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 [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
