The idea of the modern city continues to shape urban policies and practices, yet there has long been conflict over its meaning and relevance, particularly in southern cities. Alternative imaginaries, however, are partial and/or insufficiently detailed. In this paper, we first examine the modernness of modern urban infrastructure in the context of ongoing shifts away from modern ideals. Then, inspired by Gibson-Graham’s process of reading for difference, we purposefully look for fragments of what we call an emergent ‘modest sociotechnical imaginary’ in order to contribute to a fuller description of a non-modern imaginary. We examine policies and practices of sanitation in Kampala, where narratives make space for sanitation beyond the grid, seeking to improve sanitation without a predetermined teleological end. What this opening means, however, is the subject of ongoing contestations. Working between modern and anti-modern imaginaries means finding ways to choose technologies and legitimate, permit, govern, regulate, finance and distribute the costs and benefits of them with limited knowledge and control. In Kampala, we find evidence of both i) modest acceptance of limits and uncertainty and ii) efforts to layer modernist urges to create populations, know and control into emergent infrastructures. In this context, Kampala is not framed as an instantiation of a clearly defined alternative to the modern. Instead, we suggest the questions and contestations arising in Kampala are evidence of the coexistence of a modest imaginary, and that such examinations help us to deepen our understanding of ongoing struggles over what infrastructure is and ought to be.