Floods at the Dam!!

I was returning from Jinja on Saturday night and I spent one and half hours at the roundabout from Jinja. The reason, the dam had flooded. What a shame! This is not the first time this is happening, I have heard it has happened before and i guess it will happen for many other times. The Owen Falls dam is famous for many things; 

1) Connecting the eastern part of the country to Kenya and to the rest of the country,

2) For generating electricity,

3) For the picturistic beauty the dam has created over the years and it’s now famous for the floods that prevent the bridge from serving its purpose or linking two pieces of land separated by the Nile River.

The River Nile particularly this place in the last 10 years been in the news for the right things and in some cases for the wrong things. It is said that the dam has been condemned and may not last for many years. It is reported that the Japanese have given Uganda money to build another dam. You know this is a typical Ugandan problem, you never have enough money to do anything. Sometime back, there was a decision to create a new dam to generate additional electricity. Before this decision, the dam used to have water that was gushed out the turbines and creating a foam like impression that amused children. Children used to think that this was soap from the river. That is long gone. There are also reports that this diversion was a mistake. Before this settled down, the Bujagali came to the table. The Bujagali was recently opened by President Museveni as part of the 50 years of independence in the country. Sitting in my car waiting for this long made me think of why countries like Uganda cannot develop as we want it to. If a bridge so important as the Jinja one flooded, in the developed countries, they would not rest until this has been fixed. I do not think anybody from the ministry of works has been to this bridge since it got this problem. Such is the nature of backwardness.