I initially boarded a Kigali city taxi, sort of a minibus with a yellow band around it just like those in Kampala city to take me to Remera. Remera is in the outskirts of Kigali city. We had hardly moved a kilometre when some passengers started knocking on window and door screens of the taxi.

At first, it was merely a knock on the taxi’s window. ‘Just accidental,’ I thought. But later I began to think it was rather more than that.

Now my mind was full of thoughts; they are trying to communicate to pedestrians across; they are tired and trying to run away from their thoughts; why is the minibus stopping without the passengers telling the driver to stop; how does he know they want to get out?

Of course I am used to the Kampala city way where passengers shout at the driver, “Masso awo,” to mean there in front. In Kigali, no one said a word. The minibus just stopped in from there. Passengers got out.

After a few minutes, it is the minibus conductor who knocked on the door. The driver stopped. The conductor turned to me, “this is where you are going,” he pointed at Alfa palace hotel. I had initially told this brown minibus conductor with a long nose that I was going to Alfa Palace Hotel but i did not know where it was. He promised to deliver me there safely. He did.

My first time in a Kigali city taxi ended like that. When it dropped me at Alpha Palace, I checked in, took diner and slept with so many unanswered questions about the knocking. I promised myself I would find out the following day.

The following day at 4 pm, I boarded a minibus once gain. I was moving to the centre of Kigali town to just observe what was taking place there.

We were roughly in the middle of our journey to the city when the first passenger knocked on the window screen once again. What startled me is that the first knock came from the brown woman that sat on my immediate right hand side.

The tall and fat old woman dressed in a multicoloured dress extended her long arm to knock on the window screen I was leaning on. I only noticed the minibus stop. The woman got out of the taxi with difficulties.

I tried to observe keenly. We had travelled a few meters from the place of our first stop when I heard another knock. It was coming from a man in the front row seat. He knocked and in no minute, the driver stopped just on the next junction. The man got out.

I observed and enjoyed this as more and more passengers knocked and got out of the taxi in an organised way. I myself did not knock on the door to get out of the taxi because I was going to the building of Rubangura. It is at Rubangura’s building that most of the taxis from Remera stopped. So there was no need for me to knock to get out of the taxi. The minibus had reached its final stage.

When most passengers had left the taxi, I turned to the taxi conductor and asked him why people knocked on the window screens. He looked at me and let out a short mirthless laugh from his throat. He told me it is a sign of reaching near their destination so they would want to get out of the taxi.

He actually told me that this was a polite way instead of shouting at the driver. ‘Shouting like the Kampala city way!’, I recalled.

In Kampala city, it is survival for the loudest. Passengers don’t knock on window screens. They shout. Masso awo to command the driver to stop in front there. “ Packing Ssebo,” others shout to let the driver find any convenient place to pack so that they can get out of the taxi.

I remember a day I went to the old taxi park in Kampala city. The noise was unbearable. From all sides of the taxi park, taxi touts shouted directing would-be passengers to stages within the park where they can board from. Kasubi, Kawala, Makerere, they shouted amidst sounds of honking vehicles.

In the middle of this sea of shouting hundreds of touts and hundreds of honking blue-banded minibuses, stood a group of taxi drivers and conductors engaged in heated debate. A man in a brown shirt shouted, ‘Kasubi?’ as he looked directly into my eyes. I was the only passenger left to fill the minibus. Most of Kampala city minibuses are licensed to carry 14 passengers. I was the fourteenth.

We had hardly travelled a half a quarter a kilometre to Kasubi when a tall slender dark girl holding a bag sort of a school child bag, shouted to the driver, ‘Packing Ssebo.’ The driver drove her to a quarter a kilometre before stopping.

She complained in the taxi and uttered all sorts of abuses at the driver to the amusement of all passengers. But the driver insisted there was no place to park at. He had to continue driving until he reached a convenient place to park.

With vendors selling goods and commercial telephone operators working by the street sides, it sometimes gets so congested in Kampala city that taxi drivers find nowhere to pack for a minute or two for passengers to get out. So they drive them passed their destinations.