Smokin' Innocence

Taking the taxi home today, one image stands out in my mind:

We approach the dark cloud burning from beside the road, its black, translucent haze wafting over the street. Tires are being burned, typical urban, Ugandan waste management. I hold my breath as we pass, wanting to limit my daily intake of carcinogens to the standard smog that lays over Kampala. As our taxi putters past, I think of similar, obvious health hazards which the average Kampala resident is subjected to every day: standing water, open sewage, wandering livestock, potassium over-dose (we eat a serious amount of bananas and related fruit).

While I reflect on this, I catch sight of a small girl, dressed in pink, in front of the flames, but still well within the toxic fumes of the burning rubber. She sat, legs folded under, hands together and outstretched, her eyes closed. It was as if she had fallen asleep while praying. Before, I was concerned about those who would inhale the poisonous gases just in passing by or being within a few blocks radius. But here was a small child enveloped within the noxious gases with a placidly serene face accompanying her prayerful posture. I wonder if her mother strategically placed her there, knowing the grotesque juxtaposition her composition would make.

Going to Ghana last summer dispelled so many of my preconceived notions of Africa. There was poverty for sure, particularly in Tamale, but I saw very few cases of desperation and hopelessness. Ghana caused me to reevaluate what I considered “poor” and allowed me to recognize many of the unnecessary extravagances of the U.S. I left Ghana feeling optimistic about the “Dark Continent,” convinced that the media and academia had over-exaggerated its problems. Heading over to Uganda, I hoped that Kampala would serve to debunk even more theories about sub-saharan Africa.

I wish I could say that Uganda has done that for me, but in a lot of ways, I am having to struggle with the realization that Uganda really is a “developing” country. There is real need here and I saw in the refugee settlements more desperation than I could come to terms with. The hardest thing to accept is that no one can fully understand or diagnose the problems. Many have tried and some, like Jeffrey Sachs, claim to have an easy fix-all that will be the tide to lift all ships. But what suffers with the current plans for development? The environment? Culture? Identity? Studying development has introduced me to a history of good intentions which have paved a path of destruction. Of course a lot of good is happening in development here. The AIDS Support Organization (TASO) has made great strides in raising awareness and promoting prevention practices. Micro-finance and self-help organizations have raised the status of women in the country and led to better household expenditures, which indirectly has improved health and education of Uganda’s children.

But where does empowering women step into the bounds of cultural imposition in a traditionally paternalistic culture? I wish to promote equality of women based on my own feminist tendencies and even more so on studies showing the benefits of promoting gender. Still, it is paralyzing to recognize the benefits of development and at the same time try to respect culture. This task is made even more difficult by the fact that it is so hard to determine what is culture? How much was the originally paternalistic culture warped by colonialists who manipulated the tribal system, introduced a paternalistic religion (christianity), and promoted only men to positions of power?

These are just a few of the conundrums of development studies. Stay tuned for possible revelations...