Boda Boda working title
When his UN family leaves Uganda, a young European stays behind to ride motorcycle taxis with his best friend, until the friend’s death leaves him named as father to a premature baby whose mother has vanished. With his only enemy as an ally, he carries the child across the bush to find her.
The story
Elias, nineteen and Swiss, walks away from his departure gate at Entebbe to stay in Kampala with Kato, a Ganda boda rider. After Kato dies on a dangerous bush run, Elias inherits his bike and his debt, then learns that Kato’s girlfriend Sanyu has listed Elias as the father of her premature daughter before disappearing.
With the baby strapped to his chest, he rides north across the Nile and past the lions of Murchison toward Arua. Wire, the rival rider who blames himself for Kato’s death, follows him. Along the way Elias uncovers a half-brother his father has kept secret.
Myth
The film draws on two myths about failed messages: the Bantu legend of the chameleon, and the Lugbara story of the severed link between heaven and earth. Elias is the slow, adaptive chameleon; Kato is the lizard whose speed brings death; and the baby is the message they carry.