Escaping the Backpackers, Jinja
Trip Start
Feb 20, 2007
1
11
38
Trip End
Jun 2007
Jinja,
Uganda
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
At the source of the Nile
.After a few days I grew tired of the backpacker scene. It was nice at first, as I haven't been anywhere with this sort of setup so far on the trip. I made some great friends at Jinja, but every day seemed to be the same, late mornings, a lot of lazing around, and night-time drinking. I had initially planned to move on, but upon exploring the villages around Bujagali I found reasons to stay on.
One afternoon I set off for a sort of walk, not really knowing where I would go. I followed a small dirt track which branched off the main (dirt) road, into a village. It was a truly beautiful area, with little brick houses and mud outhouses nicely spaced apart between plots of land growing maize, coffee, beans, potatoes and bananas, with jackfruit and orange trees providing shade everywhere. It was all very green and there was a sense of quiet domestic happiness, with children everywhere. In Uganda the youngest children (babies, to us) are minded by the 7-8 year olds, and children older than ten are put to work, carrying water from the boreholes or digging and hoeing the land with their fathers. The women also fetch water, pound grain, and cook, often also working the land. The people here were very poor, children ran around in rags, with younger ones usually being naked
Nelson (right) with friends
. I saw, for the first time since Ethiopia, that many of the younger children had pot-bellies. After a while I found the Soft Power centre, which is an NGO set up by an American woman which is mainly funded by backpacker dollars. I had met a number of volunteers who work for them back at the campsite, and from what I had heard, coupled with what I find to be an somewhat patronizing name, I wasn't too impressed with their work. But in the spirit of coming at these things with an open mind I said that I would try visiting the project myself and seeing what it was all about.
The centre consisted of two buildings, an educational centre and a clinic. The educational centre takes sixty children from one of twenty-two local primary schools every day, rotating around from school to school. The children are given a day of sort of alternative education, being taught Drama, Science (using microscopes and other tools they wouldn't have in their schools), Computers, Drama, Agriculture, and Arts and Crafts. I met the principal, a charming Ugandan man who immediately warmed to me once I said I had a degree in mathematics, something we had in common. He showed me around the school and introduced me to the teachers, all Ugandan, and all very nice. The children seemed to be enjoying themselves (although later on I spoke with a nine year old boy who told me he hates the Soft Power days; unfortunately his English was too poor to articulate why this was so), and I couldn't help but agreeing that giving the children access to this alternative education could only be good for them
Nelson with his tools
. Soft Power spends a lot of its money on renovating the local primary schools, which provides employment for locals. Tourists can volunteer to help with this, and are then expected to make a donation. There are various other ways in which backpackers contribute, for example there are organized village walks, for which you contribute $25 to the cause. Unfortunately I was told that some tourists bring bags of sweets and pens which they give out to the children when they do these walks. I was surprised that there are still people who do this.Everywhere one goes in Third World countries children run alongside you asking for money, pens or sweets. This was most certainly not the case fifty years ago, but is a direct result of tourists who decide to give these things out, which, in my opinion, is selfishly motivated. People do this to make themselves feel good, thinking they are helping the poor; they will go home and tell their friends about "the look in that child's eyes". In fact they are only teaching these children to beg. If no-one gave, no-one would beg. Furthermore, seeing white people give things out for nothing forms the impression in a young mind that westerners are there to give handouts, which feeds and breeds the culture of dependency that is so deeply rooted in Africa by now, and is, in my opinion, the principal cause of the continent's economic stagnation.
Nelson's bedroom
The health centre was staffed by a doctor, two nurses and a lab technician, for testing blood. The facilities were clean and pleasant, as were the staff, who were also all Ugandan, incidentally. They showed me around, telling me they mainly treat malaria, syphilis and HIV, which are all big problems locally. Soft Power recently ran a campaign to try to give a mosquito net to each home in the area, after learning that the locals didn't realize that malaria is transmitted by mosquito bites. It struck me as strange that there were no patients in the clinic, with the entire staff sitting around chatting. They told me that they only treat 15-20 patients a day on average, charging each of them 5,000 Ugandan Shillings (about $3) per consultation. The next day I spoke with a local who told me that very few people use the clinic because of this fee, preferring instead to go to either a local witch doctor or a chemist, who diagnoses them from their symptoms and gives them drugs. For blood testing people go to Jinja, where they can get it done for free in the local hospital. So it seems that this facility is somewhat wasted, and quite probably doesn't help those who need it most, the very poor. It seemed daft that they can pay all those staff (with tourist dollars) but cannot afford to drop the $3 fee, even in exceptional cases. I was also told that the staff are under orders not to treat people for free, no matter how poor they are.
Nelson's living room
So I found the Health centre to be a failure, although I could see merits in Soft Power's Educational centre. That said, the whole thing seemed a bit wishy-washy to me, and I wondered whether all this "alternative education" was of any tangible benefit to the students - couldn't all that money be spent in a way that would be of more genuine help to this impoverished community?
I walked deeper into the village after my visit to Soft Power, pondering all this, everywhere being greeted with smiles and waves from children and adults alike. It has been my experience that Ugandans are the nicest, friendliest Africans I have met in my travels. Gone are the unusual feelings of being somewhat unwelcome felt in Kenya, here I genuinely feel the people are happy to see you, and glad that you are visiting their home. I stopped to chat for a while with an elderly (50, which is old in Africa) man named Nelson, who had very good English.
I ended up talking to him for about two hours. He told me he had grown up in Northern Uganda, and had trained in a technical college, learning woodwork, metalwork, electronics (specializing in radios), and general machinery. He had set up a workshop in his local town which was successful until when, in 1987, a local army thug shot him in the arm, half-paralyzing his right hand
Nelson's tools
. His father was killed and he was forced to flee his home, and went south where he stayed with a friend. In his rushed departure he had left his papers behind him, and thus couldn't prove his qualifications. Thus it was very hard for him to find work, and he did odd jobs here and there for years, sometimes settling, then having to move on.He has been in Bujagali village for about a month now, and is renting two rooms in a small, bare brick house. He showed me inside, there was nothing but a few pots and broken radios in his living room, and his bedroom had a thin foam mattress on the ground, with no sheets, a few shirts hanging up, and a few Jehovah's Witnesses publications which he liked to read in the evenings. He had just set up a workshop outside, and was working on making a rat trap; he explained to me how he would bend wires and springs this way and that to make it, using a technical vocabulary of a man who clearly had been well trained and was passionate about his work. He also showed me one of the broken radios which he hoped to repair, identifying for me various different components inside it.
Tragically he had almost no tools. He had a crudely made workbench, a rusty saw piece which was almost no use at all, a few pieces of wire, some springs and a few nails
Soft Power Health clinic
. Here was a man who had the training and know-how to run a business, and make money, but simply lacked the tools to do so. He told me how he hoped to save up to buy the tools, but how food usually had to come first, and what little he made barely covered those costs.I decided to break my rule of not giving anything to an African (the arguments for which are made above), and said to Nelson that I would take him to town in the morning and buy him a few tools. He hadn't asked for this; if he had I don't think I would have given the help. I wouldn't have done this for a young man; their youth gives them opportunity, but Nelson, who lived alone, I felt was a worthy enough cause to break my rules.
So, the next day we went to Jinja's market and for E25 we bought two hammers, a manual drill with bits, two saws, two screwdrivers, a file, a measuring tape, a hat for his head and a bedsheet for his bed. He said there were more tools he needed, but I feel it was better to give him enough to get him started than everything he wanted. This way he will be able to make money and hopefully get himself out of the rut he was in, and soon be able to save to buy the other tools he needed. I spent the day with him, talking, and visiting his friends. He was very keen to be seen with the mzungu (white man) around the village, as he said it would raise his status within the community, something I didn't feel entirely comfortable with
Soft Power School
. Although I asked him not to tell anyone what I did for him I doubt he will do so, he could barely contain himself as we visited house after house. It is this reason, above all, that I harbour some feelings of regret towards what I did for him; his telling people will further give the impression that the white man is there to give handouts, and that if things go bad in one's life one will be saved by him, instead of having to save oneself.All the same it was pleasant to get to visit so many houses in the village, where I was always warmly welcomed, if a little curiously, as they wondered who this mzungu with Nelson was. I had one conversation with a young man called David, which was particularly interesting. He told me that instead of going to the doctor when he gets ill he gets herbal drugs from Tianshi, a popular Chinese herbal chemist. This struck me as odd, and when pressed further he told me that many other people also do this, even using these drugs to treat AIDS, syphilis and malaria, amongst other serious illnesses. As I pressed him further the reasons behind this unusual choice of health care became apparent. Tianshi is essentially a pyramid scheme drugs company. In order to get their drugs you need to join, which costs a whopping (in local terms) $30. When you join you get a card, with which you can buy your drugs. To join you must be introduced by another member, who then receives 15% of any purchases made by the new member credited to their account. The more people you have "beneath you", the more money you will earn. Thus, it is in your interest to convince your friends and family to join this network. Pyramid schemes are bad enough as it is, but one that uses drugs (and herbal drugs, at that) to promote themselves, in Africa of all places, is one of the most unethical things I have heard of in all my life. I was shocked to hear that this was going on, and further dismayed when a Canadian volunteer who has been here for some time told me how popular Tianshi are here - the local store is literally mobbed with people every time a new shipment of drugs arrives in.
