Yesterday, I wound up a hill for 40 minutes, accompanying a young boy of the age of 6 home from school. Being my first time completing the journey, I struggled and even tripped in my sandals providing a stark contrast to Jared, the young boy who completes this journey every day barefoot so that he can attend school. It’s been 3 weeks already since I arrived, and I can’t decide whether I’ve adapted to life in Uganda quickly or haven’t adjusted at all. Contradiction is inbred into all my experiences here.
For example, I don’t feel life here is strange or foreign. Despite having a daily experience completely unlike my prior life, not much in this new routine feels alien. In fact, I feel I’ve already been present and living life like this for many months. Maybe this is just a trick of my imagination, since time inexplicably passes more slowly. Movement has undeniably slowed because objects are heavy, and motorized transport is expensive. My days are always filled with something to do even though we only function during the hours the sun is up because of a lack of electricity. It’s a conflicting feeling of having long days but no time.
When a moment for leisure arises, it always takes me by surprise as if I must have forgotten something important. With many daily chores, this scenario is more factual than imaginary. I’m not yet accustomed to the time it takes to preform chores with little water. Everyday involves fetching water, washing dishes twice, cooking and doing laundry. If I was a real Ugandan, this would also include farming. Obtaining water means lugging ~10–20 kg of water up a hill for a minimum of 30 minutes. An hour each is spent on dishes and on laundry which must be washed by hand in buckets. I have not cooked as I am not yet familiar with the ingredients, but it must be done for every meal as a lack of refrigeration makes preservation of food impossible and because the cheapest and most filling food such as posho, matoke and rice need to be boiled to be prepared.
The result is we labor all day to finish just before sunset only to have the cycle reset at sunrise. Yet the chores are always completed because we are many, so we share. It leaves me to wonder, however, how families with only parents and young children manage. The truth is the child grows old quick, where as soon as you are able, you help distribute the labor. Sometimes this is strictly along gender lines, with boys managing cattle and girls washing dishes, both barely 4 years old. But other times the line is not so straight because when you are poor, you cannot afford to follow such arbitrary gender boundaries and instead take what help you can.
The differences in agriculture between the United States and Uganda is incomparable. In the USA I lived the majority of my life never seeing the plants that any of my food comes from. Farms are massive and industrialized, filled with machinery and chemicals. Buying food means supermarkets where half the vegetables are imported, and most isles are processed food. Most meals in America, I’m not really sure where my food came from. Whereas in Uganda, almost everything I’ve eaten is fresh, literally straight from a tree. Coffee was grown by one neighbor next door and processed by another. Milk was squeezed from a cow an hour before consumption and the avocado I had for lunch I picked from the tree myself.
Everyone farms, not as a profession, but as a way of life. It literally another chore everyone does so they can eat. Only a few have plots larger than 1/10th of an acre, a plot of land big enough to sell food because the amount grown exceeds the needs of your family. While in the USA I was taught to treat plants and gardens with respect, be careful where I walk and never unnecessarily break branches off trees, the same cannot be said for Uganda. Ownership of land is not possessive, meaning I can walk through anyone’s garden without it being an insult. Trees are snapped no matter the location in a moment’s notice to become walking sticks. At first, this appeared like a disrespect for nature. But who am I to judge when I’m the one from the country where we’ve deforested 90% of our land.
I’m still learning what it really means to be poor. It’s stark to see so many young ones stop school because they cannot afford it. Tuition at the primary school founded by my NGO is ~$50 a year per child, but only about 10% of the school’s children’s parents pay the full fare. In fact, I’ve yet to met anyone here that hasn’t needed to pause or completely halt studies for lack of funds. Education here is like a road with many red lights. Every so often you’re stopped and are never quite sure when you can proceed. Only I supposed, sometimes the light never returns to green, leaving a child waiting for their education for the rest of their lives. It’s these moments when I reflect on the differences in my life in the United States and the lack of opportunities here that I feel I may not have adjusted at all.
Perhaps my body knows better as I was sick during my first two weeks here (Uganda has a flu season too apparently). I’m cured now but I felt silly getting sick so quickly and being so slow to recover thus perfectly playing the role of the weak foreigner. Even as I eventually took medicine to aid my recovery, a neighbor told me it was strange to see someone treating the flu, only reinforcing the view that I may have had too luxurious a life to ever truly adjust to life in Uganda.
My thoughts about disease here are conflicting. Disease seems abound, silently present in everything. The water could have cholera, the mosquitos malaria and the food typhoid, not to mention AIDs is still very present in Uganda. Yet, only I seem worried. My food is constantly cooked, water boiled, and my hands washed after the bathroom. For others though, Hygiene has not made its way to the mainstream in this village. No body covers their mouth when they cough. Children drink unboiled water and share cups with little concern and no reprimanding from adults. Lack of consistent water makes it too scarce a commodity for daily handwashing (not to mention the cost of soap). You greet everyone (including strangers) with a handshake, yet with nobody washing their hands this allows disease to easily prosper and travel. Getting sick so quickly was not surprising as I was surrounded by many children during flu season, but the indifference towards disease was.
Hygiene seems far from everybody’s mind and disease seems to be accepted and inevitable. The NGO founder, Jerimiah, fell ill with malaria around the same I was sick yet mentioned his sickness with a nonchalance. A similar tone was taken with the teacher who missed two days because she had typhoid. Neither went to the hospital and both continued to work through their sicknesses. Both obviously survived making me wonder what people fear if it’s not deadly diseases. As I continue to grow comfortable in my environment, I must remind myself to stay vigilant about the topic of disease. That although I see people constantly drinking unfiltered water, I cannot learn to do as they do. It teaches me that perhaps I am just lying to myself about having adapted to life here and many more shocks are yet to come.
The contradiction in my feelings and my experiences is leaving my brain confused. Should indifference towards disease be shocking or expected? Should carrying water up a hill feel normal or entirely strange? Thus, my mind keeps switching over whether my current life is an actual reality or rather a dream. At times, it feels distant and too foreign to be tangible. Sometimes, life here feels parallel, enough similarities to know this is not a dream, but enough differences to make me constantly wonder anyways.
But then I witness a universal truth that affirms reality. To me, these universal truths are feelings and desires that remain true no matter where you are or your situation. It’s a common thread of humanity and a reminder that even across the globe, we are not that different after all. I remember finding some universal truths during my time in China, like the common desires for love, prosperity for our children and good health for our family.
Last weekend, I found my first in Uganda while spending 4 hours hiking up the local hill on the steepest trail I’ve every climbed. Consistently along the way, we saw people who lived there, farmed there, carried water up that hill daily. My singular struggle was their daily existence. As a bystander, the view from that steep mountain was beautiful, utterly breathtaking. Yet, when pieced together with the difficulty of a daily existence, that hill was simultaneously perilous. There lies the first universal truth; that natural beauty is dangerous. That no matter where you are, you can regard a spectacular view and experience both wonder and terror. In United States, I feel it when I stare at the vast ocean in California or the blinding white of Michigan snowstorm. In Uganda, its green and brown. Dense forest on steep, muddy hillsides that radiate color in the rain, but makes the hilly terrain treacherous.
It was exactly during our descent from that beautiful hill that the rain began, forcing us to quicken our pace to avoid danger. Although the summit took 4 hours, the descent only took 30 minutes.
It’s during these moments of exceptional contrast that I wonder, “How? How could two vastly different lifestyles exist on the same planet?” Of course, there is no real answer to this beside the fact that the world is vast, but the question remains in another form. “How did I end up here, living in a remote village where people pile their crops on their heads to transport them up a hill?”
Then I’m reminded that this place isn’t as remote as it seems. Because even once we reached the top of the hill, we saw a house with electricity (although illegally tapped) and the homeowner wearing a Manchester United shirt, likely a used shirt imported from the west, a reflection that our worlds are already deeply connected. Even in this high hillside the children know Facebook, Honda and Coca-Cola. We both pollute, Americans with their cars and excess consumption of meat and Ugandans with their use of wood as fuel and high birth rates. The way I live my life in America already affects their lives and vice versa, especially because we live on the same planet. It is this link that brought me here.
This connection has even infiltrated our minds, shaping our thoughts of each other which becomes apparent when both sides are brought to the table. Ugandans with their strong view of westerners as just sources of money and my view of them as people without money who only need help. These preconceived notions come from the many interactions between the 2 worlds by the many generations before me. It’s the active result of the relationship of development through aid that has been happening between the West and Africa since WWII. This relationship gives the roots of these thoughts some verisimilitude but doesn’t justify their movement forward. It’s when I think about these things that the true depth of the work to be done here is revealed. Because even though I may have money and they may have many problems caused by a lack of money, simply giving won’t suffice as that’s been tried and done many times before and has only left us here. That true progress involves changing my mental attitude too, not only theirs.
Which brings me to the topic of suffering and the fact that I don’t really know what it means. Life in poverty in talked about with language implying suffering, something even this piece is guilty of. Western morality, or at least the morality I’ve subscribed too, implies an obligation to alleviate suffering. But as am I a reminded by a recent conversation here, with my intervention or not life would progress more or less the same here. That Jerimiah started his non-profit without donations, is building the school without new funding and does not yet have a verified source of income for next year’s expenditures. Despite this, work will continue to be done and the children will continue to go to school. That even if they only had one meal that day, the children still laugh while skipping rope at school, and at first this perplexed me. How can there be laughter when there is suffering?
Therein lies the second universal truth, that no matter what, life must go on. That even if you cannot afford many things, you can still find time to laugh, fall in love or perhaps even become heartbroken. I’m learning that people in poverty are resilient and find a way to survive until tomorrow, and that survival doesn’t mean a loss of emotion. Perhaps it is here where I mistook what it means to suffer; that it does not have to mean misery.
But I’m still uncertain of the true meaning. Does this leave suffering to simply mean not affording the things you need? The language of my generation has taught me that health, food, education and freedom of choice are universal human rights that everyone should have. Indeed, there are many here who struggle to obtain these universal human rights daily. They must choose between going hungry, stopping school or marrying young, and perhaps the very fact they must make these choices is suffering. That suffering does not imply an emotional state but rather the way you are forced to live your life, constantly making hard choices.
Even with all their daily struggles, however, the young still have big dreams for the future. To complete their education, to provide for their families, to fly to America in an airplane. Thus lies the third universal truth discovered in Uganda, that anyone anywhere can dream. The difference arises in how these dreams are fulfilled in a real life. In the words of Langston Hughes, “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raison in the sun, or fester like a sore and run?” My entire existence has blossomed in a land fertile for dreams to grow, a constant rain of opportunity. In contrast, the Ugandan tropics seems to dry out all hopes, leaving much ambition unfulfilled.
Having untapped ambition is especially true for the women, whose stories I’m beginning to know. Perhaps this controversial, but I believe it’s a universal truth that traditional gender boundaries limit families. The most obvious example is financially. I was sadly surprised to find that even when a woman has her own business in Uganda, it is not really hers because money should be a man’s worry. In those cases, even when she earns the money, she doesn’t have a voice in how it is spent. This itself need not be a problem. But when assessing the needs of children is also a woman’s job, the result leaves much family money mismanaged because a father will spend without really knowing the true costs for food and education for the family. Even though monetarily providing for a family is a traditional role for men, the men are never taught how to execute this role. They are never given a lesson in managing money or the cost of children, even informally from their parents. So even though they have the power to spend, they do not have the knowledge to execute it well.
I only imagine how families all over the globe might improve if they allowed themselves to step outside these boundaries and share the responsibilities of raising a family. That financial decisions are talked about between both parents or left fully to parent who is more money savvy regardless of gender. Families would be so much more efficient if completing household chores were based on who has time to do them, or even who enjoys them. I met a man here who was ridiculed for cooking, despite his obvious enjoyment of the task, because cooking is woman’s work. I’ve also met many women whose husbands sit at home, unable to find reliable work. Yet they cannot go to town and look for jobs because they must finish the chores first. I think of all the opportunities unmet because of inaction based on gender roles. While opportunities are lost for both genders, its especially true for the women who are often left dependent on men because of a lack of finances.
My time in this village has only began, and I think that’s for the best. For despite the many conversations I have, I still do not feel I understand. Some days I end conversations believing I’ve finally found the root of the issue only to be refuted the next day when conversing with someone else. The obvious source of all issues here is a lack of money, but this is only a reflection of a lack of jobs which is a more complex issue. Why are there so few jobs in villages? Is it because of low education levels? Is it because of low access to investment capital (like business loans)? Is it a lack of a market because there are not enough customers who can afford the goods businesses sell? In reality, the answer is a combination of all these factors and only further investigation will reveal how to proceed.
