On a recent evening drive around the outskirts of the city, just after dusk, my niece and I are relishing what’s left of the wonderful day. She’s over there buckled up in the co-driver’s seat; busy churning out random statements like a print press running behind schedule. For her age—about 11—this girl’s wit is unbelievable and a bit unsettling; it could catch you off-guard like a heart attack at 2:56am.
The time is approaching 8pm. The streets are unusually well lit and the neighborhood is glowing like a giant Christmas tree—with the occasional twinkles. I’m here thinking: either the dude manning the power station is in a good mood today, or his side chick recently moved into the area (oh, well, same thing really!), cos this glory is uncharacteristic of this place. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t take much to antagonize that fella and get him flicking that power-off switch on a whim.
It’s at this juncture that my co-driver gazes out the window and casually unleashes a brake-slamming remark. “Kampala looks beautiful at night. But during the day, it looks like a dumpster,” she said. I would be totally lying if I said I saw that coming! Not only did this comment hit me harder than any of those left hooks that Louis Castillo ate in the final minute of that breathtaking 10th-round K.O against Diego Corrales back in 2005, but, also, my niece’s aggressive sense of humor got me whimpering with laughter for the rest of the evening. If I ever needed confirmation that we’re related, this was truly it!
Even while her description wasn’t particularly accurate—cos, obviously, this place rivals a landfill more than it does a dumpster—I should’ve been patriotic enough to remind this little girl of the strides that are being taken to alter Kampala’s unbearably sore outlook. Sorry: steps. Not strides.
This Saturday, 26th September, marks the third edition of the monthly nationwide cleaning exercise. Generally, the program was rolled out by government, in conjunction with the Neuroscience Association, to help resuscitate that unresponsive region of the typical Ugandan brain that’s responsible for organizational skills and orderliness, so that the citizens would hopefully achieve some much-needed common sense and stop throwing empty water bottles and trash out their car windows!
Nah, not quite! The actual plot is to forcefully, sometimes quite literally at gun-point, get everybody sweeping their community just once every thirty days. That’s all. If they somehow eventually catch-on that it’s for their own benefit to live in a clean, trash-free environment, good. If they don’t; well, at least—and most importantly—a civic activity was scratched off the to-do list! We can now return to our usual messy selves!
The mandatory three-hour exercise, 7am-10am, always culminates in the heaping of small mounds of trash here and there, and having them torched. With plumes of smoke billowing from literally every corner of the city suburbs, the birds in the sky must surely think this place has devolved into one vast crematorium. Isn’t that an awful sight? Not yet! Wait till some errant gust of wind arrives at 10:05am and blends up all that smokey stuff in the atmosphere to create a stench that could make you swear on a stack of Bibles that diapers smell way better.
The worst part is the duration it takes the waste-collection trucks to show up! That, coupled with the unrelenting winds, which sometimes feel like the ghost of a stubborn ancestor, are always glad to puff through and spread out the light trash; pretty much reverting the scene back to default. Now, again, you have papers and plastic bags floating back and forth around the neighborhood like a bad rumor. You would need the resilience of a cockroach to win this battle!
It’s hard to quantify the progress we’ve made so far, if any. What I’ve noticed, though, is that there’s a major mindset problem, which could take a whole generation to undo. Disorder and poor hygiene seem firmly rooted in the culture here. As such, majority of the people probably participate in the activity out of compulsion rather than genuine desire for change. Nothing proves this better than the speed at which we’re tossed right back to factory settings within a matter of hours. We’re literally stuck in a loop, ironically, much like how the Israelites spent 40 years going round the mountain! Hey, you didn’t hear “40 years” from me!
I’m afraid if some of those ingrained nasty habits are not expunged from our culture, my morale in this once-a-month exercise shall remain extremely low. In a few months, my niece will be back from school, and if there’s no visible change from what she left, it will be impossible to persuade her not to sing the “Kampala looks like a dumpster” chorus. For now, I guess we’ll just roll with the punches and sweep.
