Uganda Depends On You
For all the wonderful differences between the world's cultures, a few elements of the human experience are so fundamental as to transcend nationality, place, and local custom. A few essential elements, unalterable, as if preordained by higher powers.
I am thinking, of course, about the procedure for repairing a road: assemble a dozen able-bodied men, a few pieces of heavy equipment, two signs, and a flag; position all the above to allow a single lane of alternating traffic to pass nervously between oscillations of said heavy equipment; finally, put one or two men to work.
Indeed, this was the scene recently on what Emily and I call “bad road,” the more traveled of two roads running to the nearby commercial area in Ntinda. Traffic in and around Ntinda, which is smack dab between our apartment and any probable destination, is notorious even for Kampala, a city of two million with fewer than ten traffic lights, just a handful of multi-lane roads, and, I would guess, even fewer traffic engineers. The difficulty in Ntinda lay partly in a minefield of potholes that during periods of lighter traffic inspired drivers in both directions to vie head-to-head for the clearest path - be it on the left, the right, the shoulder, a parking lot - in a harrowing weave. But by early evening, steady traffic would force every car and truck to scrape through the potholes on its respective side of the road, and the ensuing jam would last all evening.
Then the road crew arrived and began cutting neat squares in the tarmac around each offense, removing rubble, shoveling dirt, smoothing and packing it with mechanized rollers. To my great surprise, it looked like a professional job, but I should have known - what I thought was prep work was, in fact, the culmination. The workers just filled in the holes (now larger, but square) with dirt and moved on. The paving crew never came.
One could accept that quality roadwork in Ntinda is not the government's top spending priority, but neither, it seems, is the country's more critical infrastructure. I've written about the hospitals; school are equally deplorable, and the roads that really do matter - the critical lifelines to ports in Kenya and Tanzania - can't support adequate commerce or a steady supply of gasoline. At an even more basic level, only 45% of Ugandans have access to safe water, and a staggering 4% have electricity. Meanwhile, Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's president for the last 22 years, just requisitioned a new jet, and the state house in Entebbe (where, reportedly, Museveni rarely stays, favoring other lavish estates) has been renovated in shimmering white and gold.
Whatever popular support Museveni enjoys can only derive from contrast with what preceded him: the first-rate atrocities of Idi Amin; two separate tenures of the murderous (and twice deposed) Milton Obote; and before that, the colonial exploits of the British. While Museveni has ushered in a period of relative peace and stability in Uganda, his government remains largely unaccountable to the people. Corruption is the presumption in any government affair, and often the reality - large sums of money are routinely “lost” by the various ministries. Day after day the papers run fresh headlines about missing funds. Occasionally someone in parliament calls for an investigation. And, typically, that's as far as it goes.
Where the government neglects its obligations to the people, the people feel less obligation to the government, which explains the stickers you see on cars around town bearing the patriotic message, “Uganda Depends On You: Pay Your Taxes.” Would you?
I am thinking, of course, about the procedure for repairing a road: assemble a dozen able-bodied men, a few pieces of heavy equipment, two signs, and a flag; position all the above to allow a single lane of alternating traffic to pass nervously between oscillations of said heavy equipment; finally, put one or two men to work.
Indeed, this was the scene recently on what Emily and I call “bad road,” the more traveled of two roads running to the nearby commercial area in Ntinda. Traffic in and around Ntinda, which is smack dab between our apartment and any probable destination, is notorious even for Kampala, a city of two million with fewer than ten traffic lights, just a handful of multi-lane roads, and, I would guess, even fewer traffic engineers. The difficulty in Ntinda lay partly in a minefield of potholes that during periods of lighter traffic inspired drivers in both directions to vie head-to-head for the clearest path - be it on the left, the right, the shoulder, a parking lot - in a harrowing weave. But by early evening, steady traffic would force every car and truck to scrape through the potholes on its respective side of the road, and the ensuing jam would last all evening.
Then the road crew arrived and began cutting neat squares in the tarmac around each offense, removing rubble, shoveling dirt, smoothing and packing it with mechanized rollers. To my great surprise, it looked like a professional job, but I should have known - what I thought was prep work was, in fact, the culmination. The workers just filled in the holes (now larger, but square) with dirt and moved on. The paving crew never came.
One could accept that quality roadwork in Ntinda is not the government's top spending priority, but neither, it seems, is the country's more critical infrastructure. I've written about the hospitals; school are equally deplorable, and the roads that really do matter - the critical lifelines to ports in Kenya and Tanzania - can't support adequate commerce or a steady supply of gasoline. At an even more basic level, only 45% of Ugandans have access to safe water, and a staggering 4% have electricity. Meanwhile, Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's president for the last 22 years, just requisitioned a new jet, and the state house in Entebbe (where, reportedly, Museveni rarely stays, favoring other lavish estates) has been renovated in shimmering white and gold.
Whatever popular support Museveni enjoys can only derive from contrast with what preceded him: the first-rate atrocities of Idi Amin; two separate tenures of the murderous (and twice deposed) Milton Obote; and before that, the colonial exploits of the British. While Museveni has ushered in a period of relative peace and stability in Uganda, his government remains largely unaccountable to the people. Corruption is the presumption in any government affair, and often the reality - large sums of money are routinely “lost” by the various ministries. Day after day the papers run fresh headlines about missing funds. Occasionally someone in parliament calls for an investigation. And, typically, that's as far as it goes.
Where the government neglects its obligations to the people, the people feel less obligation to the government, which explains the stickers you see on cars around town bearing the patriotic message, “Uganda Depends On You: Pay Your Taxes.” Would you?
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