Dear Beloved Mayor
Katwe Slum City, Religious Schools and 50 cents - Just inside the slum city – business thrives by all means possible. - A religious school within the neighbourhood with holy book recitals and the young ones answer in unison. - Around them, filthy and dirty smelly air comes from all corners. Urine here, faeces there, raw sewage there. - Town “Hole” was presented to Kampala Municipality Council by Sheth Nanji Kalidas Mertha M.B.E opened by Governor Sir John Hathorn Hall G.C.M.C., D.S.O., O.B.E., M.C., (master of ceremony) Monday September 1950 - What has changed then? 55 years, Independent and old at 43, Makerere Ivory Tower 83 complete years – - KEEP HOPE ALIVE, KEEP HOPE ALIVE , KEEP HOPE ALIVE - colonialists. - Ado at the other corner of the road, Manchester and Ass-enal jumper and buggy bearing young slum men impress upon the passing girls with – their music system blurring out 50 cents accompanied with vigorous debate about who is who in R&B. - I turn to look at the other side, I can see inside Lubiri Barracks, Oh I mean Lubiri Palace and many many banana plantation extending as far as the eyes can see. - Back - it is a music-recording studio into a muddy ramshackle house – @ a near falling stage – I pose to think about the MINISTRY OF YOUTH AND GENDER. - Nearby, a billboard announcing condoms another MTN, Celter, Nile special, Club and so on. There is a one street coming up – a citizen’s innovation. - In a distance a heated discussion, “ abaNiggers mwaana bakuba emiziiki” (Negroes are music endowed) another shouts back “Gwe mwanna abaNiggers balina sente” (Negroes are filthy rich) - I bust in hearty laughter, almost falling off my legs. - Fellow citizens below Katwe there is a small KCC advert in soil – “Welcome to Kampala City and so on…. - Flight of time vindicates and history will absolve us – had it no been for the struggle to bring the internet to Uganda, were will we be? - My first step in Katwe was not so successful, my newly acquired gumboots were soiled badly- I hear malaria kills millions but what is here tales a different story. - I turn to the help of a water-logged pond left behind by several days of down pour – heavy scrubbing into the mud with the help of another leg, luckily cleans off the terrible thing. - I move on. - Miniature gullies, which emerge from what goes for hastily designed latrines, and “side “ bathrooms smells like hell, raw urine, sewage, condoms, shit you name it – it is all there. - Good heavens help our people. There is a condom in the middle of road. - There too emerges a tiptoeing very young modern woman wrapped in a fine towel, with painstakingly burnt hair, hopping to skip and dodging, I think pup and muddy waters along the path to a one-unit room on a multipurpose block of a house. - She disappears in one of numerous muzigo - No, many children don’t die of dysentery, diarrhoea – I am in Katwe proper - it is malaria. - We must be adapted for quite long to resist such encumbrances! Colonialists call us monkeys, rare apes! Aaah, Bloody Dirty Racists! - Bantusitan. Soweto. - Originating from a very remote region, what I see now defies explanatory power. Can it fit poverty, misery, desolation, despair, agony or ignorance – I can’t tell. - Maybe with a new economic vocabulary like “Okulembeka” – they actually do. - It is holiday time, children with mucus, some so dirty, with rags on, to imagine them living another day but they do! - They mingle, jiggle and play children games - while dysentery, diarrhoea below their feet flows in all directions at times helped in an open ditch. - It is sickening – I move to the left. - With their mothers some comfortably sited on verandas unconcerned as they marvel the tricks of their playing kids, it chills me in the spine. I am tired and jittery. - Pup here and there and many children in fact as sick dogs, cats and the like mill around them. One dog has so many bits it’s about to die I guess. - As elsewhere in Kamwokya Kitoro, here too labyrinths snakes through a thousand mud and reed houses some newly constructed others in just as lame as the builders minds themselves. - It disturbs me really. Stupid Racists Colonialists - what an absurd conjecture! - Now I can see Kampala City - a lot of it. - It is Africa architecture of a rare breed YET we survive 2005. I can now see the workers house far away in blue. - A hawker all covered in merchandise head to toe, all of the sudden surfaces behind another house calling for buyers (who is buying, who is buying) attracts my attention. - In one hand he’s carrying a small radio at full volume – It is radio West I usually listens to in Lunyankore. - Bonna Bagagaware. (Man’s Worldly Goods – Leo Huberman) - At the far end – Maama Hajjit is preparing a Katogo (mixture of cassava & beans) it goes for shs 800 bobs a plate - with flied beans that is. - I ask for half a plate with faith that Professor O2 was right when you burn or boil bacteria indeed die. Unflinching Materialist – Faith! - Sparking off a conversation with Maama Hajjit and my fellow Katogo consumers I pork a fork in my Cassava and stop a big piece in my mouth. Taste good though. - A big blue fly from several months of an uncollected waste dump opposite Maama Hajjit food vending business, zooms into our shack restaurant, landing on my shoulder. - I jump off the ramshackle bench in full pursuit – causing hearty laughter and shouts. - ”eeeeh a big man fears flies, it is only a fly !”…and so on, comes a response and yet more laughter. - Maama Hajjit ask me not to mind – she unties a piece of cloth in her waist, waves it to help chase a group of flies on tin plates in the other corner. - It is super Katogo - When did you come to Katwe Maama Hajjit – I ask. - Mzee (me!), I was born in Butambala but married to Hajji that was in the beginning of the 80s and our house there, a half cement half mud built house several hundred meters away behind other shacks, is our home comes a reply. - When is Kampala City Council in Katwe I ask – sending some in sarcastic laughter and others in derisive shouts - protest? - Nooooo No comes the cry - only when they come for taxes, look look a man points to a dirty slum road – this government, KCC thieves and so on. - I am shocked with the agitation the conversation has generated in a 20 or so minute – I signal for a passing bodaboda. - We settle for shs 2500 bobs for a round trip in Katwe, Kibuli behind Nsambya and Makindye. - I suspect nothing will change here for sometime to come. - Some Bachiga have also settle in- gathered around a small shop, I guess of a colleague selling pilsner club, some are heavily intoxicated and talking at the top of their voices. - I direct a forwards movement and speed increase from slow paced motorisation - a little bit more I argue my BodaBoda Rider. - Ladies and Gentlemen it’s only 3 o’clock and the bars are already open young women doing the rounds. - After two and half hours tour, left confused and mesmerised at human tenacity, it is coming to 6 p.m. I am tired and lost. - A struggle to stop me is a waste of time and futile – soon Uganda will get a book detailing all that we see in pictures. - I descend back to the new taxi park via Owino, Nakivubo stadium, yes stadium and retreat back to Luwero. - Till then fellow country wo/men. Me Bwanika @ [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.idrconsulting.com Bwanika ________ http://www.idrconsulting.com --> for your consultancy needs _______________________________________________ Ugandanet mailing list Ugandanet@kym.net http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
