Monday, June 27, 2011

Arrived in Africa


Getting on the plane from D.C., I met an American woman with an organization that finds women in need of help in Ethiopia and connects them to individuals in the US. She feels that the best way to make a real impact in the world is by focusing on the individual in more of a long term, customized relationship.

Later that day at our local grocery store I met a native Ugandan with a PhD from George Mason in economics who had come back to Uganda to start a salsa factory. His philosophy is that creating jobs and spurring the economy is the best solution to poverty—anything that moves people away from the mindset of complete dependence that exists today.

I think anyone in the development sector today realizes that foreign aid has not worked very well in the past. It is also safe to say that aid has actually hurt development efforts in many instances when the money is mismanaged and ends up funding corrupt governments, terrorist organizations, etc. I don’t know if any of the development activists I have met have the exclusive rights on how to do development well, but I do feel more confidence in organizations that realize the difficulties of development and the importance of things like sustainability and peripheral effects.

We have been gone from Korea for 2 weeks (I sort of left things hanging towards the end of our stay, but the short story is that we loved it and saying goodbye was harder than expected). Since then, we have spent a week in the US and now find ourselves in Uganda, the Pearl of Africa. Kampala is great, much better off than most of Africa, but I still find myself frustrated with some of the things that happen here. We went to one of the street markets on Saturday, and every few blocks we would pass a child that had been left by his or her parents to beg for the day. None of them were older than 3 years old, so all they could do is sit there while trying not to fall asleep. A few days ago, two girls from our group were crossing the golf course next to our neighborhood while walking home.  A policeman stopped them and threatened all kinds of things, like deportation or taking them to prison. Of course he couldn’t have actually done any of that, but the UGX 20,000 (USD $8) that they handed him was what he really wanted. I just feel like they have enough educated people and government structure here to know better than to let things like that continue to happen. 

 
We pay for bandwidth here, so it will be harder to upload many pictures, but I’ll try to keep things interesting nonetheless.  

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