Questions to Take Back

This blog goes back to a discussion I had with a few other students at the end of our extremely emotional trip to Rwanda. It follows well with my last (real) post and the questions are still ones I am struggling with going into the eighth week of Uganda.

Overall, we wondered, How do I take this experience back to the U.S.?
How do I not forget?
How do I teach others to understand?
How do I continue to care?
How do I morally deal with living a life so relatively privileged?
How do I help these people?

The toughest question for myself: Do I really disagree with a lot of foreign aid and intervention or am I just trying to excuse myself from the guilt of no longer pursuing plans of being an aid worker in Africa?

But then again, one of the reasons I keep coming to this continent is to see what Africa has to teach the West. The West has spent decades ripping the land raw of its raw materials and people. I think Africa has a less material commodity to offer. Maybe it’s no coincidence that this place makes me long for family so much; something which is very much a dying art form in the United States. I miss family functions and friendships more than I miss toilet stalls. Africa can teach us the simplicity found in prioritizing.

I want to make sure not to take an overly pastoral perspective of a developing country. It’s important not to deny some pressing and basic issues which Uganda faces such as sanitation and nutrition. And of course most of this country’s problems are exacerbated if not completely caused by corruption.

So how can this country “develop” to address the basic needs of its citizens in the most culturally appropriate way? When foreign intervention comes from such countries as the U.S., how much of our individualistic culture and own agenda is mixed in with the second-hand clothes and expired medications? I don’t think that “development” requires the extinction of the extended family. However, if Africa is to follow the American model, that just might be what we are prescribing: entrepreneurship, micro-lending groups which isolate wives from their “irresponsible” partners, aid distributers providing rations for nuclear families. Why not push families to build their businesses through the extended family? Could this avoid the problem of an over-saturated market of fruit sellers? How about building micro-finance organizations in a way that encourages mutual respect and inclusion of both partners in the fundamental organization of this society: marriage? When giving out aid, could the west take a little more time to recognize that providing for one’s family in Africa typically extends far beyond biological children?

And so now there are more questions than before and an infinite amount of answers, but how am I going to respond?