Uniter Comments March 25, 2009

"There are no slumdog millionaires here - but don't feel guilty about it"

The Uniter is the official student newspaper of the University of Winnipeg and is published by Mouseland Press.

Those people

Four weeks in Uganda and I haven't left Kampala. The weeks are filled with field work and sweaty data entry, the weekends a blur of alcohol. Among the expats, everybody's got a rambling story, an explanation why, and a heart to break. It's the New York of East Africa and at some level every mzungu who stumbles into this city gets stuck here, or at least ends up leaving a piece of them behind. Welcome to the KLA.

Working in the slum is a bit like walking into a prayer service carrying a bucket of marbles on your head. Even if you don't drop the bucket, which you inevitably will, you're still going to make a scene. You walk in there and you're surrounded by 8000 of the poorest people on the planet. We're talking absolute poverty poor, households surviving on less than a dollar a day, people who have never gone to school, have never had a real job, and have experienced some of the worst things mankind has ever produced - war, rape, genocide, and the shit end of transnational exploitation. Forgotten by the rest of the world that is apparently more of a global community than it's ever been, they sit here sweltering under tin roofs held up by mud walls that are one heavy rain away from falling over completely.

You walk among them and you feel like a bastard. You're the one doing the exploitation now, taking their pictures, pretending you feel their plight. The thousands of kids who just wander around the slum all day, the kids who would love to go to school but can't, they congregate and follow. They touch you and then run away and giggle. Some strut with you, as if touching white skin gives them some kind of street cred they didn't have before. The little ones shout mzungu, mzungu. Some of them cry because their older siblings have told them that the white people will come and take them away.

Many of the women smile and wave, especially those whose lives have been touched by us. Touching lives is something I say with humility and with an air of reciprocity because our interactions here are human ones and they go both ways. We're impacting each other on a daily basis.

Some of the men are cordial and gracious. They stop and shake your hand. Others assume you're from America so some of them shout out Obama! The more cheeky let out a McCain!

Others still, yell at you or mock you by asking for money or telling you that you could never endure what they've endured. Go fuck yourself White Man, is what I imagine is running through their heads. I can't blame them. In any case, the drinking holes where local brew is served - it looks like porridge and smells like a rotten variety of such - are places to avoid if you can.

Before I left Canada I had people use such language as, So you can think you can go there and help those people?

Those people.

How about us. Help us.

We're all in this together and poverty on this scale should be of concern to everybody else in the developed and globalized world. If we really are that connected as global citizens perhaps there should be a greater emphasis on helping our global neighbors.

It's what Jesus would want. Or something.

We call it field work. As if we're archaeologists uncovering some kind of artifact. Put on your sunblock and bug repellent, go out there with your canteen full, your safari vest pocketed and your hat brimmed wide. Export some knowledge, will you. Tell them what they need to know.

It's a social science, this development work. And like any science, you've got formulas, theories, and methods of deduction. Guess and check is a good one. Only with development you're dealing with peoples lives, not trying to figure out how heavy Pluto would be in Earth pounds. Or whether not Pluto should actually count as a planet or just a big rock. Often though, especially in the academic world, development dialogue can be just as pointless.

My answer to the question/statement: So you think you can go there and help those people? was a scripted, Well no, not necessarily, but I think I can go and at least see something new and try and understand it for myself. Of course once you get here there's very little that makes sense.

Aid work is not pretty and aid dollars are not baskets of hope and change. It's a dirty, difficult, disaster of a transaction and very few aid organizations, governmental or otherwise, actually have it even partway figured out. If they do, they're most likely cornered by their donors, political realities and the frustration of dealing in undeveloped locations hampered by corruption and a severe lack of urgency, ingenuity and competence. Everything takes forever to happen here, even simple tasks such as cashing a money order or checking your e-mail.

This might be where a small organization such as the one I'm working volunteering for is somewhat of a shining light. Not that we have expedited bank accounts or broadband internet, but at least we can spend our money properly. All of our donors are small, most of them individual people. We have a staff of less than ten, all of whom either get allowances from a separate organization or don't get paid at all. All of our donations go directly to our own programs tailor-made for the local slum, which right now is either child sponsorship - paying for school fees for vulnerable children - or microfinance schemes - lending small amounts of money to households to either start up or enhance a small business so they can hopefully begin supporting themselves financially.

These are good projects administered by good people for good people - those people. Cheers to those of you who have gotten involved with what we do here.