Uganda's burning

It's been a pretty awful month so far. It started with an appalling fire at Owino market (Kampala's largest and busiest) in the early hours of the morning, and ever since then, the newspapers have been full of gloomy news.



Among other things, East Africa has now been identified as a major drug transit point, for both international and local distribution. This comes as little surprise to any of us who see large amounts of conspicuous consumption by young people wth no apparent profession, (legitimate) business or family wealth. It certainly doesn't look like hard-earned money. What did, however, come as a surprise to me was the assertion in the newspapers that the maximum penalty for offenders who pleads guilty to the possession or trafficking of narcotics is a fine of one million Ugandan shillings (about $350 at current exchange rates).



The economy continues to struggle. Despite reasonable rates of economic growth, the effects of increasing fuel prices and a 20% fall in the exchange rate since the beginning of the year has resulted in high inflation rates without (as yet) any benefits from economic growth trickling down to the "man in the Kampala taxi". Poor harvests in the first half of 2011 combined with food shortages within the East African region as a whole have also pushed food prices much higher.

Teachers are demanding significant salary increases and threatening strike action. On the one hand, it's hard not to feel sympathy for teachers. How families can survive on income of less than 1 million Ugandan shillings (remember - the maximum fine for narcotics possession) per month I do not know, but at the same time Uganda's tax base is so low that it's impossible to see how the Government can afford an increase in teachers' salaries, not to mention the knock-on effect on other public sector workers of a salary increase to teachers. And, as a separate issue, while the quantity of education service delivery in Uganda has increased dramatically in recent years under the Universal Primary Education (UPE) initiative, the quality of education provided through UPE is generally acknowledged to be very poor. Makerere University lecturers are also threatening strike action for similar (and even less justified) reasons.

And now the "giveaway" of Mabira Forest, which seemed to have been shelved following public discontent in 2007, is back on the agenda, apparently in order to increase the amount of sugar cane under cultivation. It seems desperately sad tha,t in a country where so much land with arable potental lies idle, one of its few remaining natural forests is under threat of being cleared for sugar cane cultivation.

Even at a domestic level, this has been a particularly bad month. While Owino was burning, our refrigerator caught fire on Sunday morning. We awoke to the acrid smell of smoke, and the terrifying experience of flames and smoke in one's own home. Fortunately, I managed to remember most of the things one is supposed to do in a fire (apart, that is, from calling Kampala's underfunded fire brigade) - evacuate the house, switch off the elecricity, smother the flames, and so on, though I did forget to cover my nose and mouth and as a result inhaled an unpleasant amount of smoke. It goes without saying that we now have a fire extinguisher, a fire blanket and two smoke alarms installed.






I feel for the market traders at Owino, though. It's hard to make an honest living in Kampala at the best of times. And it's certainly not the best of times in Uganda.