What expatriates think about Kampala
- Somehow and for a every long time, Ugandans, have relied on foreign expert knowledge to get a glimpse of their own problem. Right, wrong or misplaced in time! - But what if we asked, what Ugandans with both experience and knowledge from foreign lands think and compare that with our own experiences? - I was shocked reading, �What do expatriates think of our capital?� By Agnes Asiimwe July 31 - Aug 6, 2004 in the monitor. - Agnes Assimwe�s article must have been followed with another one with a realistic view of our situation here. not neccessarly scientific. - Dagmar Wiltberger a worker at the German Embassy in Kampala was nearly the only person named, offering a near to a perfectly accurate situation on ground. - I have written about Kampala. My arguments always have been presaged on two premises, 1). THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT AND 2). PHYSICAL (GEO) ENVIRONMENT. Social Environment: - What can be scientifically proved true, somewhere is not readily true in other circumstances. It is a fact of nature. - Kampala business environment or whatever warms the heart, should not, overshadow the inherent problems not readily understood by the majority people Kampala faces. - A fully grown man or woman, 10.00 p.m. into night, trying his /her luck on Kampala open streets, selling merchandise or on standing by lotto machine at Mukwano building must be in brave indeed. - Most People, who work in Nakesero and the surroundings or reside in Kokolo, have a tendency to assume Kololo, Nakasero, Muyenga, etc.; reflects what happens in the slums of Banda, Kitolo, Bwaise, Wandegeya or Natete! - Of course, there are happy souls in Kisenyi, Katwe or Kitoro. What if these people are availed with other forms of knowledge to see their own circumstances under different perspective? - The social environment in Kampala is getting worse by the day. This is shocking; - Here are muggers, street children, prostitutes, destitution, beggars, lepers, homelessness, broad daylight robbers- indeed there are those who do not suffer from this social environment. - There is what is termed as a CULTURAL LANDSCAPE: that interprets like what historical land use or �Paeloecology� state. Nature always knows its own ways not known to us. - Scientific knowledge about European urban development has now been revised as dangerously disposition against HUMAN HABITATION conditions. - Cultural landscape that Kampala is (originates from impala that loomed the wetlands valleys and hill sides) and people co-habitated the landscape with the impalas. - Once again the social environment that Kampala offers, is today a land surface 80 % covered by slums. - Slums have a logical order; they generate asocial behaviour (predominantly): criminality, destitution, misery etc. - KCC has no data at all about these facts, we can term as a social environment. But today science has discovered urban agriculture outlawed by the same scientific laws! - Today, it is not strange, to find tax drivers high on drugs, or children sleeping along sewage pipeline or pavements. We should be happy about it. Physical Environment - To appreciate the dangerous physical environment in Kampala, get an open speed boat and travel a distance on lake Victoria. It is filled with dust, where is the dust coming from � Kampala? - Or walk along an water channel or stream in and around Kampala � observe the water, the filthy, blue algae which is a very toxic bacteria to small mammals and people alike. It is all there. - Get a chemist, a biologist with a few laboratory chemicals to only test Kampala water in any particular stream or spring well. - How many people can drink water (but they do) from any spring today- water smells human faeces, with high nutrient content � that is all over Kampala. - Just recently the New Vision published an article �Queen�s Way jams clear � by Catherine Ntabadde- Tuesday, 20th July, 2004, it had a picture of queens way; clearly one could see dust and smog behind. http://www.newvision.co.ug/detail.php?mainNewsCategoryId=&newsCategoryId=12&newsId=373608 - Smog is a combination of dust particles and car fumes. - Car fumes, are by-products of highly combustionable fossil fuels scientifically known as hydrocarbons. - These hydrocarbons are referred to as Highly Volatile Organic Carbon particles (VOC) because of their unstable molecular structure. - And besides their physical properties, Volatile Organic Carbon compounds are scientifically marginally understood. - Just small quantities of sunlight or heat, changes their structure in micro seconds hence their volatility. - The human health cost is not yet quantified in developed countries who have appreciated the problem. - But foetus and children born in the western world with body deformations is ever growing. - Assimwe can you do another article backed with facts and Uganda experts in the area? I promise to read it. Further investigation at http://www.idr.co.ug/ Or http://w1.193.comhem.se/%7Eu19317440/ Bwanika. Bwanika ________ http://www.idr.co.ug --> for your consultancy needs http://p201.ezboard.com/fugandamanufacturersassociationfrm1 ----------------------------------------------------------- Spela poker mot verkliga m�nniskor �ver Internet. �ver 40 000 spelare online http://www.multipoker.com -------------------------------------------- This service is hosted on the Infocom network http://www.infocom.co.ug
