A People-Centered Approach...and just a little patience

So, it’s a little weird.  Here I am, in Uganda working for the Peace Corps.  I have to admit that I didn’t expect to be doing the great majority of my work in an office, sitting at a desk in front of a computer.  Yet, here I sit.  In fact, I’m in the office right now, starting this post as I wait for Max, my counterpart, to arrive.  Today, we’re working on updating the brick business’s big, master accounting spreadsheet, getting all of the numbers from our most recent projects into the right places.  It is fun guiding and helping Max along as his computer skills continue to improve, and he seems to think that I’m a pretty good teacher, mainly because I go relatively slowly.  Admittedly, sometimes that’s because he’ll ask me something that I don’t know, and I need to figure it out on the spot…so far, I’ve done okay with this.

Anyway, the point is that, at least in some cases in Uganda, it might be a little different than what somebody might consider a “traditional” Peace Corps experience.  I think at least part of this is due to the fact that the Peace Corps operates a little differently in Uganda than in many other countries.  From what I’ve heard, volunteers in some other countries are placed in a community, and it is up to them to help members of the community identify resources, needs, opportunities, and so on, and then to work together to see what could be done to improve everyone’s well-being.  On the other hand, in Uganda, while all of us are certainly living in Ugandan communities, each one of us is placed with a specific organization…it could be a community-based organization (usually very grassroots and run by Ugandans in the community), a governmental organization (volunteers might be working directly with local or town council chairpersons), or an international non-governmental organization (which could range in size from an organization that works with a few schools in Uganda, like Positive Planet, to the Ugandan branch of the Red Cross).  It’s a testament to the sheer number of organizations in this small country (about the size of Oregon) that the Peace Corps’ approximately 170 in-country volunteers are all placed with them, and I think there are very few organizations that get more than one volunteer.  So, for example, in my case, I don’t always spend a lot of time just trying to figure out the local community, because my organization already has projects going, and in some cases I’ve just needed to jump right in and start working.

Some students looking out the window at Lwamaya Primary School

This isn’t to say that I never get to leave the office.  Over the past week or so, I’ve had a few opportunities to visit tank construction sites and one of Positive Planet’s schools, and I’m hoping that the frequency of these “site visits” continues to go up.  Last Thursday, for example, I went with some of the masons to Lwamaya Primary School, which, if we could all pull out our maps of Uganda, is in between Masaka and Mbarara…give or take, maybe about an hour and a half or so away from Kalisizo.  We went there with a trainer, because the masons are going to be expanding their construction knowledge with these interlocking soil bricks.  They’re going to be building a three-room structure at Lwamaya, which will contain a classroom, a library, and a small store, and this construction project will function as their introduction to building structures other than circular rainwater tanks.  This visit was basically to get an idea of the site, to draw up a rough plan of the structure, and to begin to estimate the amounts of materials that will be needed.  I talked to one of the teachers while we were there, who told me that the primary school, which contains seven grade levels (P-1 through P-7), had about 400 students, 6 permanent classrooms, 1 temporary classroom (until this new structure is done), two rainwater tanks (one of which isn’t collecting any water because the gutters weren’t installed very well), three sets of five latrines (boys, girls, and staff), and a little shack that functions as the kitchen, so that the kids can get lunch.

A big group of students outside the school

My point in telling you all of this is that, considering the fact that I spend a lot of my time working on a computer in an office, and the fact that so much of development work at the macro-level involves numbers, percentages, and statistics on a much bigger and more complex scale than the ones I just listed, it sometimes might be easy to forget the importance of each individual person.  For example, let’s take malaria, which, as I’ve said before, is a pretty big problem in Uganda.  I don’t know the current infection rate or prevalence rate of the disease, but let’s assume it’s relatively high.  Now, that in itself is a tragedy, because malaria is preventable.  It is transmitted by a certain type of mosquito (and only the females of this type bite humans, and they usually only feed during the night), so, if we can eliminate the breeding grounds for those mosquitoes and prevent them from biting us, we can prevent the disease.  There are a number of things that can help to accomplish this.  Obviously, sleeping under a mosquito net is huge.  In addition, using insect repellant and wearing long sleeves and pants during the evening hours can help to stop mosquitoes from landing on us and biting us.  Then, we can work to reduce any standing water nearby, because mosquitoes breed in standing pools of water.  We can cover our latrines and add stuff that will help to dry them out (like wood chips or charcoal ash).  And, on top of all of that, every volunteer in this country is on some type of malaria prophylaxis drug, which should prevent malaria, even if we are bitten.  So, it should be possible to reduce the incidence of malaria quite a bit.  But, what I really want to get at here is this:  if we reduced the incidence to, say, 0.0001% of the Ugandan population, we would probably consider that an incredible success, and it would be.  But, we cannot forget those people who are in that 0.0001% (which would be about 34 people)…they might not see things in the same way.  To them, the achievement might not seem quite so great.

More kids at a window (hopefully I didn't cause too much of a disruption)

Maybe the complete elimination of these types of diseases is an idealistic fantasy (though I hope not), but my point is that we need to be careful about seeing people in terms of numbers, percentages, statistics, etc.  And beyond that, we can’t just see people in one dimension.  Especially on the large-scale level, we inevitably lump people into categories: impoverished people, sick people, malnourished people, etc., and while these issues might have a large impact on their lives, they do not necessarily define their entire lives.  Every single person has hopes, dreams, likes, dislikes, virtues, faults…just like I do.  Their dignity and inherent value as unique individuals is of prime importance, regardless of the work we do.  We need to be careful and ensure that we don’t reduce these people to numbers and statistics on a graph or in a table.  The life or death, the sickness or health, the happiness or sadness or one individual is incredibly important to that individual and those close to him or her, and so it should be important to us, even if that individual is in the smallest of minorities.  Much of what I wrote in the last post was about our similarities and what draws us together.  This time, in the spirit of seeing the uniqueness of each individual, of seeing not what separates us or pulls us apart, but what creates variety in our lives, the rest of this post will consist of stories about my experiences over the past few weeks with some very unique, interesting, and inspiring individuals.

And even more students standing outside of the school

About a week and a half ago, a 20 year old young woman named Grace stopped by my house with her brother.  It was obvious that they had something very important that they wanted to ask me, and were maybe a little embarrassed or afraid to ask.  After sitting for several minutes (and eating a couple of bananas with them), they finally started to tell me how Grace had been in a motorcycle accident, and she showed me a scar on her wrist.  She had gone to see a doctor and had gotten some treatment, but that visit had basically eaten up all of their money.  Basically, Grace needed a job.  Well, it just so happened that I had been thinking of trying to find someone to wash my clothes for me, because, even though I had gotten a lot of practice during homestay, I knew that a Ugandan would do a much better job than I would.  So, I threw that out there as an option.  Eventually, after a little negotiation, we ended up deciding that Grace would come every Monday, wash my clothes, clean the floors (they can get kind of dirty, what with the mud and dirt and such), wash the dishes, and cook us something for lunch, and I would pay her a pretty decent wage for this work.  Plus, since she only comes once a week, she has the rest of the days to find other ways to make a little more money.

Some students in the P-7 class

Now, immediately after Grace and her brother had left that evening, I wasn’t sure if I had done the right thing, or if maybe I should have tried to go a different route.  Well, her first day was last Monday, and let me tell you, I think it will work out well.  First of all, she did a great job…she wasn’t satisfied until every single thing in my house was clean.  The stove and the mini-fridge, for example, which had built up quite a bit of grime during their two years with the volunteer I replaced, were practically sparkling.  People that came to my house in the days after that all were amazed at how nice and clean the house looked…I might even go so far as to say that Mom would have been proud to see this change from the college dorm rooms that accumulated quite a mess every single semester.  And she can cook, too!  She made spaghetti (yeah, I can actually get spaghetti noodles really easily here…although the Ugandans don’t really differentiate one pasta from another…they’re all “macarones”), and it was really, really good.  And we even had a nice conversation and bonded a bit over lunch.  She was telling me about her family, and I was doing the same.  Eventually, she asked me, as many people have, if I had a wife.  And I gave her what has become my standard answer of “No, I am still too young.  I am not yet ready for a wife.”  Then she actually said that her mother always asks her when she’ll get married and start having kids, and we found a little connection, as I told her how my dad often asks me, “Any girlfriends yet?”  (yes, that’s a plural “girlfriends” by the way).  By around 3:00, she was all done with everything, I gave her the money, and she headed off.  Then, on Thursday evening, she stopped by as I was cooking dinner…After being surprised by the massive mountain of assorted vegetables I was cooking to go with my rice, she showed me a little present that she had brought from the market, I guess to thank me for giving her some work…three avocadoes and one big papaya, which I was very excited about.  It was just a very kind and thoughtful gesture, one which she obviously didn’t need to do (cleaning and cooking lunch was more than enough), but it just showed me how great people can be, and how generous people can be, even if they don’t have a whole lot.

A really good view from the school (the photo doesn't quite do it justice)

In the morning on that day (Thursday), as I was toasting a piece of bread, my propane tank ran dry.  Seeing as Jonathan, the volunteer before me, hadn’t filled it in a while, this was not incredibly unexpected, but I basically needed to spend the morning going to the Shell Station in Masaka to get a full tank.  After lugging this empty propane tank to the main taxi stop in town (which wasn’t a bad workout, let me tell you), I was, as usual, crammed into a Toyota Corolla with about 9 other people…4 people in front, 6 in back.  As you might guess, this requires some people in the back to sit on others’ laps, and at least one person in the front to sit right in the middle, with the gear shift shoved into your leg.  That was my spot…obviously, Toyota Corollas were not designed to allow a person taller than 6 feet to sit in this spot.  My neck was a little sore when I got out, after having to hold my head sideways for most of the half hour ride.  The ride back was a bit more comfortable, since I was in the back…you’re more packed in, but there’s no gear shift in the way to cramp your style.

Anyway, the can of sardines public transportation system is not the point of the story.  The point is that, even as I was crumpled into somewhat uncomfortable positions, I was struck by how open and willing to talk to “strangers” most people in the car were.  Maybe it has something to do with the fact that one person is sitting on another’s lap, but I found it kind of neat that people, who I don’t think had met before, were greeting the other people in the car (including me) and just having conversations.  I don’t have much experience with big city public transportation back in the US, but, in general, I’m not sure if you’d find that kind of willingness there.

Okay, now you may have just noticed that I’ve started falling into a trap.  I just made a generalization.  It’s so easy to do as we look at certain things in Uganda and try to compare them to things in the USA, but we always have to remember that generalizing can be dangerous.  Once I start down that road, it becomes very easy to assume that a Ugandan will act a certain way, will do something in a way that’s different and not how I would do it.  It becomes easier to begin to create a divide, an “us” and “them”.  Sure, we are all different, and there are certain things that Ugandans are likely to do differently, but that doesn’t change the fact that, at the most basic level, we are all connected.  For one thing, we all want to feel valued, to feel that people care about us.

The trainer (yellow shirt) and two of our masons at the school

As I was walking home from the office Thursday afternoon (Thursday was apparently a very eventful day), a group of guys across the street shouted to me, “Jangu” (“Come”).  Now, obviously, it might not always be a good idea to walk over to a group of guys who want you to come that way, regardless of where you are.  But, I felt okay about this group, so I did go over, and we spoke a little Luganda, then a little English, and finally I told them that I needed to go to the market (in Luganda).  As I left, one of the guys said, “Thank you for greeting us.”  In other words, thank you for taking the time to come over, to show us that we are at least a little important to you.  Now, my thought process as I had walked over to them contained nothing about making them feel valued, but that’s how it was perceived.  And that’s all they wanted.  They just wanted to know that this person, who might look a little different, cares enough to say hi.  Thankfully, a very little bit of language can go a long way.

Now, let’s go in the other direction.  On a day that was not Thursday, I walked passed a woman who asked me for money.  I told her that I was not able (we’re actually not really allowed to…), and she walked away.  As is usually the case when someone asks me for money, I started to walk away, frustrated with the fact that we live in a world where this happens quite a lot, wondering what the answer is, what the right thing to do is.  But then, another woman came up to me and started talking to me in English.  Her name is Lydia, and she showed me where she lives, introduced me to two of her kids (Lydia and Rachel), told me that her son (Earnest, who’s away at school), has hair like mine (a statement at which I expressed profound disbelief, as I have not seen a Ugandan man with hair longer than a half an inch), and showed me her cow (which needed to have its horns cut at the top because they were so big).  Anyway, it was a really nice conversation, and she even had her kids calling me “Uncle John” by the end of it.  I don’t know if she had seen my exchange with the first woman and wanted to lift my spirits or just randomly decided to start talking to me, but it did help me to feel a little better.  And it kept me from falling into the trap, from starting to make the generalization that Ugandans see me and immediately think that I might be a source of money.  Lydia’s greeting helped to show me that I am valued, just for being a human being.

There’s also another girl who I think I’ve become pretty good friends with.  Her name is Monica, and she is in Senior 3 (after Primary 7, the next step is to go to secondary school, which starts at Senior 1, or S-1).  Monica just amazes me, in general.  First of all, her English is really good.  I can have a fairly in-depth conversation with her in English, and she definitely understands what’s going on.  Second, from what she tells me, her work ethic is incredible.  Apparently, she wakes up at like 3 in the morning to study, goes to school at 7, finishes the school day around 5, and then does chores and probably studies some more.  She said that she usually goes to sleep around 11.  In other words, she’s getting like 4 hours of sleep a night.  Now, when I was living in homestay, it became pretty obvious that sleep schedules in Uganda are usually a bit different than in the US (I would hear people out in the kitchen at like 2 or 3 in the morning, doing who knows what), but 4 hours a night is tough, especially if you do it for several days in a row (this happens to be known by me through experience).  It’s pretty obvious that Monica works really hard, and, though I don’t know for sure, I’m assuming that she’s a really good student.  After finishing secondary school, she would really like to go to the US and study to become a doctor.  (Actually, she first told me that she wanted to be a singer like Rihanna, but then, after pressing her a bit, she said that she actually wants to become a doctor.)  She has hopes and dreams, just like me, and she is willing to work so hard to try to make them happen.  And yet, even though she works really hard, she still makes time to stop by and say hello, to take a few minutes to go with me to the Saturday market and make sure I don’t buy bananas at the “muzungu” price, to let me know that I have a friend.

Okay, now this is not to say that my life here has been completely devoid of frustrations.  Let me just give you the most difficult, ongoing situation.  As you might have read before, the kids who live in my compound are a little tough to deal with (did you read the post about me getting locked in the latrine by one of these kids?).  On the positive end, they do not always shout Muzungu at me now…the frequency of “Johnny” has eclipsed the frequency of “muzungu”, I think.  But, I’ll just come out and say it, they don’t behave very well at all (and this is not a generalization about Ugandan kids…remember little Hosea?  He was awesome).  They have taking a liking to hitting me, for one thing.  I’ve tried quite a few things…Telling them not to do that in Luganda, raising my voice (Luganda and English), and trying to slowly explain to them that, in general, hitting isn’t good (something like “Do you like when someone hits you?  Well, I don’t like it when you hit me,” translated into Luganda).  This has not worked very well.  They also try very hard to get in my house.  I make it pretty clear that I’m trying to set a boundary at my front door, and that I don’t want them coming into my house.  (Among other reasons, some of these kids get insanely dirty…like, literally covered with dirt.)  Even when I have the door closed, they’ve actually opened it and gone in.  Now this becomes really difficult, because I have to get them out of my house without hurting them, and there are usually like 3 or 4 of them at once.  As I try to carry, push, pull, or otherwise move them out, I have to be very careful that they don’t fall or hit their head, which is pretty tough as there repeated attempts tick me off more and more.  And occasionally they even resort to biting…yeah, some of them have bitten my arms.  Not hard, and no skin has been broken, but I obviously don’t want them to do that, and want them to realize that doing that is pretty freaking disgusting.  Sadly, I don’t currently have the vocabulary to say “pretty freaking disgusting” in Luganda.  But, honestly, so far, these kids have definitely been the biggest test of my patience.  Yesterday, I didn’t handle it incredibly well.  I actually yelled at them  (which doesn’t work, I’ve learned…they just think that’s funny), and one of the kids did fall down as I was trying to get him and two others out of my house.  He was fine, but it scared me, and, when I finally did get into my house and locked the door, I felt really, really bad.  Today I think I did a bit better…I’m trying to get into the habit of locking my door all of the time, whenever I go in or out, so that, maybe, eventually they’ll learn that they can’t open the door and get in, so they’ll stop trying and banging on the door.  And I was very calm as two of them were hitting me today, trying to gently tell them to stop.  I did raise my voice a bit when they started with the biting, but I kept it under control.

After yesterday’s little display, I’ve realized that it might not be such a bad idea to consciously search for and rely on a little bit of divine guidance (realizing, of course, that divine guidance can come in the form of advice or help from a person).  Before leaving, a good friend told me that this experience would really challenge me and force me to rely on God.  While I’ve tried to consciously keep God in my life here, I certainly haven’t done a perfect job, and there are days when my mind just isn’t at that place.  But this little series of events has pushed me back toward that place a bit, indeed, almost forcing me to beg for more patience and peace.  And I have been.

And, wouldn’t you know it, that friend had given me some Bible verses to read while I’m over here.  The one on the top of the pile this morning was Galations 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  As I said, today went a little better.  Ask, and ye shall receive, I guess...Thank you so much, my wonderful friend.