At one of the most popular nightspots in Kigali, revellers are enjoying a musical band and treating themselves to food and drinks. Most of them are downing alcoholic beverages.

+250 Iwacu Bar can host quite a crowd during the weekend and it’s often difficult to find space in their parking lot. The cars barely have drivers inside. Yet as the night fades and more chairs and tables lie empty car parks are increasingly vacated.

You can’t help but wonder whether drunk patrons end up driving themselves back home.

Then a certain Valens shows up. He tells me he works only during the nights. His office? A spot around the parking area. He is a driver.

Valens was unemployed two months ago. That was before he decided to acquire his driver’s license and offer his services to bar-goers in need of a sober driver. He does not have his own car, rather he drives his clients in their own vehicles.

That was shortly after the police tightened the noose around drunk drivers, an effort which saw many motorists arrested and imprisoned for several days for driving under influence.

Today, Valens says he’s no longer unemployed. Yet driving bar-goers at night is all he does. He makes at least Rwf50,000 a week, he tells The New Times.

‘Steadily becoming the norm’

"When I started out, I was not sure how I was going to be a driver without a car. But, surprisingly, it is working,” he says. "I drive people who are legally not allowed to drive themselves after having one or two.”

He says it’s steadily becoming the norm for drunk car owners to hire a driver when it’s time to go home. "This used not to be the case.”

I think people now know how dangerous drunk driving is,” he says, with a smile.

As he spoke to The New Times, a client showed up. He looks drunk.

He reaches his pocket, hands Valens a key and a Rwf5,000 note and asks him to drop him off to Kabeza in Kicukiro District.

We ask him why he needs a driver after introducing ourselves.

"Just a few months ago, drinking and driving was a non-issue for me. I could drink and drive and miraculously arrive home, safely,” he recalls. "But now even if I knew there was no traffic police on the road, I would still look for someone sober to drive me home.”

"Not just because it’s illegal to drive while drunk but I now appreciate the risks involved.”

It is safe to say that Valens’s job is the result of Rwanda National Police’s ‘Gerayo Amahoro’ campaign that seeks to sensitise road users on traffic rules with the view to influencing behaviour change.

The campaign was launched in May last year and it was to run for 52 weeks.

Efforts to get fresh figures from the police were unsuccessful while working on this story.

However, official figures shared during the 2019 National Dialogue Council or Umushyikirano, in December showed that the tough measures rolled out during the ‘Gerayo Amahoro’ drive had resulted in a 42 per cent drop in the number of road accidents in the last four months of last year.

In 2019 alone, over 2500 people were arrested over drink-driving. An estimated 532 people died in road accidents between January and September 2019, drink-driving being one of the major causes of fatal accidents. According to RNP, 75 per cent of crimes committed in Rwanda are related to substance abuse.

Mobility service

Valens is one of many drivers who hang around bars (some are officially engaged by the same bars) mostly around weekends. And they are making a living from driving others back home, especially at night.

"Some people just leave their cars at home or at the bar and we drive them,” says another driver, who, unlike Vincent, has a cab.

He tells The New Times he makes an average of Rwf70, 000 a week from his taxi business.

"This is good, the police has made our work a lot easier,” he says in reference to the stepped-up campaign against drink-driving.

In the early days of the campaign, some motorists chose to steer clear of bars or resort to often-lowly hangouts in their neighbourhoods beyond the reach of the breathalyser.

To cushion themselves against losses bar owners came up added driving services to their menu.

Innocent Niyibizi, the manager of +250 Iwacu Bar, told The New Times that they do not charge drivers for serving their clients.

"When the campaign first started, we were losing customers. To attract them back we had to introduce mobility services to facilitate their safe return home,” he said.

It may be too early to tell whether Vincent’s client’s change in attitude points to general behaviour change or whether they are simply scared of the penalties awaiting them in case they get pulled over, but there is evidence many people are increasingly discarding the habit of driving under the influence.