I walked Makerere University in 1978 and the early '80s.
My Taata, Professor Thomas Musangogwantamu, Dean of Fine Art, found me as a boy drawing pictures far beyond my years. He saw an artist. He wanted me in those halls.
Back then, I would enter the washrooms, and they were neat. Built right. Water flushing like diamonds. Dignity had plumbing.
Years later, one of my first contracts was to remodel the toilets and bathrooms of Gayaza High School. Not the school that hired me—a parent did. A mother who knew: You cannot raise queens in filth.
The Ivory Tower stands proud. A masterpiece. An architect's prayer in stone.
But step into the next building—Agriculture, just meters away—and if you are lucky, flies will welcome you. Maggots will give you the seat. Flushing water there is sunshine in darkness. A rumor.
On my recent visit to that same Agriculture building, I was with my sister. She looked for somewhere to sit. To ease herself. There was nothing. No seat. No water. No door that closed. We walked to the student houses, hoping for mercy. The doors were locked or broken. So we borrowed a nearby bush. My sister—a grown woman—squatting in a bush in the middle of the Ivory Tower. We stayed in purgatory that day. Not because we were sinners, but because the toilets had died.
Listen to me: We work for two things in this world—the kitchen and the toilet.
Want to know a man's class? A university's soul? A nation's future?
Check the toilet. Check the kitchen.
My Jjajja Muguluma, in Kifuuta, Kyotera, Buddu, built a latrine next to his bedroom in 1927. It never smelled. Not once. Why? Because Mukyala Nulubula scrubbed it like a cooking saucepan. Every day. With pride.
The Oracles of Kifuuta teach us: "Obunafu tebuggwa na ngoye"—Filth is not removed by clothes.
You can wear a gown, a suit, a PhD hood—but if your toilet stinks, the dogs of Kivulu will still find you.
Titles don't cover smell. Gowns don't disinfect shame.
Makerere is clean on the surface—but inside, she's dying of a broken immune toilet system.
We polish the hood and forget the shoe. We celebrate rankings while students squat in indignity. While sisters borrow bushes.
The Catholics taught me this while in Nyenga and Nswanjere Seminaries: table manners and toilet manners are the same virtue. In a Catholic school, forget your toilet tissue and you go home. Because cleanliness is not luxury. It is discipline. It is respect. It is God.
So I appeal to you—Council, Guild, Alumni, Vice Chancellor, Parents:
Let the hood shine together with the shoe, even if it's raining.
Fund the plumbing before the podium.
Inspect the latrines before the laboratories.
Because no revolution, no research, no First Class degree means anything if our scholars leave the library and enter hell to relieve themselves.
Makerere, you are the Ivory Tower. But ivory rots when the base is wet with neglect.
As the Oracles of Kifuuta, Kyotera, Buddu, warn: "Ennyumba etali na kabuyonjo, terina kitiibwa"—A home without a clean latrine has no honor.
Fix the toilets. Restore the dignity.
Let every student—every sister—flush and forget, not hold it in and remember shame.
Privatize the toilets. I'm ready to take the tender. I would have fulfilled my Taata Prof. Musangogwantamu's dream of me keeping at Makerere.
This is not about water.
This is about worth.
And our children are worth it.
