Kijakazi
JF-Expert Member
- Jun 26, 2007
- 6,402
- 8,891
Unajua siku zote ukitaka kujua umepiga hatua kiasi gani kwenda mbele unatakiwa usikie maoni ya Mgeni anayekuja kukutembelea (usisikilize wenyeji wenzako wataishia kukupa Ugonjwa wa Moyo na kujiona haufanyi kitu), sasa nimepata hii nakala kutoka kwenye Gazeti la Uganda, embu chukua muda ukiweza umsome huyu Mwandishi anavyoiona Tanzania yetu, jinsi ilivyosonga mbele kulinganisha na anakotoka!
The centre of Mwanza Town. It is generally a rocky town with grey white soils which helps to keep the city clean.
By John K. Abimanyi
Posted Tuesday, June 11 2013 at 16:40
In Summary
If you throw a used plastic bottle or peel out of your car onto the streets in Mwanza, you just might be arrested. Such is the dedication to cleanliness and hygiene in this city.
Just how seriously does Uganda take the issue of cleanliness?
Ah, rhetorical question there, right? Do we even rank clean towns anymore? We do not, probably because finding a clean town to start with would be a titanic task in itself. There were days when Mbale Town made the news rounds as Uganda's cleanest town. But oh, does that not seem like such a long time ago, the way golden oldies sound on the radio? Mbale is like Kampala, a smaller less congested Kampala but with nearly the same magnitude of hygiene trouble.
Now consider this small occurrence.
Somewhere in the plains of north west Tanzania, as the Friends Safari bus on which I was travelling, stopped to drop off passengers on its way to Bukoba Town, one passenger stretched their hand through an open window, and, in typical Ugandan style, threw a used plastic juice bottle out onto the bush.
Na hapa ndipo anapoamua kuua kabisaaa!!
A traffic police officer was watching
Instead of rushing to check for brake lights on the bus, or for the driver's permit, or any other such small acts from which traffic police officers in Uganda earn their real bread, the officer retrieved the bottle, crossed over and impounded the bus (Tanzania yetu hiyo!)
This is Kiswahili-land, which means that for a non-Kiswahili speaking Ugandan, like this reporter, there was very little of what the cop said that could be made sense of. But he looked stern, even grim. He held up the bottle and started waving it about angrily in vicious shakes. He started to speak and mumbled on in an obviously angered tone. The man who threw out the bottle was soon on his feet, explaining and begging away at the officer.
The cop, finally, let us go, but the symbolism of the small event could not easily get lost on any of the passengers who cared to take note.
Hapa sasa, kweli Tanzania yetu is ready take off kama Wazungu wanavyosema, msikie huyu Mgeni anavyoendelea!
It got you thinking and pondering, wondering just how far reaching the standards of cleanliness are in a country where traffic police officers take a personal interest in the cleanliness, and what foreigners do to it.
Do not even start to think of what Ugandan traffic cops could do.
Kipengele Hichi ndio cha Ukweli yaani!
As soon as you notice that you are living in such a country, your personal sense of hygiene is pushed up a notch. You start wondering just how the cleanest parts of the country actually look like. And as fate would have it, it is to that town that this reporter was headed, Mwanza.
Tanzania's Ministry of Health and Welfare declares the cleanest towns throughout the country and Mwanza town currently holds that crown. Yes, even if this is still tropical Africa, and a clean city will have a few scars here and there, Mwanza truly is a clean town.
There is the occasional plastic water bottle on the street. There are the stray pieces of paper strewn about endlessly. But such incidences are few and far between. Right as soon as you walk off the MV Victoria on Lake Victoria, and on to the city's tarmacked streets which give off the look of polished black, you immediately sense that initiatives to keep the city clean are paying off.
The air smells fresh, unadulterated, as if there are no engines to push their fumes into the skies. It could be because the sea is nearby and the breeze is strong and refreshing. But Kampala too, is a lake-side town.
Ahh Mungu katupendelea aisee, huyu jamaa kadata na Nchi yetu, embu endelea kumsoma!
The streets are swept early in the morning by an army of workers and by the time you walk the streets, well into the day, there is evidence that work was done to keep the place clean. The streets (some streets) in Kampala are also swept, no doubt. But somehow, by the time it is midday, they are just as bad as they were before the cleaning.
Mwanza is the kind of clean town where the sight of rubbish is not a sign of dirtiness, but a way of realising the lengths that have been gone to, to maintain hygiene. The few times that you will see rubbish lying about on the streets, will be close to the experience of seeing one black spot on a white sheet of paper.
Some of these feats are made possible by the physique of the geographical location in which Mwanza finds itself sitting in. It is a very rocky town. The town sits on many beautiful hills rising from the lakeshore, just like is the case for a lot of Kampala.
The rocky town
All around the town, hilltops gaze from up below, with piles upon piles of gigantic grey stones peering from above, threatening to roll down and crash the town any minute.
In fact, just out of the town's main and northern port, is a pile of rocks one on top of the other, that have become the town's signature sight, the way Crested Towers used to be for Kampala, and, the Kenyatta International Conference Centre is for Nairobi.
The rock is named after the German statesman, Otto von Bismarck. One of the rocks bares a dent and folklore around the town is that the dent is a depression that was made into the rock by Bismarck when he stepped on it, upon his visit to the area. Like most things folklore, that story had very little to believe about it.
This rocky nature of Mwanza's terrain, as say compared to Kampala's red-earth soil nature, saves the town from the trouble of dust that easily sweeps onto Kampala's streets and gives our capital the outlook of a very untidy place. Also, Mwanza's soils, when you see them, are whiter, greyer than they are red. Red soils, and red dust, easily come off as dirty as compared to lighter or sandy soils. Reports from Tanzania's Guardian newspaper say that the reasons as to why the town has achieved these feats are that there is political will among the political class in Mwanza, to keep the town clean.
It mentioned such initiatives as community-based groups picking up the tasks of sweeping the streets, and, reducing the number of disposal sites in the town as some of the measures that have helped keep the levels of hygiene up.
The reduction of waste disposal was effective because, according to the reports, the garbage collection points end up becoming garbage in themselves, and, the more they are in a town, the more garbage gets out of control.
What the city of Kampala is to the northern shores of Lake Victoria, Mwanza is to the lake's southern shores, except that it is cleaner, that little bit more organised and yes, rockier. The undulating hills that face the lake, form some of the green upscale suburbs where you have to pay through your ears for a square metre of land, just the way it is on hills like Munyonyo, Bukasa and Muyenga, which similarly overlook the lake in Kampala.
Wanasiasa wasitudanganye na kutufanya tujisikie vibaya kila siku na kuona kwamba hakuna zuri tunalofanya, kama huyo Mwandishi alivyothibisha SIO kweli, Nchi yetu ni Nzuri na tunasonga Mbele tena kwa umakini na mwendokasi wa ajabu, matatizo yapo lkn yanatatulika, hivyo mimi namuamni zaidi huyu Mgeni kuliko Wanasiasa wetu, huyu jamaa amenipa tena sababu ya kuzidi kuamini ktk Tanzania, wewe Je?
Mwanza: the cleanest town in Tanzania
The centre of Mwanza Town. It is generally a rocky town with grey white soils which helps to keep the city clean.
By John K. Abimanyi
Posted Tuesday, June 11 2013 at 16:40
In Summary
If you throw a used plastic bottle or peel out of your car onto the streets in Mwanza, you just might be arrested. Such is the dedication to cleanliness and hygiene in this city.
Just how seriously does Uganda take the issue of cleanliness?
Ah, rhetorical question there, right? Do we even rank clean towns anymore? We do not, probably because finding a clean town to start with would be a titanic task in itself. There were days when Mbale Town made the news rounds as Uganda's cleanest town. But oh, does that not seem like such a long time ago, the way golden oldies sound on the radio? Mbale is like Kampala, a smaller less congested Kampala but with nearly the same magnitude of hygiene trouble.
Now consider this small occurrence.
Somewhere in the plains of north west Tanzania, as the Friends Safari bus on which I was travelling, stopped to drop off passengers on its way to Bukoba Town, one passenger stretched their hand through an open window, and, in typical Ugandan style, threw a used plastic juice bottle out onto the bush.
Na hapa ndipo anapoamua kuua kabisaaa!!
A traffic police officer was watching
Instead of rushing to check for brake lights on the bus, or for the driver's permit, or any other such small acts from which traffic police officers in Uganda earn their real bread, the officer retrieved the bottle, crossed over and impounded the bus (Tanzania yetu hiyo!)
This is Kiswahili-land, which means that for a non-Kiswahili speaking Ugandan, like this reporter, there was very little of what the cop said that could be made sense of. But he looked stern, even grim. He held up the bottle and started waving it about angrily in vicious shakes. He started to speak and mumbled on in an obviously angered tone. The man who threw out the bottle was soon on his feet, explaining and begging away at the officer.
The cop, finally, let us go, but the symbolism of the small event could not easily get lost on any of the passengers who cared to take note.
Hapa sasa, kweli Tanzania yetu is ready take off kama Wazungu wanavyosema, msikie huyu Mgeni anavyoendelea!
It got you thinking and pondering, wondering just how far reaching the standards of cleanliness are in a country where traffic police officers take a personal interest in the cleanliness, and what foreigners do to it.
Do not even start to think of what Ugandan traffic cops could do.
Kipengele Hichi ndio cha Ukweli yaani!
As soon as you notice that you are living in such a country, your personal sense of hygiene is pushed up a notch. You start wondering just how the cleanest parts of the country actually look like. And as fate would have it, it is to that town that this reporter was headed, Mwanza.
Tanzania's Ministry of Health and Welfare declares the cleanest towns throughout the country and Mwanza town currently holds that crown. Yes, even if this is still tropical Africa, and a clean city will have a few scars here and there, Mwanza truly is a clean town.
There is the occasional plastic water bottle on the street. There are the stray pieces of paper strewn about endlessly. But such incidences are few and far between. Right as soon as you walk off the MV Victoria on Lake Victoria, and on to the city's tarmacked streets which give off the look of polished black, you immediately sense that initiatives to keep the city clean are paying off.
The air smells fresh, unadulterated, as if there are no engines to push their fumes into the skies. It could be because the sea is nearby and the breeze is strong and refreshing. But Kampala too, is a lake-side town.
Ahh Mungu katupendelea aisee, huyu jamaa kadata na Nchi yetu, embu endelea kumsoma!
The streets are swept early in the morning by an army of workers and by the time you walk the streets, well into the day, there is evidence that work was done to keep the place clean. The streets (some streets) in Kampala are also swept, no doubt. But somehow, by the time it is midday, they are just as bad as they were before the cleaning.
Mwanza is the kind of clean town where the sight of rubbish is not a sign of dirtiness, but a way of realising the lengths that have been gone to, to maintain hygiene. The few times that you will see rubbish lying about on the streets, will be close to the experience of seeing one black spot on a white sheet of paper.
Some of these feats are made possible by the physique of the geographical location in which Mwanza finds itself sitting in. It is a very rocky town. The town sits on many beautiful hills rising from the lakeshore, just like is the case for a lot of Kampala.
The rocky town
All around the town, hilltops gaze from up below, with piles upon piles of gigantic grey stones peering from above, threatening to roll down and crash the town any minute.
In fact, just out of the town's main and northern port, is a pile of rocks one on top of the other, that have become the town's signature sight, the way Crested Towers used to be for Kampala, and, the Kenyatta International Conference Centre is for Nairobi.
The rock is named after the German statesman, Otto von Bismarck. One of the rocks bares a dent and folklore around the town is that the dent is a depression that was made into the rock by Bismarck when he stepped on it, upon his visit to the area. Like most things folklore, that story had very little to believe about it.
This rocky nature of Mwanza's terrain, as say compared to Kampala's red-earth soil nature, saves the town from the trouble of dust that easily sweeps onto Kampala's streets and gives our capital the outlook of a very untidy place. Also, Mwanza's soils, when you see them, are whiter, greyer than they are red. Red soils, and red dust, easily come off as dirty as compared to lighter or sandy soils. Reports from Tanzania's Guardian newspaper say that the reasons as to why the town has achieved these feats are that there is political will among the political class in Mwanza, to keep the town clean.
It mentioned such initiatives as community-based groups picking up the tasks of sweeping the streets, and, reducing the number of disposal sites in the town as some of the measures that have helped keep the levels of hygiene up.
The reduction of waste disposal was effective because, according to the reports, the garbage collection points end up becoming garbage in themselves, and, the more they are in a town, the more garbage gets out of control.
What the city of Kampala is to the northern shores of Lake Victoria, Mwanza is to the lake's southern shores, except that it is cleaner, that little bit more organised and yes, rockier. The undulating hills that face the lake, form some of the green upscale suburbs where you have to pay through your ears for a square metre of land, just the way it is on hills like Munyonyo, Bukasa and Muyenga, which similarly overlook the lake in Kampala.
Wanasiasa wasitudanganye na kutufanya tujisikie vibaya kila siku na kuona kwamba hakuna zuri tunalofanya, kama huyo Mwandishi alivyothibisha SIO kweli, Nchi yetu ni Nzuri na tunasonga Mbele tena kwa umakini na mwendokasi wa ajabu, matatizo yapo lkn yanatatulika, hivyo mimi namuamni zaidi huyu Mgeni kuliko Wanasiasa wetu, huyu jamaa amenipa tena sababu ya kuzidi kuamini ktk Tanzania, wewe Je?
http://www.tanelec.co.tz/
