Once the neatest town in East Africa, Mbale is choking on dirt

The situation is not helped with the unnecessary hooting by the bus and truck drivers transiting through the town.

And by this time, roaming boda-bodas have taken over Mbale Municipality streets.

Despite its importance, considering that it is one of the biggest employers in Mbale town, it is also such a menace.

Sickening sight of some mischievous and reckless riders zigzagging their way through the streets without due respect to the young road users, particularly the school children, is annoying.
Despite all that, the township looks rather interesting if not vibrant!

Shop owners, restaurants and salon attendants along the Market and Republic Street, two busy parts of the town, are wiping away dust on their counters as a few others mop or sweep their verandas to get rid of the gathering dust.

From one of the shops emanates a moving rhythm of Kadodi sound, creating a delightful atmosphere. Kadodi is the Bamasaba circumcision dance.

Traffic jam is not something to worry about here. The conspicuous and everlasting clock tower at the roundabout remains a classic symbol of Mbale town. Its towering presence speaks volumes.

Its connection with the town dwellers is one of a kind. Although it is not particularly appealing as it should be but neither is it repulsive.

For more than five decades it has stood tall. And in it there is a whole story of this once neatest town in the whole of East Africa.
And for that the emotional attachment it has since created with the municipality inhabitants is like that of a mother and child.

Experts take
Engineer Irenaeus Wandera Barasa, an independent consultant, describes Mbale Town infrastructure in its present form as a disaster.

He says it is unprofessional to have dug up the roads along the aforementioned streets without first creating alternatives for traffic.

For that, considering the works are even yet to be completed, Mbale town in the eyes of the professionals in the trade is one big joke.
Coupled with power outages, especially lately, brings back the memory of years ago when power rationing were part of the permanent fixture.
From Kampala to Mbale the ride is rather smooth.

The aforementioned state of affairs becomes more evident from the clock tower, which because of dusty environment as a result of bad road, makes the conspicuous, towering clock look like a displaced old-fashioned bill board.

The ugly situation then continues through the heart of the town and seems to peak around the “sleeping baby” round about.

Business
From a town dominated by retail shops dealing in agricultural and industrial goods, the last 10 years have seen a growth of several mini supermarkets with the big one being Uchumi, a shopping outlet with a regional presence, setting up shop in Mbale town.

In terms of ownership, unlike in the early days—1960s through to 1970s—the majority of business owners are now black.

However, the presence of Indian businesses is still evident across the town. Whereas indigenous people are engaged in micro and small businesses, Indians are mostly into medium enterprises such as agro-inputs, electronics, supermarkets and pharmacies.

Over the years several new businesses have cropped up in the service sector. Such businesses include cosmetology, secretarial bureaus and internet cafés, all littered across the town.

The Municipal Council Development Plan for the period 2010/11-2014/15 indicates a total of 6,300 businesses operate around Mbale town.

Despite habouring a wide mix of enterprises, on the whole the transport industry dominates other sub sectors with the boda-boda operators making up to 50 percent of the total number of entrepreneurs, according to Eastern Private Sector Development Centre (EPSEDEC) and the Municipal Council Survey, 2014. Most of these businesses are concentrated around the Cathedral Road and Republic Street.

The majority of enterprises operated by Ugandans are small-scale. They mainly include lockup shops found along the market, hardware outlets, whole sale and electronics shops and vending of produce in addition to other petty trading like selling/vending of produce by the road side.

Banking, insurance and telecommunication companies are also well represented in Mbale town, with all of them having functional branches, an indication of how important the town is in the grand scheme of things—consolidating the eastern Uganda market.

There is, however, one problem. The town dwellers have no proper toilets. For example, people operating at the Post Office premises on Republic Street, will have to walk at least a kilometre to access a public facility, considering that the nearest public toilet is at the Clock Tower, which is almost one kilometre away!

Population structure
The population of Mbale Municipality is multi-ethnic comprising the Basoga, Bagwere, Baganda, Banyankole, Langis and Itesots, as well as the Indian Community and a semblance of Swahili people from Tanzania and the coast of Kenya. However, the majority are the Bamasaba ethnic group (the Bagisu).

Night life
Compared to a cosmopolitan town like Arua, the night life in Mbale is not particularly busy although interesting. El Tanjia and The Thatch are among the most vibrant night clubs in Mbale town. Between Friday and Saturday, by midnight the dancing floor is busy.

Taste in fashion does not fundamentally differ from the one in the city.

Tight fitting and skimpy wear seems to be the generally accepted standard of dressing in those hot spots. It appears the tighter or the skimpier it gets the better the fashion statement made.

Shouting colours like all red, lemon green, hot pink and royal blue are not uncommon, especially among the young revelers.

Education services
Just like in Kampala, Mbale town is not short of tertiary and university education services. For the last 10 years, Mbale town has served as an education hub for the entire Eastern region.

In an interview with Mbale Town deputy town clerk, Joy Manana, it emerged that before UPE was introduced; there were 11 primary schools in the municipality.

To date there are 22 more. The traditional government secondary schools such Mbale S.S. and Nkoma S.S continue to draw the highest number of students in Mbale and the whole eastern region.

Mbale High School, Hamdan Girls High School and Oxford Secondary school are examples of schools run privately. The successes of privately managed schools demonstrate the opportunity education sector presents as a business.

Students from across the EAC and Somalia are all in Mbale town to partake higher education provided by universities such as Islamic University in Uganda, School of Clinical Officers and Mbale School of hygiene.

According to the Business Information officer of Eastern Private Sector Development Centre, Timothy Bisagati, some of these students settled in Mbale after their education.

Coupled with training offered by Uganda Christian University, Uganda Martyrs University, Makerere Business School and Bugema University and the management institute In addition to several technical and Vocational Institutes, explains why the footprint of Mbale town is still reverberating in eastern Uganda despite all its trouble.

However, as a result of growth in education sector, the demand for hostels has risen, piling pressure on physical planners who are already overwhelmed by mushrooming of unplanned structures in the town.

Sickening sight of reckless motor cycles (boda-bodas) zigzagging through with children rushing home after school was crazy.
Gratifying, however, is the fact that most of these school children had clean, proper uniforms and wore shoes as well, although most of those shoes appear to be begging for shoe polish.

Health services
Mbale Regional Hospital has been the dominant healthy facility in the town. It is a referral hospital for the entire Eastern Region.

But In the past decade, Cure Hospital for specialised orthopedic services, Mt Elgon Hospital, Mbale General Clinic, St Martin, Tobin Health Centre, Mbale Parents Clinic are some of the private health facilities that have cropped up to reduce the pressure on government health facilities.
However, the cost of treatment remains one of the biggest obstacles the town dwellers are grappling with.

According to Dr Tom Otim of Mbale referral hospital, patients who cannot afford to meet the bills charged by private hospitals, which ranges depend on the ailments, mostly resort to the government health facilities where treatment is way cheaper.

Crime
Land disputes, mob justice and theft cases are the most common in Mbale town. Although the police in Mbale refused to speak to Daily Monitor about the crime situation, residents interviewed for this article pointed to the aforementioned as the major crimes they are grappling with.

Mbale town then

Born and bred in Mbale, Dr Gidale Muiri Mupalya speaks with such authority, emotion and deep knowledge of his home town.

He says in those days, in the 1960s, while growing up, Mbale town was the place to be in East Africa, a claim that John Mushomi, an urban planning expert, agrees with.

He says Mbale Town was not only known as the neatest in East Africa but it was also the Eastern regional hub for business.

As regards to garbage disposal, he said every home had to have a dustbin for garbage disposal. The garbage generated at household level was collected almost on daily basis using the Mbale Municipal Council trucks.

Mbale by then enjoyed the status of the cleanest town in East Africa, something that is not the case now. Currently the garbage disposal system has collapsed.

“People from Bungoma, Kitale, and Kisumu in Kenya, let alone people from northern and entire eastern Uganda, would come here for leisure and shopping because they enjoyed our clean, natural environment,” Dr Gidale says.

He adds: “Mbale town was well organised and planned. Roads were tarmacked and well looked after. The green spots were deliberately maintained and environmental conservation was part and parcel of the municipality plan.”

According to Dr Gidale, where the clock tower is in the centre of Mbale town used to have a flourishing flower garden, and around Mbale Senior secondary School there was a children’s park which was all green (natural) as opposed to concrete that children are exposed to nowadays.

Streets were clean and lit. Garbage was collected routinely, with the trucks to do that job being readily available. And so were tractors to slash grasses to acceptable levels.

The old Mbale stadium and the current location of Mbale Bus Park were some of the area that benefitted from the services of the municipal tractor.

Senior Quarters just before Mt Elgon Hotel was such a scenery, thanks to the flowers grown there deliberately to make Mbale town look like a garden similar to the one of Eden.

During the 1960s, according to Eastern Private Sector Development Centre Report released last year, Mbale town population was dominated by Indian traders as indigenous Ugandans provided manual labour.

The report indicates that initially there was colour segregation in residential quarters, with Senior Quarters reserved for white residents, Indian Quarters carved out for Indian traders and settlers and Namatala was designated for Black Africans—Ugandans, mostly civil servants and those who provided manual labour.

Historically, business in Mbale town, both before and after Independence, was dominated and controlled by the Asians. This is evident in the oriental architecture of the older commercial premises in the town, believed to have been constructed in the 1950s.

Mbale town now

Fast forward, according to the National Population and Housing Census 2014 provisional results, Mbale town is among the 20 largest urban Centres in the country in terms of population. It has been growing at the rate of 2.5 annually.

Currently the town is inhabitant to 96,190 while 10 years ago it was a resident for 71,130 people and a decade earlier it was a home for 53,990 people. This is how in terms of population the town has since changed, with the majority being in their youthful age.

Despite differences in age and political ideologies, there is a general consensus across board even among both the technical and political leadership of Mbale Municipal Council that the town has since become a shadow of its former self irrespective of the will to make it better.

The phrase: “we have to reclaim our former glory” is a cliché in Mbale town. Everybody the Daily Monitor spoke to for this series said it repeatedly and with reverberating anger echoed through the tone of their voices.

This could be because open places gazzetted for children recreation centres are no more. Uhuru parks and open public places where people would rest or have a good time enjoying nature is something of the past.

And as a result, Dr Gidale said there is no wonder that the rate of mental breakdown in the municipality is on the increase because of lack of natural places to cool off stress and other social pressures.

Currently streets are dusty and poorly lit. Litters are scattered across the municipality. There are barely enough dust bins in the town. Roads along the Republic Streets, Nabuyonga Rise and Pallisa Road are in a mediocre state, thanks to the one year delay to complete the project.

Influence of BCU

You cannot talk about Mbale town without mentioning the Bugisu Cooperative Union (BCU).

The Bugisu Cooperative Union is supposed to be a force to contend with. Located in Mbale town, it has touched the lives of so many people, particularly the educated senior citizens of Mbale, let alone developing the economy of the town.

A survey conducted in 2014 by the Eastern Private Sector Development Centre, credits the union for establishing a coffee processing mill and constructing office premises.

One such premise is Kitutu House, In addition to that, BCU established meeting halls and staff quarters for its staff.

With the establishment of BCU mill, coffee was no longer taken to Nairobi for processing. BCU was also the first cooperative in Mbale to export coffee.

When contacted, the chairperson of Bugisu Cooperative Society, Nathan Nandala Mafabi, said BCU has more than 60,000 farmers drawn from the five districts of Bugisu region, namely Mbale, Sironko, Manafwa, Bududu and Bulambuli.
Annually BCU processes more than 30 million kilogrammes of Arabica coffee with about 90 per cent of that destined for external markets—export.

How Mbale got its name

There are different versions of how the name Mbale came about. But from interview with different people, including senior citizens, such as Dr Gidale, Hakim Khauka, andJoy Manana who were all born and bred in Mbale, there was a consensus that the name Mbale seemed to have emerged during colonialism period as a result of white man mother tongue influence.
Folklore has it that the white man, due to mother tongue interference, couldn’t properly pronounce the word Kamabale, a plural of a Lumasaba word meaning rocks or stones.
While trekking through Eastern Uganda, the colonialists were amazed by the vast rocks and pieces of stones beautifully spread across the fertile Bamasaba land.

When they asked what this is, they were told it is Kamabale (in plural and Mabale in singular). But instead they pronounced it as Mbale rather than Kamabale or Mabale as the indigenous people did.
And so the Bamasaba land became to be known as Mbale, the way the white man pronounced it.

By the late 1970s the district officially took up the Mbale municipality (town) name after the president at the time, the late Godfrey Binaisa declared that all districts and provinces take up names of their regional municipalities.

Following that pronouncement, the district became to be known as Mbale district and so is the municipality (town).

Importantly perhaps, the revolution is no longer about the names or initiations, these are settled matters, but it is about reclaiming Mbale town past glory and shaping the destiny of once the cleanest town and a regional hub for commerce.
But for the revolution to succeed it will take more than words.

The good news is that the destiny of Mbale town is in the hands of the Bamasaba dwellers, and the bad news is that the majority of whom are jobless and is in their youthful age.

MORE FACTS
Mbale District is bordered by Tororo District in the south, Manafwa District in the south east, Sironko District in the northeast, Kumi District in the north, Budaka District in the northwest and Butaleja District
It has an area of 2,467 square kilometres (953 sq mi). Its central town and commercial centre is in the southwest.

The districts of Bududa, Manafwa and Sironko were part of Mbale District before they were split.

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