a Trek. But was it fit for the gruelling 6000km tour? Davin Daniel Ochean, a group member, offered his Trek and a helmet to Nakabuye.  

Kajumbula and another Ugandan got a bus to Mombasa, where the tour would start. Nakabuye travelled by air, thanks to her family.

The expedition that traversed Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda, began August 1. The first section from Mombasa towards Malindi was tough. Nakabuye found everything strange. She was used to kicking off by 6am. But here, they started about 11am, under the ruthless coastal sun. Her bike struggled with back-breaking luggage, because unlike in Uganda, where trade centres are every after a few kilometres, in Kenya and Tanzania they could go 50km without a stopover.

The second day was even tougher. “I slowed down, hungry and exhausted. I didn’t expect those many hills. A Kenyan friend took my heavy bike, and I rode his. The Tanzanians said I had potential but something was holding me back.”

Truth is: most riders were strangers and Nakabuye couldn’t speak Swahili, the only language on the tour.  

But she enjoyed the ride to Voi, a town at the western edge of the Taru Desert, south of the Tsavo East National Park, in Kenya.

“There were no hills but lots of headwinds and crosswinds because it’s a long stretch with no trees.”

Nakabuye played pacesetter. “They made me ride at a crazy speed—about 25km/h—I loved it. Everyone said: ‘that was terrific.’”

She could ask about the route and terrain for the following day. But on day three, she pulled out after 70km due to menstrual cramps. The following day she was back on the road. But riding on an off-road, with impassable gravel was another ball game.

“The tour tested me; I discovered my full abilities: speed, endurance. I met new people. I learnt Swahili, etc.”

After nearly two months on the road, 6000km, (Nakabuye thinks they’re nearly 7000km), she felt: “I can do even better.” She did it again.  

Marvels of the road

Nakabuye found Kenyan food expensive and predictable. She faced a language barrier in Burundi. Rwandese were very reserved but their pristine cities are havens for cycling.

She loved the hidden treasures like oases in Tanzania, the beauty in Bwindi and Kabale in Uganda. But nothing beats life in Amboseli National Park. Found in southern Kenya, it hosts Africa’s largest herds of elephants. The bikers marveled at the Masai giraffe, Cape buffalo, impala, lion, cheetah, spotted hyena, Grant's zebra, and blue wildebeest—things most had only seen on Nat Geo.

They wondered how the Masai kept herds of healthy cattle in a desert. “The night we slept in the park our bodies were literally burning after riding in terribly high temperatures. I badly wanted to bathe, but the Masai gave us all the milk, not a single cup of water.” The water is for the animals.

At Namanga, on the Kenya-Tanzania border, the bikers had a full view of the colossal Kilimanjaro, the tallest mountain in Africa. Advertising the East African Community’s beauty, multiplicity, and cultural diversity, and promoting trade and mitigating challenges posed by climate change are the key goals of this annual tour.

 Steely mother

Nakabuye’s easy smile, hearty laugh, sweet voice, articulation and humility sum up a likeable persona.

At first sight, she looks like a teenager. “What can I do to look old enough?” the proud mother of two girls asked, jokingly. “Just be proud, others pay a fortune to look young,” I told her.

 Yet she’s steely. Her youngest daughter was just two months old when she rode 300km to Fort Portal for the Ekyooto Ha Mpango Festival in 2021.

 “I could stop to breastfeed her from the van. But she was generally peaceful.” Not even pregnancy stops her riding. She’s such a nerd.

Ladies need support

Nakabuye, a Rwandese race cyclist and a Kenyan were the only women among the 54 cyclists on the 2022 and 2023 GACS tours.  

The Rwandese struggled on gravel but were superb on tarmac. The ladies suffered menstrual discomfort but rode to the end.

In 2022, Nakabuye and Kajumbula narrowly survived an accident toward Namanga. It was dark. Their bikes had no lights and their service van drove in the wrong lane. “A car from the opposite direction brushed us into the bushes and sped off. Luckily, we weren’t hurt.”

But in 2023, Nakabuye wasn’t lucky. The bikers had covered about 89km from Bujumbura, Burundi, heading to Ngozi when a speeding car knocked Nakabuye down. She sustained head injuries. “We were very scared and told her to return home immediately,” her mother told me. After a night in hospital, Nakabuye was driven to Ngozi to join her colleagues. The following day, though not fit again, she rode to Kigali and finished the tour in Uganda. But where are such brave women?

“Women and girls have the passion for cycling but lack support,” Nakabuye said. She loved cycling but her sister was crucial in convincing their mother that “girls cycling isn’t a sin.”

Her sister also encouraged her to focus on her passion and ignore criticism. Then her entire family joined the support cast.

Her former employers were also flexible. Then came Fun Cycling, the group she calls ‘my other family.’

During the GACS tours, her friend Stella Nantale was in the Netherlands but often called her. “That emotional support was priceless.”

But before all that, her classmate Joseph Katende gave Nakabuye the Mountain Cat which made her a career cyclist, the bike she would hang in her mother’s house as a souvenir.

Versatile

Nakabuye won the 2016 Miss Tourism Ssese crown. The peer educator in sexual reproductive health rights, and a youth counselor for people living with HIV/Aids is also studying French and electrical engineering. On the tours, she is the favourite chef, and she wants to venture into cooking in the wild.

 Nakabuye wants to ride to South Africa. But first, across Uganda, to create cervical cancer awareness; and to the prisons to tell female prisoners that cycling is one of the things they can consider upon release. The sign language interpreter also wants to ride for children with hearing difficulty.

Safety first

 Nakabuye knows no safe road for cycling in Kampala. “Value our bicycles as you value your vehicles,” she urges other road users. “Moreover, some bicycles are more expensive than cars.”

To fellow cyclists: wear reflective gear, helmets, gloves, etc., ride the right speed, and avoid risky roads like the Northern Bypass. “Make sure you’re not the one in the wrong. Otherwise, in case of an accident you won’t be compensated.”

Towards 8pm, after our lively conversation, Nakabuye mounted rechargeable indicators at the back of her Scott bike and a bright LED light in the front. Her pink backpack could reflect against the lights. She rode home.

BRIEFLY

Name: Shamal Nakabuye

Mother: Rahma Kabuye

Father: Mustafa Kabuye

Sport: Recreational Cycling

Club: Fun Cycling Uganda

Longest trip (inland): Kampala-Kasese (360km)

Regional debut: 2022 GACS (6000km)
              Repeat: 2023 GACS (6000km)

Skills: Hotel and tourism management, peer education, counseling,  sign language, electrical engineering

Other passions: Cooking, activism

Dream bike destination: South Africa