Turn off Kampala's fountains

Apr 04, 2013

Gone are the days when residents in Kampala ate garbage for breakfast, lunch and supper. There are no more dead dogs rotting on the roads, used condoms and plastic wrappers scattered on the streets.

trueBy Owen Kibenge

Gone are the days when residents in Kampala ate garbage for breakfast, lunch and supper. There are no more dead dogs rotting on the roads, used condoms and plastic wrappers scattered on the streets.

There is a fresh bed of grass sprouting along Queens Way and trimmed lawns dot several concrete islands in the city.

Recently, a new junction with a fountain sprinkling fresh water in the air was launched. These efforts aimed at beautifying our city are commendable but they are coming at a price, which does not recognize our way of life nor the deplorable living conditions affecting the majority of Ugandans living and working in the central business district.

In a city where half the population has no access to clean water, the last thing we need is a fountain. Bless your soul if you have to respond to an unyielding case of food poisoning along Bombo Road, Luwum Street or Yusuf Lule Road.

The KCCA directors should go shopping in one of Kampala’s malls and ask to use a bath room, their planning and prioritizing will be greatly enhanced.

I am not asking for the reversal of the current beautifying projects, but I am calling for a more nuanced approach that caters for a city where the majority lives and work in crowded, unplumbed, vermin infested and dusty surroundings.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to travel by taxi in Kampala. When the driver took a right turn a few meters before getting to Blue Room from Bakuli, I threatened not to pay him unless he took me to the New Taxi Park.

He turned and looked at me in disgust and announced that Musisi had shuttered the taxi park. We were headed to a new park in Kisenyi, he announced.

As I walked through the corridor between Nakivubo Stadium and Uhuru Restaurant, my anger turned to sympathy.

The 'fasi fasi' men with twitching muscles, bodies glistening with sweat, hunched forward from the over 100 kilo gram weight on their shoulders sliced through the crowds with the efficiency of a knife going through butter, they jumped over babies who crawled between red hot charcoal stoves that were being used to roast maize on the cob, boil hooves (mulokonyi) and porridge.

Amidst this cacophony, boda boda riders with livestock, passengers and matooke hooted incessantly for the crowds to part, as naughty bus touts hustled travelers in the little space that was available.

Within spitting distance from this chaos, the gleaming Workers House, Sheraton and Serena Hotels that are magnets for the elite, rich and well connected emerging middle class, represented by Jennifer Musisi and her Range Rover driving bureaucrats, the chosen ones were nibbling on truffles and discussing their next trips to Bangkok to pick up tailored suits instead of building a city that caters for all classes of people that use Kampala as a place of work or residence.

The current approach to developing the city is a recipe for class war fare, eventually the muscled ‘fasi fasi’ men will need a slice of the pie being chewed by the ‘A’ class, but because of their low levels of education and not knowing people in right places, they will resort to brute force to get some of the goodies.

Kampala will be like Johannesburg or Nairobi, where the gap between the rich and poor is responsible for soaring crime.

We must pierce this boil by creating jobs for the young men and women, improve sanitation, build infrastructure and above all create predictability in the jua kali business hubs to start reducing on criminal options.

The writer is a journalist based in New York City

 

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});