The Slums of Kampala

Walking around the Kampala slums is an overwhelming sensory experience.  The roads and soil are a vibrant shade of rusty red.  Everyone seems to wear brightly colored clothing that contrasts starkly with their ebony skin.  The wailing of infants rings in my ears at every turn.  Passing cars and trucks kick up clouds of dry red dust, and many trail sooty exhaust smoke that chokes my nostrils and leaves me with a buzzing headache if I forget to hold my breath.  Sanga explains that there are zero emissions regulations, and it doesn’t help that most of the vehicles are at least 10 years old.  Numerous piles of burning trash (often containing plastic, batteries, and other nasty stuff) further add to the ground-level air pollution.  I get the nagging feeling that every inhalation knocks days off my life expectancy. 

Young, dusty children are everywhere.  Often they unabashedly follow me, waving and calling out “muzungu!” which is the universally accepted term for white tourist. Translated literally, muzungu means “person who wanders around aimlessly.”  Most teenagers are hard at work, either pushing wheelbarrows or carrying oversized loads on the back of corroded old bicycles.  Women calmly balance ponderous rucksacks on the crowns of their heads as cars and motorcycles squeeze past on congested roads.  There is no pavement or sidewalk, so the street is the marketplace (see below photo, taken from Sanga's car).  Women actually seem to do the most difficult work- running storefronts, cooking, cleaning, child rearing, or some combination of the above.  Their multitasking skills are a marvel. 

Wood charcoal is heaped in front of virtually every store in the slum.  According to Sanga, charcoal is brought from the forests to Kampala by the truckload and quickly consumed, even though prices rose by 40% last year.  The individual charcoal pieces are often large and irregularly shaped- not very favorable for cooking.  Of nearly 870 million sub-Saharan Africans (surpassing 2 billion by 2040), over 90% use wood or charcoal for cooking.  Though the numbers are staggering, seeing the ubiquity of charcoal firsthand gives me better grasp of this market’s vast potential.

Sanga points out a store near the EFA facility that sell his briquettes, which come neatly packaged in monogrammed 1-kilo plastic bags.  The woman running the store accosts Sanga; supplies of EFA charcoal have stalled, and she wants more.  That’s because the area has been without electricity for the past 8 days, apparently due to a blown transformer and negligent utilities.  Without power, Sanga can’t run the machines that compact and bind the charcoal powder into briquettes.  He’s experimented with solar energy, but panels are expensive and production is too slow.  How is any business supposed to function sustainably with such unreliable infrastructure?

More to come as I head to Lugazi, especially pictures (I forgot my camera cable, so these will all be iPhone shots).  Thanks for stopping by!