Scramble for Playing Spaces Kampala Is Capital City to the Pearl of Africa
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Scramble for playing spaces Kampala is capital city to the pearl of Africa, Uganda. The city is dense with population and its stories of make shift shelters and open sewers are not news to the trending urbanization world over. The city boasts of a youthful populace with more than 60% lying in the age groups of 15 – 35. The patches of slums and make-shift shelters are littered all over. The affluent have helped themselves to gallant housing in Kololo, Munyonyo and Muyenga. The rest have found accommodation wherever there is space – in Kisenyi, Mulago, and Kamwokya. In the ribs of the buzzing capital lies a vibrant suburb of Bakuli. Located in the jaws of Namirembe and engulfed by Rubaga and Butikiro roads, the conurbation offers more than meets the eye. The favela, like Brazilians may refer to it, is as vibrant as its people. Everyone seems to go about their business, and that is all. A couple of months ago, the local authority decided that the communal market should give way to investment, and the construction of a car bond was initiated. The site that was well known for fresh vegetables and food items is no more. Today, if residents of Bakuli want fresh vegetables, they have to make the long journey to St. Balikuddembe central market commonly known as Owino. Alternatively, they have to wait for the community market day on Thursday when people litter the main road with stalls and residents can buy tubers and fruits. Before it all came to this, life was pulsating and there was more to living in Bakuli than the infamous Geka Motel. Then, a couple of years ago, Badru had a local video hall that made its name for screening live games of the English Premier League, and on the peripheries of the village was a playing space. The arteries of Namirembe and Butikiro roads sandwiched a turf of sort. Stretching out fields of greenery and patches of bare ground, the space was more than a playing field. To the settlement of Bakuli, “Kasaawe” was the go to for leisure games and to watch soccer trainings and matches of Sparta 09, Watoto Wasoka’s premier project of slum soccer kids. It was host to one of the ghetto’s biggest joy, the evening games. Hundreds of youths would gather to play or, at the very least, watch the small sided games. It was a gold mine of sort for crude talents that have today spiraled into national proges like Frank ‘Zaga’ Tumwesigye, pro footballers such as Ssali Lumala Abdu ‘Chance’, and national team players like Keziron Kizito. The players presented the game in its most beautiful fashion, while the crowd that gathered was the perfect choosy band that cheered and jeered in equal measure. The way to spend your evening was simple; go the ‘Kasaawe’ and catch a game of football. And you were never disappointed! That is no more, unfortunately. The pitch has now been gazeted and endless concealments of constructions have been going on for the past one year and a half. Ideally, you would think it will be yet another car bond in town, but Malibu Holdings seems to be taking all the time in the world to ponder about what they want to turn the space in to. A business park, a car bond, a parking lot… One gaze into the lonely space and you will know how much it has missed those evening lodgings of the beautiful game. The recreation it offered to the shanty town was beyond narrative, the fun was immeasurable and the joy was indescribable. But that is no more. The story of Bakuli and its lost glory is a mirror reflection of the tales for so many a playing space in Kampala and its metropolitan. Nsambya town is five minutes south of the city centre. It is home to the most beautiful soul in the world! A couple of decades ago, the now defunct Nsambya F.C was plying its trade in Uganda’s top flight league with legendary players such as Paul Ssali coming of age through the club. The town is also home to the greenery of Villa Park, the training ground of Uganda’s most decorated club SC Villa. Nsambya alone had five public playing spaces. Today, that number has been reduced to just two. Nabagereka Primary School was more than just a primary school in the middle of Kisenyi. It was a centre for academic literacy and community empowerment. Most importantly, it had one of the biggest and most famous football grounds in the slum. The ground was valleyed between mountains of rotting waste and the school classrooms. It gave such a scenery to the biggest and oldest ghetto in Uganda. While some smoked their lives away, a bundle of kids mined their gold in the piles of garbage that engulfed the pitch. An appreciable number sought the solace of football. Most unforgettable, that school, and ground hosted the first ever Watoto Wasoka Slums Derby back in 2013 with untold ecstasy. Sadly the school is no more, and off it went with the football ground, thanks to a controversial give-away of the land to an investor late 2014. It has now been quarried with stones and has become a parking lot of sort. That investor did not only get the space which housed hopes of redemption, he also squashed all the joys that the school and its grass-free playing grounds brought to the slum. Even when the slum kids later managed to relocate their passion for football to somewhere besides the community social centre but the investor ghost was back to haunt them again. Natete is a settlement known for its bakeries. The town of bread and cake is also known for its passion for football as its famous “Ku ttano” pitch attests. However, before that pitch became a crowd’s favourite, there was one just besides the infamous Natete Police station that amassed crowds like no other. The pitch was located on the road side and this made it a favourite for by passers-by as they stole glimpses of the buzzing talents of Natete town. That is another one for the archives too, no more! Nakawa was not spared the spank either. Just opposite the Nakawa Management and Training Centre (MTAC) and before the Spear Motors Show room belay a football pitch that drew kids from all over the ghettos of Naguru and Nakawa. That same pitch was training ground for Uganda Premier league side, Police FC, and was a catchment for all police kids from Naguru shanties and beyond. Today, it has been fenced off with nothing much going on inside the walls. All that remains is long wild grass curdling with short shrubs in the space that gave us Naguru United and Brian Umwony. Just besides the illustrious Game Supermarket in Lugogo is a history that never outlived investors’ crave for open spaces. In the mid-2000s, Lugogo had more than three playing grounds and could easily be mistaken for a football development centre. Today, only the recently upgraded KCCA FC’s artificial turf survives. The jihad on soccer pitches has gone as far as Rubaga road, Gayaza, Bwaise, and Kawaala. Wherever there is an open playing space, residents will want to put up goal posts and level the ground for football games. Crowds will gather to watch, and joy will befall that community. So the parable goes. Unfortunately, the investor’s narrative goes beyond that. He will then come and buy off the land, build a fence around it and instantly restrict any further play from taking place on his plot. Then he will sit back and take a couple of years thinking of what to do with the space. Sadly, not all former playing spaces that have been bought off have turned into solid investments such as malls or business parks. Many are still redundant four five years after play was banned from those spaces. Many have become make-shift parking lots or car bonds. The rest of the former spaces are busy hosting nothing but wild grass and shrubs. They suffer from loneliness and seemingly miss the beautiful game. To this gloom of tales, the remaining spaces are persistently under threat of following the same paths. Nakivubo Stadium, the second biggest in Uganda, is slowly giving way to encroachment by tycoons who wish to expand their business empires just a stone’s throw away from the stadia. The rest of the pitches are evidently fatigued from over use. There is no choice since they are the few remaining ones. It’s archetypical for one pitch to host multiple kids’ soccer training sessions in the morning, then school sports and games outings followed by a marathon of soccer matches. This is true for Nakivubo Blue Primary school grounds, Kiira road police grounds in Kamwokya, Jamaica pitch in Mulago, Natete ku ttano and the ‘Mess’ football grounds in Makindye. The affluent population that includes expats and highly paid civil servants has resorted to renting pitches at hotels such as the Kabira Country Club and at posh schools like Kampala International School Uganda (KISU). Whereas this maintains the socio-economic castes, it also points to the growing crave for opportunities to play, while underscoring the heightened disappearance of playing spaces in thin air. At the turn of the new millennium, Kampala had close to 68 playing spaces. This has today reduced to just less than 30. .