By Simon Kaheru on April 25, 2013

WE had a concept at the school I went to, that described the careless use of pit latrines.

Some people were new to pit latrines, having come from the city where toilet facilities involved sitting rather than squatting. Others simply mis-aimed their efforts, leaving their smelly evidence on the floor.

This was called ‘Surface Cutting’.

It is generally impolite to talk about toilets or what goes on inside them, and sometimes it is downright offensive. But bear with me, please, because some days it is too easy to make smelly comparisons.

The term came to mind this week not because I was in a latrine.

I had observed too much of Kampala and come to the conclusion that many of us are ‘Surface Thinkers’; we do not think much deeper than we can see, and the offensive evidence of this poor aim is there for all to see.

I drove through three places where road works were being done – Kitintale, Kiwatule, and on Kanjokya Street – and noticed that there was ZERO work on drainage systems.

Four months ago, at a meeting I attended, Works State Minister John Byabagambi told us that “the biggest enemies of roads are water and soil” because soil clogs drains and forces water to wash road surfaces away.

None of the contractors I drove past two weeks ago seemed to know this, and it’s been like this for years almost countrywide!

In fact, nobody seems to know what goes on below the surface of the road, where ideally there should be a massive, filtered drainage system into some swamps or water treatment centres.

Then on Thursday morning I was astounded to find that even at the Serena Kampala Hotel, Uganda’s only five-star luxury hotel (say, “Mbu”) this Surface Thinking is in evidence at the main gate!

Some months ago somebody dug up the road there to do something – maybe just to dig up the road?

Believe it or not, up to now, April 2013, the front of the Serena Kampala Hotel is a pile of mud.

It is here that we host potential ‘investors’, visiting heads of state, and classy jazz concerts attended by the wealthy glitterati, who stop their cars in a pile of mud for security checks before driving into what the website says is, “an inspirational blend of 5-star polish, pan-African panache, social style and business reliability…”

Be serious.

Earlier, I had chuckled at the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) because one Sunday Vision letters page ran a photo of a fellow washing his shoes in what the paper called a “pothole”, but was actually a clogged roadside drain.

The fellow was clad in a pair of brown overalls with the words ‘KCCA Maintenance…(something)’ on the back – the irony as stark as a fresh case of Surface Cutting.

But on Tuesday The New Vision ran two stories side by side as if to prod the heads of KCCA to think below the garbage: ‘KCCA choking on garbage as disposal site fills to brim’ read one, containing lamentations by Lubaga Town Clerk Abel Asiimwe Bimbona; then, ‘Residents make briquettes out of garbage’ read the other, about Kawempe residents using garbage to make charcoal briquettes. The very next day, Vision ran another story titled, ‘KCCA collecting 31,000 tonnes of garbage monthly’.

Only time will tell whether anybody at KCCA is thinking below the headlines…but after reading that the National Planning Authority, a day after launching ‘Vision 2040’, had discovered that it had not made sufficient arrangements to pay 170 district planners and drivers who drove down to Kampala for the launch ceremony…

Then Isaac Musumba and Michael Mawanda got arrested in India under odd circumstances to do with US$37million (Ushs96billion) allegedly owed to Musumba’s client.

That’s about 10% of Uganda’s 2012 GDP (CIA Factbook). The money is from some minerals deal nobody talks about yet government statistics say ALL our minerals combined in 2011 were valued at UShs178billion.

And to explain his side of the story, the MP Mawanda says he was just hanging about in India, bumped into Musumba and the client, and they asked him to escort them as they were going about their business.

That adult man costing the Ugandan tax-payer tens of millions of shillings every month to do work in Uganda, confessed that he was loitering in India!

This Surface Thinking is the mental equivalent of Surface Cutting because we leave behind piles of evidence of our failing to aim our efforts correctly.

And it smells.

Really bad.