ABOUT TWELVE years ago I wrote about ‘surface thinking’ and ‘surface cutting’ and got into many angry discussions with ‘educated’ people in Uganda who felt affronted.

Among the sentences in that piece was: “…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…”

The reference to “poor aim” is because the origins of the term ‘surface cutting’ were the pit latrines of the college I attended.

The link should be obvious – you opened the latrine door to find evidence of that poor aim right next to the hole.

‘Surface Cutting’ was disgusting – just as the mental equivalent – ‘Surface Thinking’ is disturbing.

Another part of that article went: “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.”

That was in April 2013. 

Here we are in November 2025 and suddenly all the clever people in Uganda are quite clear that the flooding problem in Kampala is the construction work being done by “Ham”.

It’s been a week of non-stop analysis that is as nauseating as the experiences we went through in school when we opened a latrine door and found someone had engaged in ‘surface cutting’.

The feeling hits me almost every time I open up a WhatsApp Group conversation about this issue.

Twelve years and running, and still no-one seems to understand that we have to aim properly and go deeper than just the surface.

I won’t be addressing the Ham project or all the people involved in getting it designed, approved and possibly botched at the end.

As a community or society, we are generally to blame for all this nonsense because we are mentally disorganised. 

We do not really deserve cities because we do not fully understand what they are.

Some of the highly educated and even well-employed people who have been discussing these floods, for instance, do not have garbage disposal systems within their homesteads.

Those are the people now thinking on the surface of things and talking only about the Ham project – and this is NOT to excuse Ham et al, they are just one part of a major problem.

In this city we host a population whose majority actually believe that the drainage system is for garbage disposal.

Below my little village here I have seen people throwing their sacks of garbage into the drains in broad daylight.

For decades now, they have been made to understand that this is right and proper – especially when the rainy season kicks off.

The rains are important, they think, because they wash all that garbage away – out of sight. 

So long as the garbage is not on the surface, everything is alright.

I know this for a fact because I have neighbours who do not dispose of inorganic waste outside of their walls

Instead, they pile it up in their compounds till they can light a bonfire and to hell with smoke pollution.

Some of these people obtained masters degrees from prestigious universities in the western world where they never once smelt smoke arising from a pile of used diapers, broken basins, cardboard boxes and rotten vegetables.

Even as you read this, there is a person sitting in his office in Kololo or Nakasero or Naguru talking about Ham and NEMA and KCCA while throwing buveera (plastic bags) into the trashcan to be mixed up with all the other garbage.

You know that person very, very well.

He or she will drive out in their Harrier, Land Cruiser, Subaru or Whatever and give not a damn about where or how that garbage will go.

Next? Floods.

Because we are in the thick of political campaigns, the noise is even louder from all over the place. Most of it is comical because of how transparently stupid the comments are.

Political accountability? Be Serious.

The global news this week reported how, in the Spanish region of Valencia, “Carlos Mazón, the embattled president of the eastern Spanish region of Valencia, has bowed to public fury and political pressure by resigning over his botched handling of the deadly floods that killed 229 people in the area just over a year ago.

Mazón, a member of the conservative People’s party (PP), had hung on despite calls for him to stand down after it emerged that he spent more than three hours having lunch with a journalist as the floods hit and people were drowning in their homes, garages and cars.”

Here? ‘Surface Thinking’; so long as the issue goes below eye-level, we will move on, leaving the smelly evidence of our mental ‘Surface Cutting’ right there for everyone to see and smell.