Torn

There is a young lady I know, Catherine, that has become a close friend. After siring 6 children by one wife, her father married a second wife, who bore him another 7 children. He neglected the first wife's children and allowed his second wife to chase them away from the home. My friend, at the tender age of 13, was thrown out of the home. She subsequently left school and went to work as a maid, where she was routinely abused. She contracted HIV.
Two years later, a priest heard about her plight, had her connected with the hospital, and sponsored her stay in school. She is now becoming a nurse and is healthy and productive. Her father is now trying to re- establish his relationship with her and ask her for money.

This story is so typical that I am almost bored typing it. Any Peace Corps volunteer would be bored to read it. It is the story not only of Catherine but of half of the children I run across and many of those seeking sponsorships.

I love Catherine herself and want the best for her: from that perspective I am happy she was sponsored by some white person somewhere.
There are millions of parents, however, like her father. They just have children and believe that a muzungu somewhere will care for them. As long as this keeps happening, nothing changes.
And what happens to the role of the government and civil society when foreigners continue to support inadequate institutions and policies instead of allowing Ugandans to challenge their own institutions?

I am torn. Every day, these questions come up in a million ways. From, should I help with the money for doing X at the school? Yes there is no money, but the parents don't send money because they think the sisters have a lucrative muzungu connection. To, should I sponsor so and so when I leave? She is a good girl, great student, but her parents should also have some part in it.

The easy solutions are the worst: 1. Those poor Africans! I want to care for them! Who made you the mother or father of these people? Do you really want all these adults to act like children? That is disempowerment, that is paternalism.

2. Hot mess-- these people have to get it together, I'm out! The second is my present inclination.

I remember, however, how I have been helped in my own life. A very good friend has never given me money but she pushed me to do all I can and to "be all I can be." In fact, she made me apply for the Peace Corps in the first place. She is now on my neck for completing what I need to do. When she found out about the medical school dream, we had a planning session of how to bring it to reality. Does she belittle me? No. Does she do the easy thing and throw money? Never. This, however, is a personal relationship; requiring mentoring, time, advice, and, at times, calling me out. That is what we do as Peace Corps Volunteers. Try to befriend, try to be a part, try to bring out the best in the other. My best role for donations/ aid when I go home will probably again be these personal relationships. Becoming a big sister or friend to a parent-less American youth and keeping in touch with friends from Uganda-- these mundane, time consuming personal connections are the ones that matter.

Secondly, as one priest reminded me, those parents giving birth to 10 or more children are uneducated. My friend Catherine, for example, despite her parents' decisions, will not have many kids. In the end, despite my qualms, school sponsorships are the best forms of aid that I have seen. When I go home to the US, I will have positive comments about many school sponsorship programs in Uganda. I know a young lady that I am thinking of sponsoring for education when I leave as well. She has never asked for money, but I know her parents recently died. She is also a hard worker, a former student of mine, and consistently first in her class. I don't pity her-- I want to be a part of where this great lady is going!

My Confession

Forgive me, dear readers, I have sinned. For the past 6 months, I have been thinking and planning and praying, and consulting people. I have, inevitably, driven some of my Peace Corps friends crazy with constant talking and thinking and dreaming and planning—all about one thing. Although I have hinted about it multiple times on this blog; I was a bit afraid to bare all. You have, for all your following and reading, been completely in the dark.
Today, after my computer’s Ebola epidemic, after my friend’s computer was struck by lightning and after the internet café and hour and a half away (by cramped taxi) claimed to have “lost the network”—I decided that it was now or never. I still cannot be completely straight with you, so I will tell you by way of a story: that of my life.
After an interesting but not completely challenging liberal arts education, I decided to travel the world and learn. For a year I traveled, then I decided on a masters’ and peace corps. By the time I found myself in the Peace Corps, I had begun to visualize my future career as a dark, boring, unfulfilling gray—working for some organization where I was not challenged and where I continuously found ethical quandaries—I was only 24!
In college, several friends became doctors, a road which seemed much more interesting and challenging, but one which required an absolute calling--- something I was very unsure of. The world was so big, I did not want to think about one patient at a time, just yet.
The more I see big projects fail, and big people unwittingly feed big rotten messes, I wonder if one person at a time doesn’t constitute the whole world, after all. The people I have met here who have the most on the ground relevance and actually DO something are doctors. Whether my friend doing fistula surgeries in Kasese or MSF in my village; doctors actually stay on the ground with real people. When they do want to advocate for someone or something, furthermore, they seem to know a heck of a lot more about the subject at hand—and are listened to.
In December, I gave myself a Christmas gift. I took out a big piece of butcher paper and mapped out where I could go from here—career wise. This included becoming a social worker at home, working in the foreign service, working for international aid orgs, and medicine. Every day, at the day’s end, I voted for which one I wanted; according to my set of values also posted on the wall. I wanted to be personally helpful to someone, to be able to make ethical decisions, to become a part of a community, to have an interesting career, and to continuously learn and be challenged. I also began visiting any medical person or clinic or hospital I could find, to see if I was crazy or not. Medicine won every day (except one).
The Middle Eastern Awakening furthermore discouraged international public policy – people should be able to decide for themselves what to do; not having a foreign govt. supporting a repressive regime. I just kept thinking, when I am on my deathbed and looking back at life, what will make me feel as if I have lived well, and ethically, and used all I have? Or, instead, will I have propped up repressive regimes my whole life or just shuffled papers and done nothing?
I want to really help others, really do something challenging and life absorbing; not just nine to five.
Since that time, I have been looking into several post-bac programs to fulfil my pre- med requirements and it seems as though I could make it into several. From there to med- school (the programs I want go directly from the former to the latter); I will be 5 years behind someone coming straight from undergrad. 5 years to have lived in two foreign countries and really thought about my place in this world and what I want to do. 5 years to confirm the fact that I want to have a challenging, personally meaningful, and not world- dominating career. 5 years to banish my regrets. 5 years to have managed some projects and have the ability to take any career international, if I want.
According to Merton, one is supposed to go to a desert not of isolation of personal emotions; interpersonal interactions, and personality challenges. John F. Kennedy, for all his politics, was a Catholic when he founded this crazy peace corps idea. I am emerging from a two year desert, in Uganda, but a 4 year desert from Lesotho to Camden to here. Merton says we should emerge “great, noble, and pure.” Looking at that crucifix in mass every day; with an example of a great, knowledgeable creator who gave life painfully for me, I think about living for a calling. Dying for a calling every day. As long as I keep those motives pure, the doctor thing seems to fit. What do they say—Africa steals your heart, then it kills you. What will my med. School interviewers think when I tell them that becoming a doctor is like dying, so that you can really live? Ummm, maybe 5 years was a little too long to ruminate.

Abaana Babo

The title means "their children," which mothers routinely used when referring to personal offspring; I rarely hear a mother say "abaana bangye;" which means "my children."
Last weekend, I visited my best peace corps friend’s site. Along with her blossoming chicken and goat farm (she has 7 chickens and two new goats so far-- all with names), she also has a neighbor with three small children—aged 3, 2, and 1. So far, my friend has found the 3 year old locked in the latrine and has witnessed all 3 being beaten with wooden planks. As you may imagine, CPS does not exactly exist here. All of us have seen stories of school children being beaten to death by teachers—who, overwhelmingly, are only relocated to different schools. I personally know a headmaster who is accused of raping several of the girls in his primary school; one of whom recently had a baby.
In my community; I see numerous children and adults with significant scarring—as the result of a toxic mixture of abuse and negligence. Small charcoal stoves on the ground, which babies easily grab, buckets of water in which they drown; none are moved or removed. I’ll never forget visiting a friend in the village- upon observing that one of his 2 year old daughter’s fingers went missing, I was told that the 3 year old had cut it off with a knife. Sure enough; when I looked outside, the same 3 year old was playing with the same knife. Furthermore, it is not rare to find children tearing apart animals callously; one teenage boy beat the sisters’ new calf to death when it refused to go where he wanted it to.
On the other hand, many educated, wealthy Ugandans fail to discipline children whatsoever. This produces the most insipid, sniveling, entitled brats imaginable.
With my peace corps friend, however, I also visited a different new mother. A year ago, she was forcibly raped by a taxi driver; then found herself, a single career woman without children, pregnant. We came to visit both baby and mother. After a bit of pressing, she told us the birth story. The tiny woman, after the first 12 hours of labor, was found have a baby in fetal distress and rushed to the nation’s best hospital. For 12 more hours (during 5 of which she was waiting in line for registration); she waited for a C-section. When the doctor finally arrived in the ward, he proclaimed that he was tired and refused to see more than the first 5 women on the list. There were 13 women waiting, and the narrator was #12. By luck, her brother was a doctor and convinced his colleague to do the operation.
As evidence of the surgery’s success, was one of the cleanest, healthiest babies that I’ve ever seen—with ample motherly care—even though the absent and abusive father has legal rights (in this patrilineal place) to take her away when he chooses to.  

Year of the African Child

You see pictures of them, snotty nosed and ragged, on tv; accompanied by ads from organizations that cliam to need YOUR money to help them. If nothing else, Peace Corps is going to save me a lot of money in the future because (with a few exceptions) I am very unlikely to fall for it.
I feel most Westerners conceptualize African children in the same vein as puppies and kittens in the humane society commercials. They’re so cute! Awwww so sad! I just want to take him home! A group of Americans – known for tying to adopt children after spending an hour or two—ok, sometimes four—with them came last month. I side with the group calling them baby stealers. We had a small argument which included the following—But their parents didn’t care!—They don’t belong to their parents, they belong to their communities. They’re living in squalor! That fact that you call their living conditions squalor shows what you think of their culture—besides you should probably wash you feet and iron your shirt. How can you possibly love someone whose culture you don’t care one whit about?
Here, a person\s value ins not only individual; it is defined as part of their communities- families- and ethnic groups. To rip them away creates fissues in both community and child. Furthermore, I wonder if it is really so altruistic. Imagine a childless person—she wants to give a child a “better life”—but demands lifelong love and obedience from a child at the expense of his/her identity and community in return. Is that love? At this point, I’ve decided that if you really feel bad for a kid, it is less selfish to sponsor a kid through school than to kidnap.
Sponsorship, which I have done in the past and may again do in the future, is not really that great either. Research shows that as GDP goes up, which implies a monetary society, indicating wages and increased importance of educated employment instead of agricultural labor—birth rates go down. Unless, that is, a large amount of foreign aid is involved—in which case both GDP and population growth rise. My interpretation is simple—if someone else will care for your kid, don’t worry about how many you can feed and educate—let the rich muzungu do it.
In the end, the environment will suffer and the unequivocably passive- aggressive mother earth will kill us all. If I have more money than I know what to do with, I am going to buy as much land as I can and let it grow wild—for the sake of us all.

Dragon Tattoos

Yesterday, a four year old girl was brought into the health center. She was quite ordinary; with the normal ring worm signs on her head and big torn clothes over a small body with an oversized belly. She, however, was unique; in that she was accompanied by several police men and a seventy year old relative. Apparently, the old man had been found raping her and, miraculously, someone reported it to the police. More miraculously, the man did not have sufficient money to pay off the police, so man and child were brought into the hospital. After alleging not to have raped the girl, the man was released. After all, there were not DNA testing facilities or cameras, etc. for proof.
Upon hearing the story, I was immediately transported back in time to 2007 in Lesotho, where such occurrences seemed normal. Unlike Uganda, Lesotho was late in structuring a plan to attack HIV; allowing various rumors and witch doctors to come up with alternative healing measures instead. One such belief was that if one slept with a virgin, he/she could be cured of HIV/AIDS. Who is more likely to be a virgin than a small child, or a baby? Several babies with ruptured internal organs and small girls with traumatic stories began appearing. At the orphanage where I lived, there were several; one particularly tiny girl had been kidnapped and used for a year as a child prostitute—sold as a “virgin” to unsuspecting HIV positive men. Her kidnappers were discovered and jailed—then released after one year. She is now 13 with raving AIDS and, when I left, she wished me the one thing that she does not hope to attain—a long life.
In Lesotho, however, as in Uganda, the traditional house was a round room, where everyone did everything—without shame. In Lesotho, due to cold, grown children dressed and bathed in the presence of their parents. According to what I was told, molestation of children by parents was so rare that there was no shame in such practices. Is it not, then, insane to have rooms in your house precisely because there is so much scandal that children are afraid of their parents’ eyes? When did Westerners start hiding from their family members--- it must have been far before Freud had to invent his crazy theories in response the insane child abuse cases he came across.
Last night, I read Steig Larssen’s “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.” I have to admit that the images of snow covered Sweden and old stone houses with fireplaces were heavenly. The descriptions of sexual violence, however, were more than disturbing. 1. How could Mr. Larssen have spent so much mental energy on such sadistic and misogynistic ideas—what did he DO in his free time? 2. Why on EARTH are millions of people thrilled by such images? My mind instantly flashed to the two different Austrian men found to have kept young girls in secret sex slave basement cells for decades—one of them being the perpetrator’s daughter. I also thought of my old psychotherapy professor (now in her sixties) who was kidnapped at fifteen and raped and almost killed—until she fought her way out. She said that she decided to become a big woman, an intimidating woman, and a woman whom no one else would ever think of harming again. I thought about the many strong, physically substantial women that I know who give that impression—I am tough, I am not a delicate rose, I am serious and respectable and will never be vulnerable with you. I know that I am one of them and do not intend to change.
The book was a New York Times best seller and was hailed as a sexy thriller—I would say that it had great descriptions and character development and was extremely harrowing. But sexy? I hope not—because if that type of violence is what interests people, we have more problems than Uganda’s seventy year old men. Just to take precautions, however, I am doing Kenpo X in my small room tonight and vow to take a Karate and or RADD class when I get back to the States.

Almost There!

Just a few days ago, I was ruminating about the recent digital Ebola outbreak—in which my computer fell victim. Yes, the “h” key was hemoraging. I was seated on a taxi—14 seater minivan—with 21 other adults, one of whom was a very obese man complete knocked out and snoring—drunk?-- and leaning heavily on my shoulder. So far, pretty normal, except for the 50 fluttering chickens underfoot, and, therefore, all of my traveling possessions on my lap. Pretty light, except the large tub of local peanut butter for one of my nuns, and the fact that it was all on one hip (that’s the only way to fit 5 to a seat). For any anatomy and physiology people out there—the human hip is incredibly durable, but it does protest a bit.
Flash forward to a room the size of my village house doubled, with an attached bathroom containing a toilet, shower, bathtub and sink (not all one bucket and ALL WORKING!). There is also real air conditioning, hard wood closets, a bed with a duvet and a real mattress! Have I begun an unofficial liason with some political crony? Not that it has not been suggested, but NO! Did I find an oil field on my land? —again, not impossible, but NO! Instead, I am at the Close of Service (they call it Continuation of Service, after which an involuntary “Oh Lord!” came shooting out of my mouth!) We are at one of the nicest hotels in Uganda, many, including yours truly with fresh razor burn, following drain clogging less than annual shaves, to discuss ending our time in Uganda and moving forward.
The focus is on the future—what next? I remember someone telling me that life after college just goes downhill and I refused that. I also refuse for life after peace corps to be downhill. Some of us have been accepted into Ph.D. programs, some have interviews at NASA and financial firms, others seek careers as Wal- Mart greeters, still others are hopping on a bus headed south and seeing where they get between here and South Africa. I was going to be in the last group but now have a different thought. In between discussing our medical procedures for leaving (testing for a variety of intestinal and/ or blood visitors and back to the US insurance costs) a sort of panic sets in. They gave us brochures about thoroughly inculturated PCV’s (women in missionary gear; men in long beards, trying to become normal again—unsuccessfully.
Videos of happy, successful cubicle workers, like hamsters on treadmills, in the US spell only one thing—--fear. This experience has been beautiful, variegated, and most of all, completely unpredictable. The second night of the conference, I didn’t sleep. The third night, I only cried. I don’t want to lose the color and the freedom. That’s why the other volunteers are here. It doesn’t have to fade to grey the other side. You choose what you want. We can choose to live in beautiful, unpredictable communities—yours truly hopes for Philly—we can join RPCV groups, we can choose interesting, demanding careers. Like any other infectious and fatal disease, the fade to grey is preventable, with proper cautions.
Back to my site, someone stole someone else’s phone, someone is dying and can’t get to the doctor, I wake up in the morning with no control of my day; life in Uganda is not perfect either, but I will miss it.

Inch Deep and Mile Wide

Last week, I went to church with a friend in her village. On the wall of the simple building were pictures of St. Daniel Comboni and the Uganda Martyrs, respectively. The building was obviously unfinished, with no windows or outside paint. It was, however, already cracking, with large cracks up and down the floor and a large crack from ceiling to floor. The cracks were patched up but obviously endemic. Sometimes I think this is a perfect illustration of religious faith in Uganda. Not yet to the point of reasoning, not past the point of “everyone is doing this,” and many times not to the point of personal behavioral change, but already with serious fundamental cracks. Moreover, the priest emphasized that the parish could no longer depend on outsiders for funding, but had to stand on its own. He set a challenge for each person to give $0.50 that month. I know that this is half of the cost of a motorcycle ride across town—which most people can achieve quite easily. It seemed, however, to be a great challenge.
I would be the first to say that I wanted my experience here to be spiritual, and it has been. It has been much more spiritual than I ever imagined, but I am a bit unique in that. I have met some Ugandans who speak of faith in a cogniscent manner and are able to talk about philosophy. For the masses flooding football stadiums to see big TV preachers—hand in hand with prominent politicians—however, I wonder.
The sisters usually say that still waters run deep; I completely agree. For the masses of people shouting the gospel on street corners and dancing in Pentecostal churches; multiple wives are still the norm, the alcohol consumption rate is still the highest in the world, and the rate of HIV infection is still increasing. Speaking of my sisters, moreover, their order was founded in the 1970’s, at which time, it received many new novices. That stream of young women has already begun to atrophy. When the great old orders, begun in the 1500’s in Europe took at least half a millennium to decrease, this one is struggling to reach 50 years strong. The obvious corollary exists—noisy waters are usually shallow.
This is not to discount the great work done by missions and missionaries in Africa. As I know several missionary priests and work at Catholic institutions, I admire their efforts. I am certainly unable to start several schools and hospitals and religious orders, changing a completely foreign people into baptized converts on my own. I admire the old missionaries still around who speak the local language better than locals and are responsible for the faiths of thousands if not more. My question, however, is one—what is the foundation? Inculturation teaches us that the African philosophy on God does not ask what is true; it seeks merely to relate to deity in the best way possible. My nuns tell me that the Christian God is appealing because He is kinder than the vengeful ancestors of traditional beliefs. Maybe the gifts of schools and hospitals don’t hurt, either.
At the end, there is still Sister D. in the garden, who saw fellow teachers hacked to death by rebels in Gulu. She doesn’t speak much, but spends at least 4 hours a day with her Jesus in the prayer room. When I hear her pray the luminous mysteries, I know she speaks from a relationship. The loud PTA chairman, however, with his big crucifix, recently married his 16th and 17th wives, respectively, and tried to sell his handicapped son for human sacrifice. The other week tried to make a big public donation in church. The priest, who is a fan of Buddhism and psychology, as they relate to Christ—made him sit down and put the donation away. What a place!