Halfway

At this point I am about halfway finished with my African experience. By recognizing that I’m not saying that I am eager to finish up and that I’ve been homesick. I am looking forward to the comforts of Oregon, especially when the only consistent daily reminder of home is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The power has become increasingly unreliable and I have given up on the internet. Luckily, the organization that we have been consulting has just completed a new office with satellite internet and is looking into getting a generator. But in the meantime I can only reflect on and some of the things that I have learned without the ability to download any new songs or check my Facebook (really roughing it).

The rainy season here is like a mildly wetter version of the summer in Portland. This is awesome because it’s sunny for a few days, rains like crazy for a few hours, then back to being sunny. I’m hoping to come back with a bit more color than my friends who have been around Oregon all summer. We are planning a trip down to Tanzania and the beaches of Zanzibar Island, which I couldn’t be more excited for, so being back home with good color is almost assured. Derek and I have become a bit bored with the Ugandan scene and are looking forward to hammering down our business plan and taking off to see some more interesting parts of the region. In the guidebook we have the pages that are filled with vibrant color pictures are dominated by scenes from Tanzania and Kenya so we have been getting the feeling that there is much more around than the blandness of Northern Uganda.

People who work for NGOs abroad are downright badasses. The guys that we are living with who work for the International Lifeline Fund are complete soldiers, at least in my sense of the word. They are willing to put up with bad living and working conditions, the constant threat of fraud, and human management chaos in order to really create a positive impact on the world. One of the guys who we are living with, Ben, has been working in Afghanistan, Sudan, Malaysia, to name a few and continues to not be completely burnt out from the work. Most of the NGO people we have met take everything in stride, whether it was attacks on them in Darfur or terrible food in Kabul, and work without a lot of recognition. They aren’t doing it necessarily for the good of a nation or group, but work towards the betterment of all mankind. They have stories that range from life-death situations to stories that are completely hilarious and will never be replicated. It has been pretty cool to be able to hear some of the experiences that they share with us and you get a little jealous of all the experiences they have had. Veejay, the deputy-director of ILF and a complete badass, said to “get the f*** out and travel as much as you possibly can”. No matter where I end up getting locked-down in my career I am going to make sure to keep getting out and seeing the world. It seems like that is the best way to put your own life into context no matter what you end up doing as a career.

Overall; the largest problem with Africa has got to be the complete lack of public infrastructure and absence of faith in the government. It’s not that people talk about the government frequently and with a lot of distaste; it’s that it takes a lot of prompting to get people to do so. Things are very different when you have discussions with people from different areas about the federal government. Up here in the North there is a complete lack of trust of the current President because he is from the South. In a conversation with a Southerner who currently resides here in the North I learned that, from his perspective, the Northerners are only concerned with fighting each other. The tribal conflicts here are the main focus whereas the work of the central government is trivial because they feel no real connection to the leadership in Kampala. After going around to villages and constantly having them ask for lower fuel costs, more hospitals, better education, and clean water you begin to get the sense that they don’t think the government will do much for them. Driving around and seeing the state of the roads, (the worst of any country I have ever been in) it seems like the absence of services that we figure to be so basic of a government (like road repair) shows a complete failure of a government to work in the best interest of its people. I am in no way saying that faith in the government will change things for the people and that “get out the vote” programs will change anything. They won’t. What I’m saying is that in a modern era where Africa is becoming more relevant in the global economic scene, the countries that will succeed on this continent are the ones that can become successful in helping the everyday worker complete their basic task and add to the production of the country. If roads are poor, people are sick, higher education is difficult, it doesn’t matter how well you pitch foreign investors into coming to your country. Globalization has created native pockets around the world of multi-national corporations and the easier that nations can help multi-national corporations create their vision in a local context (hiring locals, seeing that nation as a potential market, etc.) the more willing companies will be to relocate to that nation. And it isn’t the recognition that these problems will help their nation because the leaders certainly know.

It’s in the actual implementation and, in Africa, that’s where most of the things fall down. Ideas and planning here need to have direction and goals because people will take advantage of vagueness and weakness. Having concrete plans and wisely investing at the start are the best way to carry an organization forward in Uganda. Anything that is kept as a concept here surly will fail.