The (Wo)man in the Mirror, Part 2

There’s another aspect to the idea of “starting with the (wo)man in the mirror.” This one not so warm and fuzzy, but is a personal rant of mine.

I’m saying this to all Wal-Mart-bashers and government-blamers: Individual action is powerful. Sure, you’re only one of 300 million Americans, but our country turns—politically and economically—on the sum of individual actions.

So, to all Wal-Mart bashers: vote with your pocketbooks. If you don’t like the way Wal-Mart treats its employees, don’t shop there, don’t work there, and don’t invest there. Help the spread of information, but also respect the rights of others to weigh the good and the bad and make their own decisions. (This can be applied to myriad other causes/corporations as well.)

Government-blamers are especially interesting to me. They can be found in two groups, often on opposite ends of the political spectrum—those who blame the government for doing too little, and those who blame the government for doing too much. Both are equally mistaken in my view.

We are extremely fortunate in the U.S. that the government isn’t some entity that makes its own decisions; the government is us. We have the tremendous responsibility for overseeing it. We hire our representatives with our votes and pay them with our tax money. We should guide them and supervise them, and fire them if they aren’t doing a good job. It becomes more complex when some citizens approve of and others disapprove of a leader, which is inevitable. But if you find yourself in the minority and don’t get your way, the true people to blame are your fellow citizens who see things differently, not the government, as if it were some amorphous blob or secret society.

True, it’s not a perfect system, but it’s a whole lot better than it could be. (The fact that we have elections that are completely non-violent—even when they bring new leaders with drastically different political ideologies—is a miracle in itself. If that happened in Uganda it would be monumental!) Most of the people who believe the government to be completely non-penetrable and non-responsive have never tried. Especially on the more local levels—representatives in state legislatures and city council members—many elected leaders are very responsive. They want to hear from their constituents. Opinions of their every-day constituents carry a lot more weight than those of lobbyists and special interest groups.

Anyway, that’s my experience at least. So please don’t be offended when I don’t take any government-blaming seriously until I see the blamer put in some effort.

Same thing for society-blamers. Or any kind of blamer, really. Let’s just stop sitting around and blaming others.

Okay. I’m stepping down from my soapbox.

The (Wo)man in the Mirror, Part 1

It’s grasshopper season. I just ate about a hundred of them. They’re actually really good as long as you try not to think about what you’re eating. They’re kind of like fries, but better. Except now I have an antenna stuck in my teeth! Time for some floss…

And now I’m having a Michael Jackson dance party alone in my house by lantern-light.

I had my mp3 player playing at random a few days ago when my landlord was here painting, and he told me he didn’t know any of the songs on it, so I decided to look for something he might know. “Francis, do you like Michael Jackson?” “Oh, I love Michael Jackson! I had all of his albums on cassette tape.” As each new song played, Francis called out the name of the album and the year it came out. The world is smaller than we thought!

Thus I rediscovered my liking for Michael Jackson. Especially his cheesier songs like “Heal the World” and “Man in the Mirror.” (It brings me back to elementary school!)

Which gets me thinking… how do you “heal the world, make it a better place”?

My nine months in Uganda has completely reframed the way I think about service; about charity. Until now, I believed that I could be everything to everyone. If it sounded like a good cause, why not? Then I came here and the “good causes” approaching me are endless—both because of the level of need, and because of the expectations people have when they see the color of my skin. Whether it’s kids coming to my door asking for money for school fees or founders of local NGOs asking me to connect them with Western funders, or a whole number of other scenarios, there’s a big expectation. I see a lot of people expecting the bazungu (white people) to throw money and solve every problem (or at least try).

That’s the biggest tragedy in Africa—not AIDS and not poverty—but this inferiority complex people have. How can I help your community without feeding into that?

According to MJ, “If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.” I think he’s right. When I think of the people who have made a difference in my life, they haven’t been career-do-gooders. They have just been people doing their job—family members, friends, teachers, church members—and doing it well. That’s all any of us can really do.

So I’m letting go of my dreams of going down in history with Albert Schweitzer. Here in Uganda, I’m just going to focus on being the best teacher I can be and on running the best little internet café around (as a business, not a charity). When I get home, I’m just going to do what I love and do it well, and release myself from the burden of trying to change the world.

After all, in the words of Adam Smith, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner…”

 

Checking In

It’s been a while… sorry about that! (As Ugandans would say, I’ve been “quiet” lately.)

Life here is good! I know there will still be rough patches ahead, but I’ve survived the first six months out on my own since training. I’m finally into a groove and feeling really excited about the work I’m doing.

The first few months were tough. After training, Peace Corps volunteers get sent out alone into the rural areas to work with our assigned organizations or schools. I arrived and heard about all of the great AIDS prevention work my organization used to do—the village outreaches, the radio program, the support group for people who tested HIV positive. When their last Peace Corps volunteer left, everything stopped. The grants expired. The computers got bogged down with viruses. The internet café they had opened to try to generate income closed its doors. The bank account was suspended due to inactivity. The two staff members (both are unpaid volunteers with other full-time jobs) left me alone in the office all day, somehow expecting me to get them out of this mess; to kick things back into gear.

Weeks and then months passed, and we were accomplishing nothing. Nobody would show up for our weekly staff meeting. I missed my old job back at home so much! I had a constant internal battle inside my head—if I take the reigns, write some grants, and start doing the work for them, things will probably collapse again when I’m gone, but at least the work will have continued for another two years while I’m here. Maybe that’s better than nothing? But no. My job here is organizational capacity building. I’m not going to be here forever, and If I take over, I’m undermining the organization’s capacity to stand on its own to feet.

So I decided to sit back and see what the organization does on its own, without my intervention, and try to build on that. It was so slow and frustrating, but one day in August I realized that this is just the pace that the organization moves; the level of activity at which it’s sustainable. I’m in Uganda, and people have a different sense of time and a different task-orientation. I needed to accept what I can’t change and work with what I’ve got.

But I also couldn’t spend my days in boredom, waiting for other people to come around, so I started finding a few other things to do. I started teaching math at the high school on the next hill, and I absolutely love it! I’ve also been traveling around to other schools with a few other Peace Corps volunteers putting on girls’ empowerment workshops. I’ve got a few other good projects which I’m really excited about in the works.

I find it ironic that I expected this to be a time in my life when I would selflessly give of myself, but instead I’m learning a lot about standing my ground. I’m learning how to negotiate. I’m learning about my boundaries and values and what I am and am not willing to do. I’m learning that I don’t always have to smile and nod.

So that’s my life right now. I’m glad I am where I am.

I Love You, But You’re Driving Me INSANE

Punch was clearly too young to be taken from his mother. When I took him home, nobody seemed to know his exact age, but the closest estimate I got was one month. He cried nonstop, except when I was holding him and when he was sleeping (which was never more than one hour at a time). And he couldn’t eat dog food yet. Only milk.

Adorable, definitely. His puppy eyes always looked so cute and sad. But after two sleepless nights and a smelly house from his messes, I was at my wits’ end.

I had left Punch tied in the front yard while I went out back to wash the dishes which had been piling up, when a neighbor boy stopped by and said, “Now, why do you make this puppy cry like this?” And I said, “I know, he hates being tied, and I hate making him cry, but if I let him loose he’ll wander away.” “But he’s very young. He should still be with his mother.” SOLD!! Taking him back to his mother for now and taking him when he’s a little older—that was exactly what I was secretly wishing for, but I just needed someone else to suggest it in order to know that it was okay.

So I carried Punch back into town. The kids weren’t around, so I went around back and put him in the dog house where his brothers and sisters were sleeping. When I went home without him, I didn’t feel the loneliness I thought I’d feel: just pure relief.

Math and Puppies

A few of my favorite things!

Starting next week, I’m going to be teaching math at the high school on the next hill! I’m pretty psyched about it. It will take some getting used to the Ugandan school system. No text books at all—not even for the teachers to reference. No calculators. No set curriculum. I asked the Head Teacher what subjects I should teach, and he told me I could teach them anything I want. Interesting…

And I got a puppy last night. As I was carrying him home, a funny old man who passed me along the road asked me if I had named him yet. I said no, and asked if he had any suggestions. He told me I should name him Punch. So Punch it is! Punch has turned out to be a bit of a handful. I hardly slept at all last night because he was whining and scratching at my bedroom door. If there are any puppy experts reading this post, please lend me your advice! He is adorable though.

Sunny Days, Nothin’ But Clouds Away

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve checked in, but everything’s going great!

I was in Kampala the end of August for a Peace Corps Uganda All-Volunteer Conference. Such conferences are a bit rare in our world of budget cuts, so we were all pretty lucky to have this opportunity! It was fantastic to spend time with 130-ish committed and talented colleagues, to share ideas and strategies for making a difference in this country. I came away with lots of good ideas, but the one I’m most excited about is a computer training curriculum (computer training is a hot commodity here, and my organization has a nice computer lab!) that integrates HIV/AIDS prevention messaging aimed at high school students.

Right after the conference, Spencer arrived! Spencer is my good friend from ASU who will be visiting for a while, staying in the next village down the road. We’re really excited to work on some projects together that will benefit the community in our neck of the woods.

We were looking for some good local food before boarding the van to go upcountry, and we found this awesome, crowded allyway filled with people and big pots of soups and meat bubbling over charcoal stoves. We enjoyed rolexes (no, not the watches!) for lunch—made of chapati (a flat bread made from flour and water) rolled with fried eggs, onion, tomato, and cabbage inside).

The next day, when we were back at our village, my co-worker dropped by the house to invite us to a party at a local high school. They were swearing in their newly-elected student body officers. We showed up expecting a regular, American-style party with mingling and food and music. Little did we know what was in store! As we arrived, the whole school was seated in the assembly hall, and we were ushered in to sit in the front of the room and introduced as honored guests. They began with a several-hour-long Catholic mass, and then we were asked to introduce ourselves and say a few words to the students, and then there were speeches from the students and faculty. When the mass was finally over, they asked us to stay for lunch and then open the dance. They played some hip hop music and told Spencer and I to start dancing and the rest would follow. We started dancing and all the students went crazy! It’s so strange to be considered automatic dignitaries here, just because of the color of our skin.

The sisters from the convent invited us to come celebrate the 4^th of July with them. We ate amazingly delicious hamburgers, played with sparklers, and played some dominoes. It was a good time! It was also visitation day at the school, so we visited some of the kids whose parents weren’t able to make it and had a good time. The school the sisters run is definitely impressive. It’s in a remote location out in the bush, but the sisters do so much to make sure the children receive a high quality education.

Life is good!

Nonprofit Myths in the Developing World

I keep bumping into a few attitudes that just make me want to hit my head against the wall:

1. “We can’t do anything until we get more grants.” No way! There are plenty of things small, start-up organizations can do without grants! Gain knowledge. Talk with people. Build a network. Become experts in their field. Find out what similar organizations are doing in other places. Develop new strategies.

   Plus, one of the worst things a young nonprofit can do is waste all of its time searching for and applying for grants which aren’t likely prospects, or even worse, receive grants while lacking the infrastructure to manage them, and as a result leave a bad taste in the mouths of would-be future funders.

    

2. “Raising money locally is just extorting the poor. All of our funding should come from abroad.” I think there is so much power and pride that comes when a community can come together to meet its own needs, even on the smallest level. Outside funding always comes with strings attached, no matter what. My dream is to help the most marginalized people in this community—the rural poor, the people living with HIV/AIDS, the people suffering from domestic violence—to find their own voice and their own power. Without that key element, African countries will always be at the mercy of the big international donors.

    

3. “People are used to getting handouts (mosquito nets, sugar, etc.) when they come to meetings. Our meeting attendance has been dwindling since we started sending them home empty-handed. We need to find something to give people so they will come and get the psycho-social support they need.” The fact that people won’t come to our meetings without receiving a handout means that our meetings aren’t providing them with the psycho-social support they need, or not enough of it to be worth the trip in from the village. If we can’t revamp the meetings to actually meet the needs of the clients, it would be better to cancel the meetings altogether than to pour resources into incentives for people to come.

Pictures from my long walk home

The 15-ish mile journey began in a jungle-y area…

…through a few tiny towns and villages…

…up higher to a beautiful view of the horizon…

…past children in their school uniforms…

…and finally home!

Hospitals, Concerts, Nuns, and Goats

Saturday:

After riding two hours in a “small taxi”—a circa-1990 Corolla carrying about 12 passengers (I kid you not! They even squish two people into the driver’s seat)—I arrived in a nearby town to visit my friend Irene in the hospital. Irene’s story is so sad! She was a nurse in our health center. Somewhere in the process of taking the blood of an HIV-positive patient, an open wound on her finger came into contact with infected blood. She rushed to the nearest hospital to begin taking an HIV prophylaxis. She had been taking the drugs a few days when she developed Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare but life-threatening drug reaction. She has been in the hospital for over a month. I had spoken with her on the phone a few times and was glad to finally be able to go see her in the hospital. When I first saw her, I startled. She looked like a burn victim, with open sores covering her entire body. She wasn’t able to talk the first couple of weeks because of the sores in her mouth, and her family was afraid she would die. Her condition is slowly improving, but she will likely have severe scarring and she still can’t eat solid foods. I wanted to do something for her but I just couldn’t think of what. I gave her the novel I had packed to read on my weekend trip, feeling a little bit silly but hoping it could at least stave off some boredom. I left feeling so sad, and then later angry. If she had been wearing gloves when she came into contact with the blood, none of this would have happened. Does our clinic not supply its nurses with gloves? I intend to investigate.

Next I sat in regular “taxi”—a 15-passenger van—for another four hours to the next big town, where I met up with another Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). We continued on another taxi for another hour to another town, where we met up with a group of about eight more PCVs for dinner and then a fun concert. This town is near some tourist attractions, so it has a lot of “muzungu comforts.” I actually had a cheeseburger! Even though it was no comparison to Hires back at home, it was fantastic!

The concert was fun and interesting. The main performers were two popular Ugandan singers, Radio and Weasel, who do kind of reggae-ish music. There is definitely a different performer-crowd dynamic around here. I’ve decided that whatever developing countries may lack in political democracy, they make up for in crowd democracy! The warm-up bands were local musicians singing along to pre-recorded backup music, but after a song or two, people started shouting and someone from the crowd would jump up on stage and point to his/her watch, signaling that it was time for the next act. Eventually, Radio and Weasel came on and the crowd wetnt into hysterics! People were jumping up on stage and giving the performers money, taking pictures with them, and dancing with them. The guard standing on stage with an AK-47 (these guards are ubiquitous in Africa) did nothing, and the musicians didn’t seem to mind. It was definitely a concert managed by the people, for the people! After the concert, we saw Radio and Weasel as we all were leaving. Weasel saw us and shouted out “Muzungus!” My wonderful and hilarious PCV-friend Miranda shouted back, “You call me madam, not muzungu!” Way to sass off to a celebrity, Miranda! J

Sunday:

I left town in the morning to journey back home, taking another way back. Another hour on a “taxi”, then an hour and a half of waiting, and then what should have been three hours in a “small taxi”, except the fact that we had a flat tire and the car was overheating along the way. Three hours quickly turned into five. Finally I made it to another village about 15 miles from mine, where there is a convent with some fantastic Ugandan and American nuns! They also have two young German volunteers teaching in the school run by the convent, and an American volunteer, Nick, who has been here for a few months setting up a microfinance organization. It was Nick’s last night in town, so he invited me to come join them for his goodbye dinner. Dinner was great—Mexican food! We all played cards and dominoes for a few hours, and then I stayed up late talking and relating experiences with Nick. The sisters were kind enough to let me stay in one of the empty teacher rooms.

Monday:

I walked down the main road after breakfast, intending to catch another “small taxi”, but when I reached the road, I wondered how long it would take to walk. The area is beautiful and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect—sunny with a cool breeze—so I started making my way…

Two and a half hours later, I heard a goat in distress. I rounded the corner to find a goat hanging from a rope by the neck off a drop-off, one foot above the ground. The goat had been tied on the flat land above, but had fallen off the drop-off and the rope wasn’t long enough for the goat’s feet to touch the ground. I looked around to make sure nobody was watching and might think that I was trying to steal their goat, and then I picked up the goat and put it back on solid ground above the drop-off, but the goat just laid on its side, gasping for breath. I thought, “Goat, I don’t know what else I can do for you!” But luckily, the goat finally started breathing normally and stood up.

An hour and a half later, I finally made it home!

Thrills

“It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go—let it die away—go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow—and you will find you are living in a world of new thirills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life… It is much better to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back to the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.”

-C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p. 111