Just the other day, I was heading to Ntinda for an early morning errand. My chauffeur and I hopped onto our open-roof, two-wheel Bugatti and decided to use the Kireka-Kamuli road to connect to the Northern Bypass. Yo, that was the moment we unknowingly bought VIP tickets to Mad Max.
By the time we reached Ntinda, I was cocoa brown, dust had baptised me, my clothes had changed colour without my consent, my nose had collected enough soil samples for NEMA, and I genuinely felt like I needed a shower before whatever meeting had brought me there. That is when it hit me. The dust in Kampala has become a full-time resident.
Then I remembered one of Uganda’s greatest conspiracy theories: why people suddenly become lighter the minute they land abroad. We have all seen it, someone spends two weeks in Dubai or London and returns looking like they discovered a new skincare routine.
Kumbe the secret is not expensive body lotion or foreign water. It is simply the absence of Kampala dust. Here, you can moisturise with shea butter, sunscreen, vitamin C serum and the tears of your ancestors, but one trip through Kireka, Najjera or Busega will humble your entire skincare investment before lunchtime.
There is now a special kind of faith required to leave home in Kampala believing you know how you will reach your destination. Yesterday’s road is today’s construction site. Google Maps has completely given up; it now says recalculating with the exhaustion of our leaders. Every corner has an excavator, or a trench.
Kampala is under construction everywhere, at the same time, and nobody seems to know when anything will end. At this point, our tourism slogan should simply be: Visit Kampala, bring a face mask, a boda rider and a prayer. You will need all three.
We need the roads, Nayeee….
The problem is not that roads are being fixed. The problem is that it feels like government woke up one morning and said, ‘You know what? Let’s repair Kampala… all at once.’ Every route now comes with a surprise package.
You leave home thinking you are using your usual shortcut, only to find an excavator parked in the middle of it like it pays rent there. The diversion takes you through somebody’s village, somebody’s gate and somehow still ends in traffic.
To be fair, Kampala needs better roads. Nobody is out here campaigning for potholes, we have complained for years about craters so deep they deserve their own postal addresses. There are potholes in this city that boda riders know on a first-name basis. They do not even get shocked anymore, the rider simply taps your knee and says, boss, hold tight, we are approaching the chairman.
You automatically lean because both of you know what is coming. Right now, graders, tipper trucks and heaps of murram have become Kampala’s new national symbols. Every junction is under construction, every bypass has dust, and every road has that one man in a reflector jacket pointing confidently into chaos. We prayed for better infrastructure, yes. We just did not expect God to answer all our road prayers on the same day.
Then the bloody dust
Kampala dust has officially stopped being a visitor. It has unpacked its bags, found a plot and become a resident of this city. At this point it deserves a National ID, a passport and honestly, it has spent enough time here to contest for MP.
You leave home looking fresh, smelling expensive, white shirt ironed like you have serious plans for the day. Then you board a boda through one construction zone in Kinawataka, another in Busega and a small detour in Najjera. My friend, by the time you reach work you look like you have been volunteering at a brick-laying site.
And please do not think car owners are enjoying life.
You wash your car on Saturday, admire it for exactly 15 minutes, then Kampala gently coats it with a fresh layer of development. Dust enters places you did not know dust could enter. SUV drivers have become mobile weather forecasts.
A Prado flies past on an unfinished road and suddenly the entire neighbourhood disappears inside a brown cloud. Pedestrians start coughing, boda riders become silhouettes, someone’s rolex gets free murram toppings. The funniest part is that the Prado is already in the next trading centre while the rest of us are still waiting for visibility to return.
The jokes write themselves, but for roadside businesses it is not funny anymore. Traders dust tomatoes every three minutes, boutiques keep doors shut, salon owners mop floors that become dirty before the bucket is empty, and restaurants now serve chapati with a complimentary side of Kampala seasoning.
Then the rain comes and Kampala changes departments and yesterday’s dust becomes today’s mud. The diversion that looked questionable in the morning becomes a river by evening. Excavations become ponds. Motorists, meanwhile, have become amateur geologists.
You approach a puddle, slow down, look carefully at its colour and ask yourself the most important question of the journey: ‘Is this three inches deep, or am I about to lose my Toyota?’
In comes the heavy traffic
Perhaps the biggest problem with moving around Kampala right now is that nobody knows what kind of journey they are signing up for. Every diversion seems to have given birth to another diversion. A closed main road sends traffic into a residential neighbourhood where children were playing football yesterday, only to wake up and discover their street has been promoted to a highway.
Suddenly, taxis, bodas, school vans, delivery trucks and one confused cement truck are squeezing through a road designed for 12 homes, three dogs and a bicycle. Then Google Maps calmly tells you, this route will save you three minutes.
Three minutes where? The shortcut involves reversing for a truck, negotiating with six boda riders and somehow squeezing between an excavator and somebody’s perimeter wall.
Kampala traffic was already doing enough before the construction boom decided to add steroids. Morning traffic now has no respect for morning; it can comfortably escort you towards lunch. Evening traffic starts while some people are still pretending to work.
You leave office at 3pm to beat traffic and find traffic has already arrived and is waiting for you. Even distance has lost meaning. Ask someone how far Ntinda is and they will first ask, depending on the day.
How are the roads being prioritised?
Beneath all the jokes, there is a serious question Kampala residents are asking: who is deciding which roads get fixed first? Because some roads have been terrible since people were still using BlackBerry phones.
Others have appeared in so many political speeches that by now they should be collecting appearance fees. These roads have survived potholes, rain, sunshine, elections and several national budgets, yet somehow the potholes remain employed.
The complaint is not that we do not want better roads. Please, nobody is protesting against tarmac. We have suffered enough. The question is whether there is some method to this madness. You have neighbourhoods where roads become swimming pools every time it rains, while another road that was perfectly usable yesterday is being excavated today.
Naturally, people will ask questions. Which roads are being prioritised, why those roads, and when exactly will the works end? You see, without that information, every new excavator starts looking suspicious. Give people the plan, the timelines and the reason. We can tolerate the dust much better when we know where all this development is taking us.
Then fuel prices to the mix
Then comes the other Kampala punishment: fuel prices. When traffic has you parked for 40 minutes, every drop of fuel suddenly feels like gold. Your car is not moving, but the fuel gauge is moving like it has somewhere important to be. You leave Bweyos confident and reach town with the fuel light on, the air conditioner switched off and serious questions about your financial decisions.
Naturally, the oil-country debate returns. ‘We are an oil country, why is fuel behaving like it is being imported from the moon?’ someone asks online. Another person responds with crude prices, taxes and transport costs. Nobody reads that part.
Yet perhaps the most expensive part of Kampala’s current transformation is not fuel, vehicle repairs or transport fares. It is TIME. A person who spends two hours travelling a distance that should take 40 minutes loses something that cannot be refunded at the pump.
People wake earlier, reach home later and arrive at work already exhausted. Parents miss school pick-ups. Deliveries take longer. Business meetings start late. Dates begin with screenshots of traffic maps as evidence, I swear I left home.
‘Road works’ has become one of the most socially accepted explanations in the city. Weddings, introductions, office meetings, church services and birthday parties increasingly begin with the same apology: ‘Sorry, the road…’ Nobody even asks which road. We understand.
You may genuinely have left home two hours ago. Your destination may be six kilometres away. You might even be able to see the building. Reaching it is another matter entirely.
Then the coordination
Kampala residents have long wondered why infrastructure work sometimes seems to happen sequentially rather than collectively. One team handles drainage ,another handles water. Another arrives for electricity or fibre.
Eventually the road is resurfaced and everybody celebrates. Then, not long afterwards, somebody appears with another machine and opens part of it again.
Installing infrastructure without coordination can feel like beautifully tiling your bathroom and then remembering that you forgot the plumbing. Residents do not necessarily expect construction to be painless, but they reasonably expect agencies to communicate with each other and with the public.
A road closure is easier to tolerate when commuters know it is coming, understand the alternative route and have some idea how long the disruption will last. Instead, Kampala occasionally specialises in surprise excavations. You use a road successfully on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning there is a trench.