MY RANDOM NEIGHBOURHOOD WALKS have me fully convinced that the vast majority of us are in serious need of deep-root (or deep-rooted) re-education.

Without question, we are generally informed (do not use “educated”) about the concepts that define how the world developed, works and should be made to improve. 

That seems to be all.

Right now, I am afraid to google the word “educated” for its definition, even though I bravely use ‘re-education’ here; because IF education was delivered in the first place, then let’s do it again but properly.

Ideally, the re-education will deliver some information to those who have not even had the benefit of sitting in a formal classroom setting and receiving instructions from people who went to school to deliver it.

On my walks, for instance, I often see people – mostly women – of clearly humble settings (judging from their clothing and other indicators) picking vegetable greens out of drainage channels and off of the roadside.

In the distant past this was accepted somewhat – even by people with ‘an education’.

Today – in 2026?

Back then when we first started seeing this I recall investigative journalists uncovering it to be the start of a supply chain down which such vegetables ended up on regular market stalls, and then our dinner plates.

The most scary story was about the yams we were consuming – which were reportedly being harvested from swamps and wetlands here…including those in industrial area where too few factories disposed of waste responsibly.

I like yams but had to stop eating them till I owned my own land far away from factories and human waste sewage channels.

On another circuit through a neighbourhood quite distant from where I live I spotted a saucepan top-wrapped by a polythene bag on a roadside sigiri.

I was too tired of such sights to stop and speak with the young lady involved at the little residence there.

I recalled that I, myself, had earned a university degree before I discovered that it was unwise for me to consume food that one domestic worker had prepared on a stove in this manner.

The look my mother gave me when I told her I was finally getting steamed matooke done at home by some new ‘innovative’ maid stopped the kaboozi dead right there – and the maid’s employment shortly thereafter.

My mother explained that the research into kaveera (plastic/’polythene’ – polyethylene bags) being used to cook food, and its link to cancer was not fully conclusive but concerning enough for us to all stay away from the method.

That was thirty (30) years ago.

And yet, today, I walk past those roadside meat grilling stations and see young fellows using buveera – those plastic bags that were banned in Uganda in 2007 – to light up their charcoal grills.

Obviously those young fellows did not get a deep enough education in science and how it works. Their customers?

Sadly, as I said before here, they are not the only ones with just a light smattering of information in their heads.

Where I actually live, a neighbourhood populated by well-to-do holders of Masters degrees, doctorates and people who use grand titles like ‘Engineer’, ‘Doctor’ and ‘Chairman’, we hear numerous complaints about people burning garbage.

Someone once even tried to make an excuse for them because: “…maybe it is the shamba boy/houseboy/housegirl doing it and the owner does not know.”

Of course that’s not true. 

No-one would consider you to Be a Serious person if your domestic affairs are so shabby.

During one argument where I was presented with a similar excuse I told the person suggesting it that the same wealthy house owner should be the one subscribing to an official garbage disposal service – not their presumably much less-educated domestic employee. 

And that’s why re-education is necessary here. 

People really need to be made to understand better how all these things fit together and it needs to be deep-rooted.

The compromise I arrived at was to call up the National Environmental Management Authority (NEMA) to report the rampant garbage-burning going on. They gave me the numbers to report to for their inspectors to respond whenever someone lights up their garbage.

I moved on and found myself days later closing my last walk before typing this out by going past a brand new set of apartments that have already been partly occupied.

As I walked past the gate, the caretaker walked out with a black garbage bag – the big ones you get from bin collectors or buy in supermarkets.

He was watching a video clip or something on his phone as he crossed the road and emptied the contents of the bag onto the ground there, in front of an empty plot of land. 

The look on his face mirrored that of a small herd of goats and one cow that were grazing on the land, sifting through various types of waste.

Again, I had no energy to create awareness at that point.

The setting said it all – the ignorant man, the indolent cow, the jittery goats and the narrow road division between the garbage-ridden plot of land and the new apartment block.

Even if I wanted to call up the NEMA people, I would likely suffer a migraine trying to direct them to the place – there is no signage at the apartment block.

Deep-rooted re-education. The roots of ignorance need to be dug out entirely and all the soil deep down in our knowledge systems sterilised so that the infection is totally wiped out.

There is no other solution.