Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Pictures Link
The pictures link that was not working in the previous post should now be fixed. To access the pictures you can sign in using mahmoodb@union.edu as the email address (this email address is set to expire today, but it should continue to work on this site since it basically serves as a username) and union1795 as the password. If you want, you can also make your own account.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Two Months
Wow - two months down. Incredibly fast for me and probably slow for those of you reading my insufferably long blogs. I posted a bunch of blogs I have been unable to upload the last couple weeks (I dated them back). The first is on the geography of Ddegeya, which I should probably urge you to skip unless you like geology, local Ugandan agriculture, or ecology. The second are some thoughts about what got me here - it is tough to put these thoughts in words, but it is the closest I've come to being able to explain it. The one below this blog is a draft of what we have planned for the next three months. There will be revisions, but so far it is keeping us incredibly busy and tired, which we enjoy. In this blog, random thoughts and a wish list...
PHOTOS. I have posted new photos - some of the better ones here (use mahmoodb@union.edu and union1795 as the password to sign in). Recall you can go to May 1 blog for the first batch. I have since shave the beard and will go for a haircut today.
Life here is good so far. I find that I miss friends mostly and I am getting along fine without running water, American food, constant and non-stop power, etc. I do miss autumn. Becky and I celebrated two months with a coke and I will get a haircut today. I am surprisingly okay living pretty communally - a curtain separates Becky and I and I spend most nights with Richard and John. Sometimes it can be tough to get away - kids are in front of the door from sunrise to sunset, we eat together every meal, and if I take a walk I will hear, almost rhythmically, "mzungu, mzungu."
After a week of working with kids who don't go to school (ages 2-7), I am exhausted. The kids constantly test me. A friend who was formerly a teacher suggested to me once that they have "paddle day." Throughout the year teachers can assign "paddles" and on one celebratory day when the family and the community is invited, kids receive their paddles on stage. Perhaps a picnic to follow the formal ceremonies. It really could end bad behaviour and I am pushing Becky for a similar system.
To my surprise and delight a similar system is in place. One boy had been obnoxious, disruptive, and violent all day. Finally, we sent him home - "Kati ogende waka. KATI." A few minutes later we heard the most horrifying screams from the top of the hill. Paddles administered and we didn't even have to ask. I felt bad being police, judge, and jury and glad I wasn't the paddler, but it went a long way for behavior of he other kids - "Oyagala ogenda waka?" Do you want to go home?
Wish List
Some of you had asked about supplies that would be useful for the community: Children's books, chewable vitamins, kids games, cards (ie UNO), cream of tartar for play dough, food colorying (play dough), educational games (ie flashcards with letters, numbers, and words), dollar tree stuff, arts and crafts supplie (pipe cleaners, water colors, string, etc), deflated dodgeball, world map.
Don't send: paper, pens, pencils, candy - this stuff is much cheaper to get here. It cost $14 to send a 1 lb 10 ounce package, so if that price is steap, we have a lot of supplies for now so no worries.
I have a very long list of blogs to write, but I hope to have some information about the kids, some notable people, and the education system soon. Thanks for reading!
PHOTOS. I have posted new photos - some of the better ones here (use mahmoodb@union.edu and union1795 as the password to sign in). Recall you can go to May 1 blog for the first batch. I have since shave the beard and will go for a haircut today.
Life here is good so far. I find that I miss friends mostly and I am getting along fine without running water, American food, constant and non-stop power, etc. I do miss autumn. Becky and I celebrated two months with a coke and I will get a haircut today. I am surprisingly okay living pretty communally - a curtain separates Becky and I and I spend most nights with Richard and John. Sometimes it can be tough to get away - kids are in front of the door from sunrise to sunset, we eat together every meal, and if I take a walk I will hear, almost rhythmically, "mzungu, mzungu."
After a week of working with kids who don't go to school (ages 2-7), I am exhausted. The kids constantly test me. A friend who was formerly a teacher suggested to me once that they have "paddle day." Throughout the year teachers can assign "paddles" and on one celebratory day when the family and the community is invited, kids receive their paddles on stage. Perhaps a picnic to follow the formal ceremonies. It really could end bad behaviour and I am pushing Becky for a similar system.
To my surprise and delight a similar system is in place. One boy had been obnoxious, disruptive, and violent all day. Finally, we sent him home - "Kati ogende waka. KATI." A few minutes later we heard the most horrifying screams from the top of the hill. Paddles administered and we didn't even have to ask. I felt bad being police, judge, and jury and glad I wasn't the paddler, but it went a long way for behavior of he other kids - "Oyagala ogenda waka?" Do you want to go home?
Wish List
Some of you had asked about supplies that would be useful for the community: Children's books, chewable vitamins, kids games, cards (ie UNO), cream of tartar for play dough, food colorying (play dough), educational games (ie flashcards with letters, numbers, and words), dollar tree stuff, arts and crafts supplie (pipe cleaners, water colors, string, etc), deflated dodgeball, world map.
Don't send: paper, pens, pencils, candy - this stuff is much cheaper to get here. It cost $14 to send a 1 lb 10 ounce package, so if that price is steap, we have a lot of supplies for now so no worries.
I have a very long list of blogs to write, but I hope to have some information about the kids, some notable people, and the education system soon. Thanks for reading!
Scheming
Work, I've said, or hinted at, has waned and waxed over the last couple months. We began very busy, doing a lot of manual labor fixing roads, stacking bricks, and digging trenches. We also taught for a couple hours per day at St. Timothy's primary school and at the nursing school in Kyetume on Saturdays. Then the students had a school holiday and as our manual labor ran dry, we started to have more and more time on our hands. We are now in the beginnings of what looks to be a very busy three months (until school goes on holiday again). I have been exhausted at the end of the day the last couple weeks, working pretty much sunrise to past sunset. It feels really good to be busy.
Needs
We began to try to think about projects and as John returned with his infinite wisdom and help, things began to look more realistic. We identified a couple pressing needs in the village - education and nutrition - and began trying to think about how to address these issues. We couldn't simply buy the much needed protein for a village of protein deficient kids and we definitely didn't have the resources to pay for additional teachers at the primary school.
A Garden
We began by working with John and Richard, planting a vegetable garden. I was reminded of something that Hudson had said - that most of the people had trouble getting the cash to buy vegetables and that the old system of bartering made it easier. I asked John if we could barter fresh vegetables for staples. He was positive, but cautiously explained we weren't at the point where we could figure out how to distribute crops. He suggested we use our first batch of crops as an incentive to get kids to help with a second, larger batch of crops.
So we began, breaking the soil with the hoe. It was recently used soil and the plot was small so it was easy. The real fun began as we took a one kilometer trip to John's Father's house to pick up manure one wheelbarrow at a time. After three or four trips (there were three of us) we had enough fertilizer, Susan, our cook, casually declared.
By this time, school had resumed in Bunyere, so Becky and I were there while Richard made the vegetable bed and planted the seeds, but one week in our little ones were coming along well. The extra watering means an extra 10 - 15 gallons of water per day, but I'm starting to enjoy the trips to the watering hole.
Bore Hole Catastrophe
Sidetracking, I want to describe "fetching water" (okuleta amazzi kaluzzi). You empty the jerry cans (John often jokes that he will get the spoons - I like everything filled to the brim) and then head down to the watering hole. There, you walk across four waterlogged logs that bend a frightening distance when I get to the middle (I hear whispers, which I can only gather to mean, "the heavy white man with the Osama beard is trying to snap the logs and take us with him into the water). After it rains, the water is dark brown, but high enough that it is east to reach down and fill the jerry can. When it is dry you really have to lean down into the borehole to get the spout of the jerry-can under the water. So, on a few flimsy bending and bowing logs you are leaning into a pool of water head first - all the makings for disaster. One hot (low water level) day I reached a little too far and went head first toward the water. I don't know how I didn't fall in, but I think it involved kicking small children, screaming like a little girl, and bear hugging all the logs. Everyone began laughing - the children always watch me fill up the jerry-can because I am white. Now I am white and clumsy. My sixth grade students couldn't have been happier to witness it.
Project Peanut Butter
Our newest scheme is to plant peanuts in a much larger plot near the clinic as a way of helping growing kids get protein. We've even begun experimenting with the ground nuts we can buy in the market, water, and oils to see if we can make a homemade peanut butter (we think this idea is looking good). John tells us the oil that is sold is given as a laxative for those who are, well, behind. I am somewhat paranoid about a lot of the food. We don’t eat a lot of meat and occasionally, suddenly, there is an overwhelmingly acute need to hobble to the latrine, which means that the culprit could be almost anyone. The unsuspecting cassava? Perhaps the fried cabbage? The peanut sauce and beans seem too obvious and coffee, although a diuretic, has never had the same effect in the US. I wonder when the day will be that I don’t make it to the latrine; I fear it will be in Bunyere teaching Phys Ed to a bunch of 6th graders who would not respond differently from American 6th graders – cruelly. Anyways, ground nuts are cheap and we don't think it takes much oil, so this might be an affordable way to distribute some protein. Peanuts and beans are expensive for many families, so this might be one way of working on that problem if we can find a way of producing a lot of protein rich crops and distributing them at a discount.
Distribution and Education
Becky was the one who figured out most of the details about education in Ddegeya. The idea is that we work with 20 - 30 kids who cannot afford school fees in the "public schools" and try to help them learn the basics - numbers, the alphabet, writing, art, and some critical thinking (with a lot of playing). The program is in its first week and we have the kids come in the morning for four hours. John attracted a wide variety of kids - many we know, but ranging from 2 - 8 years old and an even greater range of abilities. It has been tough and exhausting working with kids who speak almost no English (or Luganda), but we are getting better. Most importantly, the kids are learning and having a lot of fun with the puzzles, balls, and games we provide in addition to paper and pens.
I like kids, but I am nowhere near as comfortable as Becky working with as many as 25 or 30 kids of all different ages. I look at the program as a possible way of distributing peanuts, peanut butter, and eventually vitamins to some of the neediest kids around. The truth is that Becky and I can't do as good of a job teaching the kids, but most of the kids hang around the clinic most of the day instead of going to school, anyways.
A Typical Day
So we are beginning to see what a typical day looks like here:
6:30 Wake Up
7:00 Fetch water, water garden, do dishes
8:00 Breakfast, prepare lesson plans, prepare materials for morning program
9:00 Morning program with kids who don't go to school
1:00 Lunch, prepare lesson plans
2:00 Teaching/Tutoring at primary school
5:15 Working in garden, water garden, fetching water, extra tutoring
7:00 Hanging out
8:00 Dinner
9:00 Blogs, preparing materials for following day, reading, grading papers
On Monday and Friday we have worked it out so that we are free to work at the clinic in the afternoon on records, protocols, and construction. Saturday we teach at the nursing school and are typically gone from 8:30 - 1:00.
Needs
We began to try to think about projects and as John returned with his infinite wisdom and help, things began to look more realistic. We identified a couple pressing needs in the village - education and nutrition - and began trying to think about how to address these issues. We couldn't simply buy the much needed protein for a village of protein deficient kids and we definitely didn't have the resources to pay for additional teachers at the primary school.
A Garden
We began by working with John and Richard, planting a vegetable garden. I was reminded of something that Hudson had said - that most of the people had trouble getting the cash to buy vegetables and that the old system of bartering made it easier. I asked John if we could barter fresh vegetables for staples. He was positive, but cautiously explained we weren't at the point where we could figure out how to distribute crops. He suggested we use our first batch of crops as an incentive to get kids to help with a second, larger batch of crops.
So we began, breaking the soil with the hoe. It was recently used soil and the plot was small so it was easy. The real fun began as we took a one kilometer trip to John's Father's house to pick up manure one wheelbarrow at a time. After three or four trips (there were three of us) we had enough fertilizer, Susan, our cook, casually declared.
By this time, school had resumed in Bunyere, so Becky and I were there while Richard made the vegetable bed and planted the seeds, but one week in our little ones were coming along well. The extra watering means an extra 10 - 15 gallons of water per day, but I'm starting to enjoy the trips to the watering hole.
Bore Hole Catastrophe
Sidetracking, I want to describe "fetching water" (okuleta amazzi kaluzzi). You empty the jerry cans (John often jokes that he will get the spoons - I like everything filled to the brim) and then head down to the watering hole. There, you walk across four waterlogged logs that bend a frightening distance when I get to the middle (I hear whispers, which I can only gather to mean, "the heavy white man with the Osama beard is trying to snap the logs and take us with him into the water). After it rains, the water is dark brown, but high enough that it is east to reach down and fill the jerry can. When it is dry you really have to lean down into the borehole to get the spout of the jerry-can under the water. So, on a few flimsy bending and bowing logs you are leaning into a pool of water head first - all the makings for disaster. One hot (low water level) day I reached a little too far and went head first toward the water. I don't know how I didn't fall in, but I think it involved kicking small children, screaming like a little girl, and bear hugging all the logs. Everyone began laughing - the children always watch me fill up the jerry-can because I am white. Now I am white and clumsy. My sixth grade students couldn't have been happier to witness it.
Project Peanut Butter
Our newest scheme is to plant peanuts in a much larger plot near the clinic as a way of helping growing kids get protein. We've even begun experimenting with the ground nuts we can buy in the market, water, and oils to see if we can make a homemade peanut butter (we think this idea is looking good). John tells us the oil that is sold is given as a laxative for those who are, well, behind. I am somewhat paranoid about a lot of the food. We don’t eat a lot of meat and occasionally, suddenly, there is an overwhelmingly acute need to hobble to the latrine, which means that the culprit could be almost anyone. The unsuspecting cassava? Perhaps the fried cabbage? The peanut sauce and beans seem too obvious and coffee, although a diuretic, has never had the same effect in the US. I wonder when the day will be that I don’t make it to the latrine; I fear it will be in Bunyere teaching Phys Ed to a bunch of 6th graders who would not respond differently from American 6th graders – cruelly. Anyways, ground nuts are cheap and we don't think it takes much oil, so this might be an affordable way to distribute some protein. Peanuts and beans are expensive for many families, so this might be one way of working on that problem if we can find a way of producing a lot of protein rich crops and distributing them at a discount.
Distribution and Education
Becky was the one who figured out most of the details about education in Ddegeya. The idea is that we work with 20 - 30 kids who cannot afford school fees in the "public schools" and try to help them learn the basics - numbers, the alphabet, writing, art, and some critical thinking (with a lot of playing). The program is in its first week and we have the kids come in the morning for four hours. John attracted a wide variety of kids - many we know, but ranging from 2 - 8 years old and an even greater range of abilities. It has been tough and exhausting working with kids who speak almost no English (or Luganda), but we are getting better. Most importantly, the kids are learning and having a lot of fun with the puzzles, balls, and games we provide in addition to paper and pens.
I like kids, but I am nowhere near as comfortable as Becky working with as many as 25 or 30 kids of all different ages. I look at the program as a possible way of distributing peanuts, peanut butter, and eventually vitamins to some of the neediest kids around. The truth is that Becky and I can't do as good of a job teaching the kids, but most of the kids hang around the clinic most of the day instead of going to school, anyways.
A Typical Day
So we are beginning to see what a typical day looks like here:
6:30 Wake Up
7:00 Fetch water, water garden, do dishes
8:00 Breakfast, prepare lesson plans, prepare materials for morning program
9:00 Morning program with kids who don't go to school
1:00 Lunch, prepare lesson plans
2:00 Teaching/Tutoring at primary school
5:15 Working in garden, water garden, fetching water, extra tutoring
7:00 Hanging out
8:00 Dinner
9:00 Blogs, preparing materials for following day, reading, grading papers
On Monday and Friday we have worked it out so that we are free to work at the clinic in the afternoon on records, protocols, and construction. Saturday we teach at the nursing school and are typically gone from 8:30 - 1:00.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Thoughts about Uganda and Social Entrepreneurship
When I found an e-mail in my inbox from one of the Minerva Fellows directors urging us to write about our personal struggles, I immediately began planning a blog that would outline my recent struggles in the latrine after two months of the Ugandan staple diet. A sort of not-so-subtle way of explaining that I keep my personal thoughts close to the vest. But one night I got to thinking about what drove me here and the struggle it has been to justify my 18 hour plane ride to Africa.
I have found that many of my friends - white, middle class, often male - identify with struggles in poverty, violence, environmental problems, political and economic hypocrisy. I see them thinking about the social, environmental, and political problems we face as they tap their pencils to the bands Blue Scholars, Flobots, Michael Franti, and others. Perhaps political alienation from both democrats and republicans is a reason why more than half the country doesn't vote. 60 million Americans don't have healthcare, but we spend more than half our taxes on the military (nearly two decades after the cold war ended). We spend 4 percent of our taxes on education, but will gladly build more prisons to house the uneducated and poor (70 percent of prisoners in New York come from eight poor, marginalized neighborhoods in New York City). We shun welfare, so long as it isn't corporate welfare (did we bail out AIG yet?). Internationally, we give less than 0.2 percent of our budget to humanitarian aid (we pledged 0.7 percent well before Iraq and taxcuts). We live on tens of thousands of dollars per year, but the rest of the world lives on tens of hundreds of dollars per year, struggling for nutrition, healthcare, clean water, and education. We single out Saddem Hussein as a dictator for using our weapons to kill others as our army kills Afghani, Iraqi, and Pakistani civilians.
Just before I left for Uganda I sat on a former teacher and mentor's porch and we talked about some of these problems. As we sat in the sun in a beautiful North Buffalo neighborhood Chris looked at me and asked, "So why don't we do anything about these atrocities?" He looked down at his son who was less than one year and his eyes and voice faded as he answered his own question, "Sometimes we just get distracted trying to do the best for those closest to us." We are comfortable and it makes sense that we try to provide the best we can for ourselves and those closest to us - which, intentionally or not, means distracting ourselves from the reality of our affluence. So I find myself comfortably looking down at the people who are sacrificed for my way of life and up at the people engineering this mass exploitation. I am part of the problem and want to break away and learn to be part of the solution. I want to discover some of the reality that I have hid from myself.
But given that we are among the privileged privileged it feels somewhat hard to identify with these problems from our suburban sanctuaries. Ben Folds expressed this frustration in "Rockin' the Suburbs" delineating some of his criticisms in "All U Can Eat." Utah Phillips in "Anarchy" sings along with Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States describing a situation in which the privileged act as a protective barrier between, say, the 428 richest people who make as much money as the 428 million of the world's poorest. A protective barrier because it is uncomfortable to criticize the system that gives many prosperity (although this last surge of economic growth has reduced the middle class and the middle class that is left has less money), because it is hypocritical - it feels superficial. Here were my thoughts one late night:
It is two hours past my bedtime, four hours past sunset and I find myself outside surrounded by darkness with a flashlight, pen, and legal pad trying to explain to myself what brought me to Uganda.
You could say one underlying draw to Uganda was that I wanted to live among "common people" - the exact sentiment that William Shatner derides in his song Common People. "...If you called your dad he could stop it all/You'll never live like common people/You'll never do what common people do/You'll never fail like common people..." I wanted to see how a Ugandan lives and imitate it as best as I could, understanding that I can't actually succeed in replicating a Ugandan lifestyle. Paul Farmer goes further, describing a "group of young Americans trying to live in solidarity with the poor by avoiding hot showers." Certainly fair criticisms of me and my motivations.
The truth is that I desperately needed a cold shower - a sobering wake up. I was active at Union College, but as one letter of recommendation on my behalf states that I work "calmly." I calculate and am a couple steps ahead of myself, but I had witnessed a very different type of activism at Union. A more reactive, lively sort of social action. Two people for whom I have the utmost respect, Naazia Hussain and Varun Shetty, always seemed to be current and, although not reactionary, they reacted to current problems passionately and effectively. They raised money for natural disaster victims, increased campus awareness and dialogue, inspired others, and founded the Iraqi Student project to bring an Iraqi student to Union College; they responded to pressing needs. I have passions, but sometimes I wished that I could have been more acute, more passionate about the problems I see in the world. Perhaps this was one of my motivations for traveling to Uganda. I was among the few Campus Action members that helped erect the Iraq War Memorial in 2005. Ian Kennedy, the creativity behind the project said something to the effect of "we need to help illustrate the costs of war, instead of just reading body counts on the back-pages of the New York Times. In going to Uganda I needed to go beyond statistics for once in my life. I had written to congress people and the white house about climate, Darfur, and the UN Millennium Goals, but I never felt any closer to the problems. The problem was never real to me as I sat in my beautiful campus housing or suburban sanctuary. The closest I ever got to these problems was the blue US Postal Service Box and the form letter reply dismissing the problem for both me and the legislature. We had both done our part.
In coming here I was determined to do my part to help the village of Ddegeya to the best of my ability. I had been sent here as a "social entrepreneur," a term for which I have mixed feelings. Part of the uneasiness was because I was coming from another culture, a "modern" culture, so when I arrived as a social entrepreneur it has the connotation that my culture and I bring some magical elixir or knowledge to cure this other cultures social ails. Taking it further, it can seem like a politically correct way of saying "white man's burden." Of course, this is unfair to say. Most of the social entrepreneurs I learned about acted within their own culture. The people here are more resourceful than I have ever been - they can live on less than one dollar per day - so my charge as a social entrepreneur is difficult.
The charge, I am finding, is difficult, because no matter how many kilos of water I carry, no matter how long I eat the local staples, no matter how long I go without internet, or how often I wash the dishes in brown murky water, my condition will never be permanent. I can and will be leaving Uganda. It is a privilege to be able to leave and because of that privilege I will never truly understand these people. One boy, Gerald, tells me nearly every day "I want [to] study [in] America." After I tutored a 6th grade girl this Saturday she described a dream about me waving to her as she walked to school past the men who harass her. She said that, in her dream, she returned and sat with me at a picnic table and heard me tell John that I would take her to America. I was uncomfortable, I had waved to her that morning and I was sitting with her at a picnic table practicing social studies. I will never know what it is like to be a "common person" - a nameless member of the 3 billion impoverished, an average Homo sapien - my situation in Uganda has no permanence. A "common person" is nearly always permanently impoverished. So I remind myself, again, that living in poverty than living among the poverty-stricken is very different. I would be able to touch it when I catapult a malnourished kid into the air, but not able to feel or understand it when I catch him or her.
So I can come away inspired and passionate and perhaps lessen my grip on the weapons of privilege - economic privilege, racial privilege, sexual privilege - but I cannot enter the world of poverty in the same way that Gerald will more than likely not venture beyond the invisible line enclosing his village. [John described the wonder and awe about traveling to Masaka for the very first time (a city the size of Schenectady) - he described the bushes flying past the car window, the awe of being in a taxi (it currently costs $1.25 to travel to Masaka), and he remembers talking about his trip to Masaka for a year after it happened. Most kids never make it to Masaka - the twenty mile trek insulates the kid's rural lives.] Utah Phillips describes this struggle to give up the weapons of privilege in his song Anarchy, calling it the most worthwhile struggle in his own life. So if cold showers are the beginning of this struggle, I may be on the right path.
In mission trips to Farmington, Maine I helped build roofs, put up dry wall, paint, plaster, and do finish work around windows with some of my closest friends. We quickly found that while working for people in poverty, we received much more than we gave. We learned to build and met truly interesting people every year. On my last trip before college I worked for a one-legged WWII veteran full of stories. There was a woman named Minnie who made homemade donuts for her painting crew. Another year there was homemade, homegrown strawberry rhubarb pie (strubarb) from an old couple realizing their dream of building their own home. In Uganda I've met the crazy man down the road, Ugandan students, political canvassers, and clan elders. Learning directly from people, I believe, is the most effective way to learn. So the cultural knowledge I will come away with will more than outweigh my meager contributions.
Of course I want to help and I want to be a social entrepreneur. Becky and I are beginning to find ways we can help. It is difficult - we are isolated by language, separated by color, embedded in a new and almost surreal culture and landscape, and have been slow to learn the magnitude of the problems and available resources. In short, it has been a real struggle to find a niche as the only mzungus within tens of miles. But we are beginning to make progress - isolating problems and possible solutions as "entrepreneurs," volunteering or finding meaningful work where possible, and slowly learning a language and culture that has been a tremendous barrier to our progress.
As we begin to attack problems I am beginning to see that what I do here will be very helpful, but will only attack the symptoms. We are beginning to envision programs to attack educational shortfalls and malnutrition inequalities, but even if these programs spread to every corner of the world they would not attack the underlying political and economic conditions that created these inequalities. So it is good to be entrepreneurial and work to advance societies, but we also have to look at our condition and look at the machinery behind it (or the oil between the gears?). Uganda is helping me understand my own condition much better, I am learning valuable cultural lessons, and beginning to apply my strengths and time to advance this community. In all of these lessons I am overwhelmingly on the receiving end and I think the real entrepreneurship will come when I apply these lessons in the year and years to come.
I have found that many of my friends - white, middle class, often male - identify with struggles in poverty, violence, environmental problems, political and economic hypocrisy. I see them thinking about the social, environmental, and political problems we face as they tap their pencils to the bands Blue Scholars, Flobots, Michael Franti, and others. Perhaps political alienation from both democrats and republicans is a reason why more than half the country doesn't vote. 60 million Americans don't have healthcare, but we spend more than half our taxes on the military (nearly two decades after the cold war ended). We spend 4 percent of our taxes on education, but will gladly build more prisons to house the uneducated and poor (70 percent of prisoners in New York come from eight poor, marginalized neighborhoods in New York City). We shun welfare, so long as it isn't corporate welfare (did we bail out AIG yet?). Internationally, we give less than 0.2 percent of our budget to humanitarian aid (we pledged 0.7 percent well before Iraq and taxcuts). We live on tens of thousands of dollars per year, but the rest of the world lives on tens of hundreds of dollars per year, struggling for nutrition, healthcare, clean water, and education. We single out Saddem Hussein as a dictator for using our weapons to kill others as our army kills Afghani, Iraqi, and Pakistani civilians.
Just before I left for Uganda I sat on a former teacher and mentor's porch and we talked about some of these problems. As we sat in the sun in a beautiful North Buffalo neighborhood Chris looked at me and asked, "So why don't we do anything about these atrocities?" He looked down at his son who was less than one year and his eyes and voice faded as he answered his own question, "Sometimes we just get distracted trying to do the best for those closest to us." We are comfortable and it makes sense that we try to provide the best we can for ourselves and those closest to us - which, intentionally or not, means distracting ourselves from the reality of our affluence. So I find myself comfortably looking down at the people who are sacrificed for my way of life and up at the people engineering this mass exploitation. I am part of the problem and want to break away and learn to be part of the solution. I want to discover some of the reality that I have hid from myself.
But given that we are among the privileged privileged it feels somewhat hard to identify with these problems from our suburban sanctuaries. Ben Folds expressed this frustration in "Rockin' the Suburbs" delineating some of his criticisms in "All U Can Eat." Utah Phillips in "Anarchy" sings along with Howard Zinn's book A People's History of the United States describing a situation in which the privileged act as a protective barrier between, say, the 428 richest people who make as much money as the 428 million of the world's poorest. A protective barrier because it is uncomfortable to criticize the system that gives many prosperity (although this last surge of economic growth has reduced the middle class and the middle class that is left has less money), because it is hypocritical - it feels superficial. Here were my thoughts one late night:
It is two hours past my bedtime, four hours past sunset and I find myself outside surrounded by darkness with a flashlight, pen, and legal pad trying to explain to myself what brought me to Uganda.
You could say one underlying draw to Uganda was that I wanted to live among "common people" - the exact sentiment that William Shatner derides in his song Common People. "...If you called your dad he could stop it all/You'll never live like common people/You'll never do what common people do/You'll never fail like common people..." I wanted to see how a Ugandan lives and imitate it as best as I could, understanding that I can't actually succeed in replicating a Ugandan lifestyle. Paul Farmer goes further, describing a "group of young Americans trying to live in solidarity with the poor by avoiding hot showers." Certainly fair criticisms of me and my motivations.
The truth is that I desperately needed a cold shower - a sobering wake up. I was active at Union College, but as one letter of recommendation on my behalf states that I work "calmly." I calculate and am a couple steps ahead of myself, but I had witnessed a very different type of activism at Union. A more reactive, lively sort of social action. Two people for whom I have the utmost respect, Naazia Hussain and Varun Shetty, always seemed to be current and, although not reactionary, they reacted to current problems passionately and effectively. They raised money for natural disaster victims, increased campus awareness and dialogue, inspired others, and founded the Iraqi Student project to bring an Iraqi student to Union College; they responded to pressing needs. I have passions, but sometimes I wished that I could have been more acute, more passionate about the problems I see in the world. Perhaps this was one of my motivations for traveling to Uganda. I was among the few Campus Action members that helped erect the Iraq War Memorial in 2005. Ian Kennedy, the creativity behind the project said something to the effect of "we need to help illustrate the costs of war, instead of just reading body counts on the back-pages of the New York Times. In going to Uganda I needed to go beyond statistics for once in my life. I had written to congress people and the white house about climate, Darfur, and the UN Millennium Goals, but I never felt any closer to the problems. The problem was never real to me as I sat in my beautiful campus housing or suburban sanctuary. The closest I ever got to these problems was the blue US Postal Service Box and the form letter reply dismissing the problem for both me and the legislature. We had both done our part.
In coming here I was determined to do my part to help the village of Ddegeya to the best of my ability. I had been sent here as a "social entrepreneur," a term for which I have mixed feelings. Part of the uneasiness was because I was coming from another culture, a "modern" culture, so when I arrived as a social entrepreneur it has the connotation that my culture and I bring some magical elixir or knowledge to cure this other cultures social ails. Taking it further, it can seem like a politically correct way of saying "white man's burden." Of course, this is unfair to say. Most of the social entrepreneurs I learned about acted within their own culture. The people here are more resourceful than I have ever been - they can live on less than one dollar per day - so my charge as a social entrepreneur is difficult.
The charge, I am finding, is difficult, because no matter how many kilos of water I carry, no matter how long I eat the local staples, no matter how long I go without internet, or how often I wash the dishes in brown murky water, my condition will never be permanent. I can and will be leaving Uganda. It is a privilege to be able to leave and because of that privilege I will never truly understand these people. One boy, Gerald, tells me nearly every day "I want [to] study [in] America." After I tutored a 6th grade girl this Saturday she described a dream about me waving to her as she walked to school past the men who harass her. She said that, in her dream, she returned and sat with me at a picnic table and heard me tell John that I would take her to America. I was uncomfortable, I had waved to her that morning and I was sitting with her at a picnic table practicing social studies. I will never know what it is like to be a "common person" - a nameless member of the 3 billion impoverished, an average Homo sapien - my situation in Uganda has no permanence. A "common person" is nearly always permanently impoverished. So I remind myself, again, that living in poverty than living among the poverty-stricken is very different. I would be able to touch it when I catapult a malnourished kid into the air, but not able to feel or understand it when I catch him or her.
So I can come away inspired and passionate and perhaps lessen my grip on the weapons of privilege - economic privilege, racial privilege, sexual privilege - but I cannot enter the world of poverty in the same way that Gerald will more than likely not venture beyond the invisible line enclosing his village. [John described the wonder and awe about traveling to Masaka for the very first time (a city the size of Schenectady) - he described the bushes flying past the car window, the awe of being in a taxi (it currently costs $1.25 to travel to Masaka), and he remembers talking about his trip to Masaka for a year after it happened. Most kids never make it to Masaka - the twenty mile trek insulates the kid's rural lives.] Utah Phillips describes this struggle to give up the weapons of privilege in his song Anarchy, calling it the most worthwhile struggle in his own life. So if cold showers are the beginning of this struggle, I may be on the right path.
In mission trips to Farmington, Maine I helped build roofs, put up dry wall, paint, plaster, and do finish work around windows with some of my closest friends. We quickly found that while working for people in poverty, we received much more than we gave. We learned to build and met truly interesting people every year. On my last trip before college I worked for a one-legged WWII veteran full of stories. There was a woman named Minnie who made homemade donuts for her painting crew. Another year there was homemade, homegrown strawberry rhubarb pie (strubarb) from an old couple realizing their dream of building their own home. In Uganda I've met the crazy man down the road, Ugandan students, political canvassers, and clan elders. Learning directly from people, I believe, is the most effective way to learn. So the cultural knowledge I will come away with will more than outweigh my meager contributions.
Of course I want to help and I want to be a social entrepreneur. Becky and I are beginning to find ways we can help. It is difficult - we are isolated by language, separated by color, embedded in a new and almost surreal culture and landscape, and have been slow to learn the magnitude of the problems and available resources. In short, it has been a real struggle to find a niche as the only mzungus within tens of miles. But we are beginning to make progress - isolating problems and possible solutions as "entrepreneurs," volunteering or finding meaningful work where possible, and slowly learning a language and culture that has been a tremendous barrier to our progress.
As we begin to attack problems I am beginning to see that what I do here will be very helpful, but will only attack the symptoms. We are beginning to envision programs to attack educational shortfalls and malnutrition inequalities, but even if these programs spread to every corner of the world they would not attack the underlying political and economic conditions that created these inequalities. So it is good to be entrepreneurial and work to advance societies, but we also have to look at our condition and look at the machinery behind it (or the oil between the gears?). Uganda is helping me understand my own condition much better, I am learning valuable cultural lessons, and beginning to apply my strengths and time to advance this community. In all of these lessons I am overwhelmingly on the receiving end and I think the real entrepreneurship will come when I apply these lessons in the year and years to come.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Around Ddegeya
Ddegeya Village, from the highway, looks like every other village along Masaka Mbarara Road. From the paved highway there are a handful of buildings painted red and white with MTN (the main telephone company, which, last week, subscribed its millionth customer), Zain, or Warid (also phone companies). The buildings are generally 20 feet wide with a couple of entrances to stores selling bananas, soap, bread, bananas, pancakes (kabalagala), etc. with a couple 10 x 10 foot apartments in the back. If the village has power, it is usually these shops that have it. There are a couple centers in Ddegeya - the center by me sells bananas and pancakes and has no power. The center about one kilometer down the main road sells all kinds of odds and ends and has power (and the barber shop).
On the road is the sign for the Engeye Health Clinic. From the main road, Engeye is about 50 meters down a dirt road, which, I'm told, leads eventually to Rwanda. The homes surrounding the clinic are mostly made with sticks and mud with grass roofs, but some are nicely finished with mud bricks and tin roofs. The main road sees mostly petrol trucks, a handful of personal vehicles (some of which are very nice), taxis, and the occasional UN vehicle. The dirt road is well trafficked with a pedestrian, bicycle loaded with bananas or water, or motorcycle flying by every couple of minutes. The road is in pretty good shape as far as a kilometer down from the clinic.
Engeye is situated on top of a hill about 300 feet tall. Between the main road and the clinic there is a dirt path down to the open water hole where we (and everyone else in Ddegeya) get our water to wash our clothes, selves, and dishes. This path sees people constantly streaming by from 6:30 AM to 7:30 PM. The well water ranges from mostly clear to very brown with algae constantly present.
Hills and Bananas with a touch of Geology
But Ddegeya and the rest of the surrounding villages are really about hills and bananas. The hills are like ripples radiating from Masaka with a hill a few hundred feet tall every couple of kilometers (mostly aligned north-south). Trucks barely climb the hills - they are steep - and occasionally grind to a halt. I have picked up a few rocks mostly because Professors Rodbell and Shaw left an impression on me when we picked through rocks in Australia. I think that the rocks are some kind of intrusive igneous brand with a lot of iron (the soil is red, red, red). Uganda is, according to the 6th grade science text a big plateau with hills jutting out of it. To the southwest where Congo and Rwanda meet Uganda there are the Rwenzori Mountains (and, supposedly, a tribe of hunter-gatherers). From the main road you will, almost invariably, see mud huts surrounded by banana trees, followed by a small trading center with red and white painted buildings, followed by mud huts and banana trees...
But the villages are very alive. Pick a dirt road and you will likely see planters pouring sweat into the ground as they soften it with a pickaxe and a hoe. Goats criss cross with kids chasing after them. Chickens and young children run free. Well dressed men and women often move with bananas (bananas or plantains) or water. Women carry the heavy stuff on their heads, somehow, and men usually have bicycles with racks that must be circa WWII. People stop and say hello - "Oli Otya, Sabo?" (How are you sir?) To which I reply the only way I know how, "Balungi, nnyabo. Osiibye otyano?" (Good, maam, how are you this afternoon?).
Eucalyptus trees are found in patches and I think are often cut down for firewood or building supplies (timber is very expensive here). When I think about the trees I kind of think about the Malthusian trap; many of the families can't afford coal and almost no one can afford propane so the kids are sent to scavenge for wood. Since I see kids as young as two taking part in getting supplies, they became useful to the family at an early age, helping the family. But all the growing families seem to be in competition for the villages resources. It scares me that the water level at the bore hole rises and falls several inches per day and that the thickets of trees are getting scarce here. Anyways, like in Australia, Eucalyptus trees have vertically hung leaves which allow them to avoid the intense equatorial sun at noon and instead catch the less intense morning and evening sun, which minimizes evaporation in areas where water is limited. The leaves are hard and woody with a fiber called lignin, which allows the leaves to last a long time - eucalyptus trees are adapted for dry, hot climates. Every once in awhile I see a patch of really big cacti. All over, especially throughout the valley beneath the clinic, there are "mini hills" that range from one to four times my height - these pimples jutting from the landscape are apparently from ants and termites, which I will be dining on in the coming weeks (I've been told).
Food
The people plant mostly bananas, but also have cassava, yam, tomato, sweet potato, irish potato, mango, jack fruit, pine apple, coffee, beans, onion, eggplant, cabbage, greens, peanuts, and so on. The people rely on their gardens for nutrients, so the more diverse the agriculture the less problems with sickness. Fertilizers come from the cattle ranchers that dominate the valley below the clinic, but unfortunately many cannot afford enough fertilizer to grow peanuts, beans, and vegetables, so kwashiokor is pretty typical in kids.
The staple foods are matooke (steamed plantains), posha (corn flower and water that is heated and stirred until it turns into an airy paste) or rice with either beans or peanut sauce. Some families likely have to make do without peanut sauce or beans, because that stuff has to be bought at the market when it is out of season and most people's profits come from the extra produce they sell. Becky and I also get cassava, yams, greens, potatoes, and eggplant to supplement the "staple" lunch and dinners and fruit with bread and fake butter for breakfast. It seems simple and bland, but I really feel like a king when I bring out bread, butter, tea with sugar, and pineapple for breakfast. To me, it is somewhat embarrassing to have some of these non-necesities (bread, butter, pineapple most mornings) when there is so much poverty around. When we have big work days, Hudson would often cut open a fruit or some sugar cane as a snack or we can pick up some pancakes (these are small fried corn flour patties) or bananas.
Overall
So in general, if we were to summarize Engeye it is at the top of a hill with a paved road running east-west along the north side of the clinic and a one lane dirt road running north-south on the west side of the clinic. To the east is a grassy valley (and further, another hill). To the west is the town center about a kilometer away. The nearest large trading center is Kinoni, 6 kilometers east. The nursing school is in Kyetume 20 kilometers west and Masaka is 30 kilometers East. Surprisingly, the climate in Kyetume is much more arid that Ddegeya, with less rain and a lot of dust. The school and Bunyere Village (no trading center) is across the road about a half kilometer northwest (Ddegeya runs West from Engeye). Another village, Nakateete, with no trading center is a kilometer south. In all of these places, you will see bananas, hills, and planters.
On the road is the sign for the Engeye Health Clinic. From the main road, Engeye is about 50 meters down a dirt road, which, I'm told, leads eventually to Rwanda. The homes surrounding the clinic are mostly made with sticks and mud with grass roofs, but some are nicely finished with mud bricks and tin roofs. The main road sees mostly petrol trucks, a handful of personal vehicles (some of which are very nice), taxis, and the occasional UN vehicle. The dirt road is well trafficked with a pedestrian, bicycle loaded with bananas or water, or motorcycle flying by every couple of minutes. The road is in pretty good shape as far as a kilometer down from the clinic.
Engeye is situated on top of a hill about 300 feet tall. Between the main road and the clinic there is a dirt path down to the open water hole where we (and everyone else in Ddegeya) get our water to wash our clothes, selves, and dishes. This path sees people constantly streaming by from 6:30 AM to 7:30 PM. The well water ranges from mostly clear to very brown with algae constantly present.
Hills and Bananas with a touch of Geology
But Ddegeya and the rest of the surrounding villages are really about hills and bananas. The hills are like ripples radiating from Masaka with a hill a few hundred feet tall every couple of kilometers (mostly aligned north-south). Trucks barely climb the hills - they are steep - and occasionally grind to a halt. I have picked up a few rocks mostly because Professors Rodbell and Shaw left an impression on me when we picked through rocks in Australia. I think that the rocks are some kind of intrusive igneous brand with a lot of iron (the soil is red, red, red). Uganda is, according to the 6th grade science text a big plateau with hills jutting out of it. To the southwest where Congo and Rwanda meet Uganda there are the Rwenzori Mountains (and, supposedly, a tribe of hunter-gatherers). From the main road you will, almost invariably, see mud huts surrounded by banana trees, followed by a small trading center with red and white painted buildings, followed by mud huts and banana trees...
But the villages are very alive. Pick a dirt road and you will likely see planters pouring sweat into the ground as they soften it with a pickaxe and a hoe. Goats criss cross with kids chasing after them. Chickens and young children run free. Well dressed men and women often move with bananas (bananas or plantains) or water. Women carry the heavy stuff on their heads, somehow, and men usually have bicycles with racks that must be circa WWII. People stop and say hello - "Oli Otya, Sabo?" (How are you sir?) To which I reply the only way I know how, "Balungi, nnyabo. Osiibye otyano?" (Good, maam, how are you this afternoon?).
Eucalyptus trees are found in patches and I think are often cut down for firewood or building supplies (timber is very expensive here). When I think about the trees I kind of think about the Malthusian trap; many of the families can't afford coal and almost no one can afford propane so the kids are sent to scavenge for wood. Since I see kids as young as two taking part in getting supplies, they became useful to the family at an early age, helping the family. But all the growing families seem to be in competition for the villages resources. It scares me that the water level at the bore hole rises and falls several inches per day and that the thickets of trees are getting scarce here. Anyways, like in Australia, Eucalyptus trees have vertically hung leaves which allow them to avoid the intense equatorial sun at noon and instead catch the less intense morning and evening sun, which minimizes evaporation in areas where water is limited. The leaves are hard and woody with a fiber called lignin, which allows the leaves to last a long time - eucalyptus trees are adapted for dry, hot climates. Every once in awhile I see a patch of really big cacti. All over, especially throughout the valley beneath the clinic, there are "mini hills" that range from one to four times my height - these pimples jutting from the landscape are apparently from ants and termites, which I will be dining on in the coming weeks (I've been told).
Food
The people plant mostly bananas, but also have cassava, yam, tomato, sweet potato, irish potato, mango, jack fruit, pine apple, coffee, beans, onion, eggplant, cabbage, greens, peanuts, and so on. The people rely on their gardens for nutrients, so the more diverse the agriculture the less problems with sickness. Fertilizers come from the cattle ranchers that dominate the valley below the clinic, but unfortunately many cannot afford enough fertilizer to grow peanuts, beans, and vegetables, so kwashiokor is pretty typical in kids.
The staple foods are matooke (steamed plantains), posha (corn flower and water that is heated and stirred until it turns into an airy paste) or rice with either beans or peanut sauce. Some families likely have to make do without peanut sauce or beans, because that stuff has to be bought at the market when it is out of season and most people's profits come from the extra produce they sell. Becky and I also get cassava, yams, greens, potatoes, and eggplant to supplement the "staple" lunch and dinners and fruit with bread and fake butter for breakfast. It seems simple and bland, but I really feel like a king when I bring out bread, butter, tea with sugar, and pineapple for breakfast. To me, it is somewhat embarrassing to have some of these non-necesities (bread, butter, pineapple most mornings) when there is so much poverty around. When we have big work days, Hudson would often cut open a fruit or some sugar cane as a snack or we can pick up some pancakes (these are small fried corn flour patties) or bananas.
Overall
So in general, if we were to summarize Engeye it is at the top of a hill with a paved road running east-west along the north side of the clinic and a one lane dirt road running north-south on the west side of the clinic. To the east is a grassy valley (and further, another hill). To the west is the town center about a kilometer away. The nearest large trading center is Kinoni, 6 kilometers east. The nursing school is in Kyetume 20 kilometers west and Masaka is 30 kilometers East. Surprisingly, the climate in Kyetume is much more arid that Ddegeya, with less rain and a lot of dust. The school and Bunyere Village (no trading center) is across the road about a half kilometer northwest (Ddegeya runs West from Engeye). Another village, Nakateete, with no trading center is a kilometer south. In all of these places, you will see bananas, hills, and planters.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Contacting Becky and Steve
So Becky and I get requests for contact information pretty regularly and it can be tough to respond via facebook and gmail sometimes. So, if you were looking for our address...
Stephen Po-Chedley
c/o John Kalule
PO Box 26592
Kampala, Uganda
I think it is three US stamps for a letter - write air mail on it. We love letters and usually have time after dark to reply (my grandma gives me daily updates on ducks in a nearby pond - loving it).
Our phone number is 256 779175450. 256 is the country code, but people have been telling me Skype (www.skype.com) make it very simple to make calls at 15 cents per minute over the internet. Otherwise, I think you dial 011 256 779175450 to call. I had wanted to call some of you back home, but the phone card company that was semi-reasonable seems to have abruptly stopped working after I bought a couple months of talk time...we are going to try to get our money back next week.
The time difference is 7 hours (Noon in NY is 7PM here). The best time to call is 12pm-3pm on weekends(evenings in Uganda) when we will try to keep the phone on, but anytime between 11PM and 3PM you can reach us if the phone is on.
Stephen Po-Chedley
c/o John Kalule
PO Box 26592
Kampala, Uganda
I think it is three US stamps for a letter - write air mail on it. We love letters and usually have time after dark to reply (my grandma gives me daily updates on ducks in a nearby pond - loving it).
Our phone number is 256 779175450. 256 is the country code, but people have been telling me Skype (www.skype.com) make it very simple to make calls at 15 cents per minute over the internet. Otherwise, I think you dial 011 256 779175450 to call. I had wanted to call some of you back home, but the phone card company that was semi-reasonable seems to have abruptly stopped working after I bought a couple months of talk time...we are going to try to get our money back next week.
The time difference is 7 hours (Noon in NY is 7PM here). The best time to call is 12pm-3pm on weekends(evenings in Uganda) when we will try to keep the phone on, but anytime between 11PM and 3PM you can reach us if the phone is on.
Friday, September 05, 2008
Fall Begins in New York
So everyone is getting ready for fall and school, which makes me a little nostalgic -missing soccer and autumn, but I am lucky to be able to see the sun directly overhead and rise from both the north and the south at the same place (see second blog in July for location of Ddegeya).
I posted a lot today. Pictures are located in the blog from May 1. I had to archive them because it would take me too long to get to your comments otherwise. Wanted to show you all a sample of what I am seeing here. Also, below, is a long blog about development from my perspective.
Becky and I are semi-autonomous. Becky got to Kampala today, by herself, and I got to Masaka by myself today. Masaka is 30km west of Ddegeya Village and Kampala is a few hours northeast. I piled in with 9 others, an elderly man on my lap and made it here pretty easily, which is nice. The only problem is that the people who sit on my lap (I am bigger than most people here so I am always folded into the back with people on top of me) always seem to sit directly on my femoral artery with their muscly-bony asses. By the time we get to Masaka I cannot feel my leg at all (no exaggeration here). Luganda is getting better, but it is complicated with five tenses and a lot of exceptions. We will probably never be fluent here, but we will be able to talk to kids. On September 1, I had a sort of Helen-Keller-at-the-water-fountain-moment when a niece of John was talking to me in Luganda and I actually understood. She usually trails around me blabbing on and on, "Becky agenda wa? Njagala kwela wansi. Tugende kwoza? ..." to which I reply, "You really think so? I mean, I swore Bush wouldn't win the last election and I was pretty sure he couldn't win in 2000. Well Victoria, if you say Obama, I will have to trust that...Good point, but what about the second derivative test?" She never sees the humor.
We have not been incredibly busy the last week (two trips into Masaka in the last week), but I think next week will be very busy. Construction is resuming on the clinic and with John back we will be working on a lot of administrative stuff. I will be alone teaching in Kyetume at the nursing school tomorrow and students will be coming in the afternoon to ask chemistry, physics, english and math questions. The questions are tough, I have not seen them in years, but I like rederiving the formulas at night (they can never remember the formulas). I was a little too proud when I remembered the definition of a derivative. It is good for the soul as Professor Seyffie Malekia always said. I have been somewhat starved of news and information so I have to make my own statistics (As of April I will have spent 3.0 percent of my life in Uganda, 1.1 percent in Australia, 0.2 percent in New Zealand, and 0.2 percent in Canada). I would kill for a physics textbook. I have been reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, which is good, but we are in reconstruction, which can be a little bland. We will also be starting a couple mentoring programs at the clinic to help with school work in the afternoon and to help adults learn English at night. This morning and the last few days we filled in some major potholes and redirected water so the rains are less of a problem. We have had a couple hard rains, but so far I am unimpressed (I may be miserable later). Next week, we begin work on the Engeye garden. Looking forward to what should be a busy few months (until the school goes on holiday in December).
I also recalled a riddle from my Australia blog that no one has answered - so I challenge you all (this will hold you over until my next post). I have 12 coins. One of the coins weighs slightly more or less than the other 11. Using a balance (the one with two sides) just three times, tell me which coin is different and whether it weighs more or less. Bilal, I am counting on you...
Okay, I have a bunch of unwritten blogs for you to look forward to including: a description of Ddegeya, profiles of different people, more on food, coffee!, population, and interesting trends I have noticed at Engeye in the plot of "Water fetched over Water Consumed" (Bilal can hardly wait and Chad would love to find flaws with another poor student's graphs). Thank you all for reading - I love the comments and I will try to answer them in the comments section. Thinking about all of you back in school (and grad school). Until next time...
I posted a lot today. Pictures are located in the blog from May 1. I had to archive them because it would take me too long to get to your comments otherwise. Wanted to show you all a sample of what I am seeing here. Also, below, is a long blog about development from my perspective.
Becky and I are semi-autonomous. Becky got to Kampala today, by herself, and I got to Masaka by myself today. Masaka is 30km west of Ddegeya Village and Kampala is a few hours northeast. I piled in with 9 others, an elderly man on my lap and made it here pretty easily, which is nice. The only problem is that the people who sit on my lap (I am bigger than most people here so I am always folded into the back with people on top of me) always seem to sit directly on my femoral artery with their muscly-bony asses. By the time we get to Masaka I cannot feel my leg at all (no exaggeration here). Luganda is getting better, but it is complicated with five tenses and a lot of exceptions. We will probably never be fluent here, but we will be able to talk to kids. On September 1, I had a sort of Helen-Keller-at-the-water-fountain-moment when a niece of John was talking to me in Luganda and I actually understood. She usually trails around me blabbing on and on, "Becky agenda wa? Njagala kwela wansi. Tugende kwoza? ..." to which I reply, "You really think so? I mean, I swore Bush wouldn't win the last election and I was pretty sure he couldn't win in 2000. Well Victoria, if you say Obama, I will have to trust that...Good point, but what about the second derivative test?" She never sees the humor.
We have not been incredibly busy the last week (two trips into Masaka in the last week), but I think next week will be very busy. Construction is resuming on the clinic and with John back we will be working on a lot of administrative stuff. I will be alone teaching in Kyetume at the nursing school tomorrow and students will be coming in the afternoon to ask chemistry, physics, english and math questions. The questions are tough, I have not seen them in years, but I like rederiving the formulas at night (they can never remember the formulas). I was a little too proud when I remembered the definition of a derivative. It is good for the soul as Professor Seyffie Malekia always said. I have been somewhat starved of news and information so I have to make my own statistics (As of April I will have spent 3.0 percent of my life in Uganda, 1.1 percent in Australia, 0.2 percent in New Zealand, and 0.2 percent in Canada). I would kill for a physics textbook. I have been reading A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn, which is good, but we are in reconstruction, which can be a little bland. We will also be starting a couple mentoring programs at the clinic to help with school work in the afternoon and to help adults learn English at night. This morning and the last few days we filled in some major potholes and redirected water so the rains are less of a problem. We have had a couple hard rains, but so far I am unimpressed (I may be miserable later). Next week, we begin work on the Engeye garden. Looking forward to what should be a busy few months (until the school goes on holiday in December).
I also recalled a riddle from my Australia blog that no one has answered - so I challenge you all (this will hold you over until my next post). I have 12 coins. One of the coins weighs slightly more or less than the other 11. Using a balance (the one with two sides) just three times, tell me which coin is different and whether it weighs more or less. Bilal, I am counting on you...
Okay, I have a bunch of unwritten blogs for you to look forward to including: a description of Ddegeya, profiles of different people, more on food, coffee!, population, and interesting trends I have noticed at Engeye in the plot of "Water fetched over Water Consumed" (Bilal can hardly wait and Chad would love to find flaws with another poor student's graphs). Thank you all for reading - I love the comments and I will try to answer them in the comments section. Thinking about all of you back in school (and grad school). Until next time...
A Tale of Two Cultures: Ddegeya, Uganda and American
Everyone is going back to Kampala this weekend (Becky, John, Lawrence, Hudson) so I am taking a few hours in Masaka to get to e-mails I have been putting off and updating the blog, which has been tough the last couple weeks. This is a long essay. If you don’t feel like reading it, a shorter one will appear in the Concordiensis on September 21. Also, important I am going to respond to questions/comments, so if you commented recently, there is probably a comment waiting for you in the comment section of the post you commented on. This blog pulls extensively from Bill McKibben's Deep Economy.
Uganda, a landlocked nation in sub-Saharan Africa, is at a sort of transition point in its development. Power lines follow the road and soar above the hillside dotted with banana plantations, but rarely connect villages to the hydroelectric dam. 70 percent of the country's population lives rurally as subsistence farmers, but it is not a shock to see a handful of these planters wielding cell phones. The Ugandan people likely have to take the phone to the next village over to charge, since power is very limited, but cell phones and power lines hint at the developing "modernity." Most of the younger kids can only manage a few phrases, but "I want to go to America" or "I want to live in America" is widespread in village vocabulary. As the appeal of “modernity”, development, and globalization sinks its roots into Uganda's hilly soil, we can simultaneously rejoice and lament. Yes, “modernity” means better transportation, better medicine, better schools, better nutrition, and better water, but it can also be devastating to a village life characterized by community, simplicity, sustainability, varied culture, and sharing.
Varied Culture
Take culture, which is often slowly tugged away by "modernity." Christianity and Islam are slowly uprooting the pre-European religion in southern Uganda of worshipping small, natural Gods such as trees or rain. Similarly, the people here no longer wear traditional clothing. Instead, nearly all adults are well dressed in khakis and a button down shirt or a dress. The radio playing local Ugandan made music is frequently interrupted by Shakira, Shaggy, Alicia Keyes, Celine Dion, and the like. Some children run around without shorts or pants, but others have shirts adorned with "Minnesota Vikings" or "Porn Star." The same children, in the local primary school, are not allowed to speak the local language, Luganda, but instead must learn English, a language which their parents likely do not speak. Ddegeya Village is dotted with banana plantations, mud huts, and dirt roads carrying bicycles, but homes are now built with mud bricks and the dirt roads also carry peachey peacheys (motorcycles). Even community structure is giving way to change. After observing a family conflict being resolved by the clan's elder, it was quipped that this sort of respect and reliance on elders is beginning to fade. It's hard to say that culture is eroding away for the worse, but it is certainly less varied.
If the United States sets any precedent, indigenous people and culture can assimilate to the culture of development, be removed, or face genocide (or all of the above, as the Cherokees did in the 1820s)1. Pre-European contact, different tribes and clans dotted Uganda with unique languages, customs, and governments, but it is now complicated to tell what tribe someone belongs to - everyone has been branded a Ugandan. As in the United States, Ugandans have deep national pride for what they call “the pearl of Africa.” In the United States, the woman who invented the baby carrying backpack is celebrated as a social entrepreneur, but after one week in rural Uganda you are sure to see women carrying infants using a two-dollar blanket. There is value in cultural variety. Symbolically, gardens and plantations in Uganda are rich with coffee, banana, plantains, mangoes, tomatoes, potatoes, jack fruit, avocado, peanuts, maize and more. Visit a farm where produce in the United States is produced and you are likely to see a monoculture. Development in many ways smashes cultural variety.
Community and Sharing
One element of rural Uganda that is still very much intact is the sense of community and sharing. If a family is having a hard time producing enough food, the neighbors will allow the family to work some of their land. Even land divisions are less obvious; there are no white picket fences - property divisions are often marked instead by foot trails, regularly funneling visitors through a Ugandan's land. Visiting a neighbor is not just 20 minutes of small talk as you borrow his shovel. Neighborly visits frequently last hours. Families travel far to see each other every few months. Aside from family and neighbors, the villagers share their crops with visitors, instead of bringing them to the market, despite having incomes of less than two dollars per day. Within the family, bonds are close. Eight-year-old girls carry around infants, helping to raise their siblings. Brothers and sisters play together rather than participate in sibling rivalry. Even when kids fight - viciously and hard - they are arm in arm walking up the dirt road a few minutes later. We have spent nearly 99 percent of our existence, as a species, in small bands of egalitarian, hunter-gatherers. It is no wonder there is a natural propensity towards community2. We have even made physiological adaptations geared toward community. "Those with rich social networks are four times less likely to come down with illness," people over 80 with poor social networks are 60 percent more likely to develop dementia, and people with large social circles are 23 percent less likely to develop coronary artery disease3.
Development, at least in the United States, has evolved into a wave of individualism. We can see the individualism as people walk by on their cell phones, with their iPods, or tune into a favorite video game or television station. Web pages, television, music, and other media can be personalized to an individual. Personal vehicle ownership is highest in the United States. We truly are an army of one. What could demonstrate community more than packing 11 people into a "public taxi" with a stranger on your lap, as they do in Uganda? As Bill McKibben states, "We surrendered a fixed identity - a community, an extended family, deep and comforting roots - for, quite literally, a chance to make something of ourselves4". US workers between 1973 and 2000 added 199 hours to their annual work schedule in order to advance themselves5. Americans have isolated themselves, literally, as the average population density has dropped by more than 50 percent from 1920 to 1990 (while the population doubled)6, Americans spend less time with family and friends7, and between 1974 and 1994 frequent visits to neighbors fell by about ten percent8. The culture of hyper-individualism has evolved into tremendous inequality and greed. The CEO who made something of him or herself makes 200 times that of the average worker9 and Americans earning between $50,000 and $100,000 donate two to six times (in percentage) more than those who make more than 10 million dollars (with the exception of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett)10.
Cultural Sustainability
The prospects of cultural sustainability in the United States and Uganda are distinctly different. Societal sustainability is an important consideration given the UN Millennium Ecosystem Report which starkly states, "human actions are depleting Earth's natural capital, putting such strain on the environment that the ability of the planet's ecosystem to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted11". In Uganda, most families have six or more children who begin to contribute very early. Children at age three or four emerge from their mud huts at sunrise to carry a half gallon or a gallon of water, by age 10 or 11 they are pushing 220 pounds of water uphill on a rickety bicycle. As a result of all of these children helpers, the population is exploding exponentially. In the meantime, climate change in the tropics is not well understood. But this is a culture of hearty people: they each survive on less than five gallons of water per day (compared to over 100 gallons in the United States); few have vehicles and those that do usually share; per capita electricity consumption is about two orders of magnitude smaller in Uganda; Ugandans often rely on natural fertilizers rather than fertilizer derived from the fossil fuel intensive Bosch-Haber Process (as large farmers in the United States do); and Ugandans know exactly where their crops come from (their back yard or local market) and what to do if Mother Nature is slow in delivering rain or sunshine. The oil and water that have provided the cheap labor of American expansion are facing simultaneous depletion in the coming decades and precious metals, minerals, and natural products and services are being exploited faster than they can regenerate. It is a battle of increasing persons in Uganda versus increasing material wants in the United States. Neither system works out in the end, but the cultural shock is less likely to occur where the people do not rely on oil's cheap labor and do not take water for granted. Ugandan women carry 45 pounds of water uphill, on their head - they are unlikely to waste that water away. Similarly, Africans pay dearly for oil, spending roughly 80 percent of export earnings to import oil, so for the average Ugandan oil is too expensive and is not used (gasoline is about $6.95 USD)12.
Simplicity
Ugandans, in many ways, live simpler lives. Ugandan children often entertain themselves not with an iPod, but an expired bicycle tire or with a string and a soda bottle trailing behind. A soccer ball is a nearly infinite source of entertainment. One 6th grade student recently celebrated his 14th birthday by eating a big dinner of matooke (steamed plantains) and peanut sauce and going to bed early. His satisfaction was bubbling as he explained his birthday and, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned that his parents also bought him a coke, which is a day's salary for most in this region. There is a sort of simplicity, joy, and freedom that emanates from the villagers in Ddegeya, Uganda. The response to, "What do you like to do in your freetime?" is generally something like talk with friends, dig in the garden, help my grandmother, study, play football [soccer], or, if the Ugandan is from the city, they may enjoy going to the cinema with friends. Similarly, the farmers here, like Americans, work hard, but life is dictated by the rains and soil fertility. Everyone in Uganda is a weatherman with about the same miserable accuracy as American meteorologists, but life is somewhat simpler when you plant when the rains come (they can count on it happening twice per year) rather than whenever the boss calls you in to cover for someone.
Many Americans live somewhat more complicated lives, perhaps at a cost of their happiness. Americans work many hours, they overload schedules, and jam media into their lives for entertainment and to keep hectic schedules manageable. Many of our complications come from our ever-increasing material want. There is a correlation between money and happiness, but at $10,000 per capita income the correlation stops 13. The percentage of Americans who find themselves happy with their marriage, job, home, and life in general has steadily decreased in decades since the 1950s14. Working more hours to attain more material wealth, we have not freed ourselves of want, despite being the pinnacle of "modernity."
A New “Modernity”
Despite decreasing happiness in the United States, long hours, and a culture that cannot persist without wearing out the environment, it would be shortsighted to declare one society better. It isn't surprising that many Ugandans yearn to see America. "Mzungus," whites, come with their digital cameras, laptops, university educations, books, vitamins, malaria prophylaxis, and paper which allow them to instantly and easily recite facts, record data, learn, teach, entertain and stay healthy. Children in Uganda, though safe enough in their community to wander away from home at age three, still wander with distended bellies, typical of kids with kwashiokor (a type of malnutrition). It may cost a family a week or more of earnings to pay off the debt from inevitable bouts of malaria. Further, that family may need to walk two or three kilometers to be treated for these diseases. AIDS leaves orphans and disrupts the economy with a plaguing prevalence of 6 percent. While you may meet new friends in a bus that is overfilled and hot - it is still expensive and hard to use, especially for the millions in extreme poverty (incomes of less than $1.08 per day). Families still have to foot part of the bill to get kids through 7th grade and there is little support for kids who wish to go on to secondary school.
While Ugandans are kind, have rich communities, varied culture, and live off the land sustainably, they still have unmet needs. Despite their outward happiness, there is suffering. As Hudson Nsubuga explains, "Someone may appear happy, content, but may be suffering deeply in our culture." It has been estimated that Uganda would need 1.9 billion USD per year for 10 years to alleviate the worst issues of gender inequality, health, water, slums, energy, roads, hunger, and education15. While this seems like an incredible amount of money, the tax savings that went to the top 0.2 percent of Americans during first term Bush tax cuts would more than foot the bill. Instead, nearly 50 percent of tax revenues go to the military with 0.2 percent to humanitarian aid (largely concentrated in Iraq). As a people, Americans could stand to share some of the accumulated wealth in exchange for community, simplicity, and sustainability. We also have an obligation. Not only are we donating less than a third of pledged humanitarian aid (a gap of roughly 40 billion dollars), but we also contribute to many problems that are facing and will face developing nations. Climate change, as one example, will bring on increased mosquito borne disease, killing as many as 184 million Africans by the end of the century16. As Bill McKibben puts it, "If you are a poor person living in China, you have plenty of friends and family around all the time; perhaps there are five people in your living in your room. Adding a sixth doesn't make you much happier. But adding enough money that all five of you can eat some meat from time to time pleases you greatly. By contrast, if you live in a suburban American home, buying a new coffee maker adds very little to your quantity of happiness17". A truly modern culture will have to blend the technologies that advance people, with the cultural variety that dots the globe.
[1] Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. Harper Perennial, New York: 2003, pg. 136 - 138.
[2] Robert Sapolsky, "A Natural History of Peace," Harper's, April 2006.
[3] Erin Middlewood, "Social Medicine," Orion, September - October 2005, p. 26.
[4] McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy. Holt, New York: 2007, pg. 96.
[5] Juliet Schor, "The (Even More) Overworked American," in John DeGraaf, Take Back Your Time (New York: 2003), pp. 4, 10.
[6] Rifkin, European Dream, pg. 155.
[7] McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy. Holt, New York: 2007, pg. 100.
[8] Layard, Happiness, 104 - 95.
[9] Frank, Luxury Fever, pg. 33.
[10] David Cay Johnston, "Study Shows the Superrich Are Not the Most Generous," New York Times, December 19, 2005.
[11] Shankar Vedantum, "Report on Global Ecosystems Calls for Radical Changes," Washington Post, March 30, 2005.
[12] Sawin, "Mainstreaming Renewable Energy," pg. 13.
[13] Diener and Seligman, "Beyond Money," figure 2, p.5.
[14] McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy. Holt, New York: 2007, pg. 100.
[15] UN Millenium Project 2004.
[16] McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy. Holt, New York: 2007, pg. 21.
[17] McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy. Holt, New York: 2007, pg. 108.
Uganda, a landlocked nation in sub-Saharan Africa, is at a sort of transition point in its development. Power lines follow the road and soar above the hillside dotted with banana plantations, but rarely connect villages to the hydroelectric dam. 70 percent of the country's population lives rurally as subsistence farmers, but it is not a shock to see a handful of these planters wielding cell phones. The Ugandan people likely have to take the phone to the next village over to charge, since power is very limited, but cell phones and power lines hint at the developing "modernity." Most of the younger kids can only manage a few phrases, but "I want to go to America" or "I want to live in America" is widespread in village vocabulary. As the appeal of “modernity”, development, and globalization sinks its roots into Uganda's hilly soil, we can simultaneously rejoice and lament. Yes, “modernity” means better transportation, better medicine, better schools, better nutrition, and better water, but it can also be devastating to a village life characterized by community, simplicity, sustainability, varied culture, and sharing.
Varied Culture
Take culture, which is often slowly tugged away by "modernity." Christianity and Islam are slowly uprooting the pre-European religion in southern Uganda of worshipping small, natural Gods such as trees or rain. Similarly, the people here no longer wear traditional clothing. Instead, nearly all adults are well dressed in khakis and a button down shirt or a dress. The radio playing local Ugandan made music is frequently interrupted by Shakira, Shaggy, Alicia Keyes, Celine Dion, and the like. Some children run around without shorts or pants, but others have shirts adorned with "Minnesota Vikings" or "Porn Star." The same children, in the local primary school, are not allowed to speak the local language, Luganda, but instead must learn English, a language which their parents likely do not speak. Ddegeya Village is dotted with banana plantations, mud huts, and dirt roads carrying bicycles, but homes are now built with mud bricks and the dirt roads also carry peachey peacheys (motorcycles). Even community structure is giving way to change. After observing a family conflict being resolved by the clan's elder, it was quipped that this sort of respect and reliance on elders is beginning to fade. It's hard to say that culture is eroding away for the worse, but it is certainly less varied.
If the United States sets any precedent, indigenous people and culture can assimilate to the culture of development, be removed, or face genocide (or all of the above, as the Cherokees did in the 1820s)1. Pre-European contact, different tribes and clans dotted Uganda with unique languages, customs, and governments, but it is now complicated to tell what tribe someone belongs to - everyone has been branded a Ugandan. As in the United States, Ugandans have deep national pride for what they call “the pearl of Africa.” In the United States, the woman who invented the baby carrying backpack is celebrated as a social entrepreneur, but after one week in rural Uganda you are sure to see women carrying infants using a two-dollar blanket. There is value in cultural variety. Symbolically, gardens and plantations in Uganda are rich with coffee, banana, plantains, mangoes, tomatoes, potatoes, jack fruit, avocado, peanuts, maize and more. Visit a farm where produce in the United States is produced and you are likely to see a monoculture. Development in many ways smashes cultural variety.
Community and Sharing
One element of rural Uganda that is still very much intact is the sense of community and sharing. If a family is having a hard time producing enough food, the neighbors will allow the family to work some of their land. Even land divisions are less obvious; there are no white picket fences - property divisions are often marked instead by foot trails, regularly funneling visitors through a Ugandan's land. Visiting a neighbor is not just 20 minutes of small talk as you borrow his shovel. Neighborly visits frequently last hours. Families travel far to see each other every few months. Aside from family and neighbors, the villagers share their crops with visitors, instead of bringing them to the market, despite having incomes of less than two dollars per day. Within the family, bonds are close. Eight-year-old girls carry around infants, helping to raise their siblings. Brothers and sisters play together rather than participate in sibling rivalry. Even when kids fight - viciously and hard - they are arm in arm walking up the dirt road a few minutes later. We have spent nearly 99 percent of our existence, as a species, in small bands of egalitarian, hunter-gatherers. It is no wonder there is a natural propensity towards community2. We have even made physiological adaptations geared toward community. "Those with rich social networks are four times less likely to come down with illness," people over 80 with poor social networks are 60 percent more likely to develop dementia, and people with large social circles are 23 percent less likely to develop coronary artery disease3.
Development, at least in the United States, has evolved into a wave of individualism. We can see the individualism as people walk by on their cell phones, with their iPods, or tune into a favorite video game or television station. Web pages, television, music, and other media can be personalized to an individual. Personal vehicle ownership is highest in the United States. We truly are an army of one. What could demonstrate community more than packing 11 people into a "public taxi" with a stranger on your lap, as they do in Uganda? As Bill McKibben states, "We surrendered a fixed identity - a community, an extended family, deep and comforting roots - for, quite literally, a chance to make something of ourselves4". US workers between 1973 and 2000 added 199 hours to their annual work schedule in order to advance themselves5. Americans have isolated themselves, literally, as the average population density has dropped by more than 50 percent from 1920 to 1990 (while the population doubled)6, Americans spend less time with family and friends7, and between 1974 and 1994 frequent visits to neighbors fell by about ten percent8. The culture of hyper-individualism has evolved into tremendous inequality and greed. The CEO who made something of him or herself makes 200 times that of the average worker9 and Americans earning between $50,000 and $100,000 donate two to six times (in percentage) more than those who make more than 10 million dollars (with the exception of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett)10.
Cultural Sustainability
The prospects of cultural sustainability in the United States and Uganda are distinctly different. Societal sustainability is an important consideration given the UN Millennium Ecosystem Report which starkly states, "human actions are depleting Earth's natural capital, putting such strain on the environment that the ability of the planet's ecosystem to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted11". In Uganda, most families have six or more children who begin to contribute very early. Children at age three or four emerge from their mud huts at sunrise to carry a half gallon or a gallon of water, by age 10 or 11 they are pushing 220 pounds of water uphill on a rickety bicycle. As a result of all of these children helpers, the population is exploding exponentially. In the meantime, climate change in the tropics is not well understood. But this is a culture of hearty people: they each survive on less than five gallons of water per day (compared to over 100 gallons in the United States); few have vehicles and those that do usually share; per capita electricity consumption is about two orders of magnitude smaller in Uganda; Ugandans often rely on natural fertilizers rather than fertilizer derived from the fossil fuel intensive Bosch-Haber Process (as large farmers in the United States do); and Ugandans know exactly where their crops come from (their back yard or local market) and what to do if Mother Nature is slow in delivering rain or sunshine. The oil and water that have provided the cheap labor of American expansion are facing simultaneous depletion in the coming decades and precious metals, minerals, and natural products and services are being exploited faster than they can regenerate. It is a battle of increasing persons in Uganda versus increasing material wants in the United States. Neither system works out in the end, but the cultural shock is less likely to occur where the people do not rely on oil's cheap labor and do not take water for granted. Ugandan women carry 45 pounds of water uphill, on their head - they are unlikely to waste that water away. Similarly, Africans pay dearly for oil, spending roughly 80 percent of export earnings to import oil, so for the average Ugandan oil is too expensive and is not used (gasoline is about $6.95 USD)12.
Simplicity
Ugandans, in many ways, live simpler lives. Ugandan children often entertain themselves not with an iPod, but an expired bicycle tire or with a string and a soda bottle trailing behind. A soccer ball is a nearly infinite source of entertainment. One 6th grade student recently celebrated his 14th birthday by eating a big dinner of matooke (steamed plantains) and peanut sauce and going to bed early. His satisfaction was bubbling as he explained his birthday and, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned that his parents also bought him a coke, which is a day's salary for most in this region. There is a sort of simplicity, joy, and freedom that emanates from the villagers in Ddegeya, Uganda. The response to, "What do you like to do in your freetime?" is generally something like talk with friends, dig in the garden, help my grandmother, study, play football [soccer], or, if the Ugandan is from the city, they may enjoy going to the cinema with friends. Similarly, the farmers here, like Americans, work hard, but life is dictated by the rains and soil fertility. Everyone in Uganda is a weatherman with about the same miserable accuracy as American meteorologists, but life is somewhat simpler when you plant when the rains come (they can count on it happening twice per year) rather than whenever the boss calls you in to cover for someone.
Many Americans live somewhat more complicated lives, perhaps at a cost of their happiness. Americans work many hours, they overload schedules, and jam media into their lives for entertainment and to keep hectic schedules manageable. Many of our complications come from our ever-increasing material want. There is a correlation between money and happiness, but at $10,000 per capita income the correlation stops 13. The percentage of Americans who find themselves happy with their marriage, job, home, and life in general has steadily decreased in decades since the 1950s14. Working more hours to attain more material wealth, we have not freed ourselves of want, despite being the pinnacle of "modernity."
A New “Modernity”
Despite decreasing happiness in the United States, long hours, and a culture that cannot persist without wearing out the environment, it would be shortsighted to declare one society better. It isn't surprising that many Ugandans yearn to see America. "Mzungus," whites, come with their digital cameras, laptops, university educations, books, vitamins, malaria prophylaxis, and paper which allow them to instantly and easily recite facts, record data, learn, teach, entertain and stay healthy. Children in Uganda, though safe enough in their community to wander away from home at age three, still wander with distended bellies, typical of kids with kwashiokor (a type of malnutrition). It may cost a family a week or more of earnings to pay off the debt from inevitable bouts of malaria. Further, that family may need to walk two or three kilometers to be treated for these diseases. AIDS leaves orphans and disrupts the economy with a plaguing prevalence of 6 percent. While you may meet new friends in a bus that is overfilled and hot - it is still expensive and hard to use, especially for the millions in extreme poverty (incomes of less than $1.08 per day). Families still have to foot part of the bill to get kids through 7th grade and there is little support for kids who wish to go on to secondary school.
While Ugandans are kind, have rich communities, varied culture, and live off the land sustainably, they still have unmet needs. Despite their outward happiness, there is suffering. As Hudson Nsubuga explains, "Someone may appear happy, content, but may be suffering deeply in our culture." It has been estimated that Uganda would need 1.9 billion USD per year for 10 years to alleviate the worst issues of gender inequality, health, water, slums, energy, roads, hunger, and education15. While this seems like an incredible amount of money, the tax savings that went to the top 0.2 percent of Americans during first term Bush tax cuts would more than foot the bill. Instead, nearly 50 percent of tax revenues go to the military with 0.2 percent to humanitarian aid (largely concentrated in Iraq). As a people, Americans could stand to share some of the accumulated wealth in exchange for community, simplicity, and sustainability. We also have an obligation. Not only are we donating less than a third of pledged humanitarian aid (a gap of roughly 40 billion dollars), but we also contribute to many problems that are facing and will face developing nations. Climate change, as one example, will bring on increased mosquito borne disease, killing as many as 184 million Africans by the end of the century16. As Bill McKibben puts it, "If you are a poor person living in China, you have plenty of friends and family around all the time; perhaps there are five people in your living in your room. Adding a sixth doesn't make you much happier. But adding enough money that all five of you can eat some meat from time to time pleases you greatly. By contrast, if you live in a suburban American home, buying a new coffee maker adds very little to your quantity of happiness17". A truly modern culture will have to blend the technologies that advance people, with the cultural variety that dots the globe.
[1] Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. Harper Perennial, New York: 2003, pg. 136 - 138.
[2] Robert Sapolsky, "A Natural History of Peace," Harper's, April 2006.
[3] Erin Middlewood, "Social Medicine," Orion, September - October 2005, p. 26.
[4] McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy. Holt, New York: 2007, pg. 96.
[5] Juliet Schor, "The (Even More) Overworked American," in John DeGraaf, Take Back Your Time (New York: 2003), pp. 4, 10.
[6] Rifkin, European Dream, pg. 155.
[7] McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy. Holt, New York: 2007, pg. 100.
[8] Layard, Happiness, 104 - 95.
[9] Frank, Luxury Fever, pg. 33.
[10] David Cay Johnston, "Study Shows the Superrich Are Not the Most Generous," New York Times, December 19, 2005.
[11] Shankar Vedantum, "Report on Global Ecosystems Calls for Radical Changes," Washington Post, March 30, 2005.
[12] Sawin, "Mainstreaming Renewable Energy," pg. 13.
[13] Diener and Seligman, "Beyond Money," figure 2, p.5.
[14] McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy. Holt, New York: 2007, pg. 100.
[15] UN Millenium Project 2004.
[16] McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy. Holt, New York: 2007, pg. 21.
[17] McKibben, Bill. Deep Economy. Holt, New York: 2007, pg. 108.
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Masaka Update
Problems with the flashdrive in Masaka, so my thoughts on modernity and community will have to wait a day or so. Similarly, I was going to see about uploading photos while I am in the town, but that will have to wait.
John, the clinic manager has arrived, which is very exciting because Becky and I have ideas for projects in Ddegeya and so does John. It was a quiet week last week and it seems I was wrong about the rainy season coming early. I've been told there is a hurricane barrelling toward New Orleans... I have also heard about Obama/Biden and McCain and nobody from Alaska (actually I heard about her months ago as a rising star). Thanks Emma and Matt for the news.
More soon... other fellows I am going to skim your blogs...
John, the clinic manager has arrived, which is very exciting because Becky and I have ideas for projects in Ddegeya and so does John. It was a quiet week last week and it seems I was wrong about the rainy season coming early. I've been told there is a hurricane barrelling toward New Orleans... I have also heard about Obama/Biden and McCain and nobody from Alaska (actually I heard about her months ago as a rising star). Thanks Emma and Matt for the news.
More soon... other fellows I am going to skim your blogs...
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