One Week Left in Uganda

It’s been a full month since my last post, and a lot has happened in that time:

• My laptop crashed and I had to borrow one of the ones I brought for Brain Tree because the only Apple store on the continent is 3,360 miles away in Cape Town.
•  Brain Tree and I collaborated to make an amazing gratitude video for The Shipley School, but it is stored on the crashed laptop. All my pictures and videos from this trip are also stored there as well. So here's me desperately hoping that the Apple store at home will be able to save them. 

Me and some of the stars of the Gratitude video

•  My Independent Study Project has sucked all the creative energy out of me. I’m 40 pages down and using the very last of my creative juices to write something other than typhoid findings.
• I interviewed 55 slum dwellers about their handwashing practices (pretesting included) and have entered and analyzed way more SPSS data than I would ever have imagined. I also learned that SPSS is incredible and statistics is actually pretty fun.  

A picture of my translator and I interviewing a woman in Kisenyi

• I have a two week extension on my paper because my academic director is incredibly kind. She decided on two weeks since I lost a week of work from not backing up my documents regularly enough and a week of work searching for a replacement laptop.
•  I’ve gotten quite homesick. My dreams have started to center around being back in the states. They range from eating a bowl of raisin bran in front of the TV; to seeing my family waiting for me at the airport; to jump-hugging my best friend when I get back to Atlanta. 
•  I’ve started making plans for when I’m going to return to Uganda. Currently planning on coming back the summer after I graduate as a gift to myself for finishing my med school apps.
• We went white water rafting on the Nile River. It was an incredible day and we ended it by drinking Uganda's Nile beers on a Nile beach (except I cheated and had a Club beer instead because Nile is too dark for me).

Some Reflections:

At first when I stepped into Kisenyi, the slum community in which I did my fieldwork, I was shocked and afraid of the poverty I found. I was afraid that I would never be able to live my life without debilitating western guilt after seeing what I saw. I was now aware of the lie that is the Western Liberal belief that “while they may be poor, they are happy.” While I applaud it for being a paradigm that helps people not look down on the culture of the poor, I find fault in its ability to make an excuse for people to escape the guilt of privilege. 

I have no intention of living a life like Paul Farmer, an American doctor who resides in Haiti for six months out of the year at the hospital he built there. He is the only American for miles and works from 5am to late in the evening treating the patients no one else will help. I wish I could live such a selfless life, but I simply wouldn’t be happy. So I was afraid that I would return to the states, guilty for the ignorantly privileged life I lead, and more guilty for my inability to rise from that guilt and become a Paul Farmer. 

My perspective has evolved over the four weeks I spent in the field and mulling over my data sets. I can't be sure what my return to the states will really be like, but I am less afraid of crippling guilt than I was at first. Will I find American wastefulness disgusting? Absolutely. Will I still be able to carry out conversations about The Bachelor and How I Met Your Mother? Definitely. Will I speak of people in Africa as an “other,” almost like they live in a separate reality from my own. Absolutely Not.  And will I allow myself to whine about the injustice of the world when my laptop crashes in the midst of the largest paper of my life? Not Anymore. I think the biggest challenge I will face in my life is learning to live with knowledge of the world, and give back in a way that works for me. I will never allow myself to intentionally forget anything I've gone through here and I think that simple act of mindfully remembering will be enough to make sure I live my life not thinking only of myself.