Well, sadly my summer is coming to a close, and although I’ve loved every minute of my travel around the globe, it’ll be nice to be settled back into one place, with all of my things in one room, and life having a pattern again (I say this now, but when I want to die midway through the semester at MIT I’m sure I’ll be aching to have this summer back…).
So, what’ve I learned? Well for one, I’ve learned that that’s a completely American thing to expect and think. As is somewhat expected, being in a place like Uganda with a culture so different than one I have ever experienced has really given me a lens into my own culture, and I’ve realized many things that I think and do are really quite Western which I would’ve have noticed before – for example, the need to feel like I’ve gotten something out of each thing that I do, instead of just enjoying whatever I’m doing at the time with no expectations for the future. One of the biggest is the need to be independent. In the US, when you’re growing up as a kid, it’s like a race to see who can do the most by themselves first. It’s the little kid who says “I can do it myself!” when you try and help them do anything like open something or put some article of clothing on, and every teenager spends their time fighting for their independence from their parents. Even as adults, we pride ourselves when we can get around in a new area without the help of others, or can learn to do something on our own. In Uganda, there is no sense of a need to be so independent – kids aren’t running from their parents trying to do things by themselves (but they’re still doing much more than kids here are doing at their age – walking around the city on their own, washing their own laundry, fetching water, etc. – really makes you appreciate all those times you complained about setting the table once a week when you were younger). I think this non-need to be independent is sort of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it means that there’s a much larger sense of community because people are always helping each other out and giving directions and getting help from their neighbors, and there isn’t any shame in asking for help because everyone is always helping everyone else. On the other hand, it means that there isn’t the push like there is in America to be bigger and better at everything than the person before you that really drives our quick speed of development and is, I think, one of the big reasons that so much new technology and thought is coming out of our country. Along the same vein, in Uganda, when people offer you something, or offer to pay for your meal or something, it’s actually pretty rude there to refuse to take their offer, which took some getting used to, but I think the principle in the US that you should protest comes from the same line of thought. At first, I always felt uncomfortable that everyone kept doing things and paying for things for me, but it quickly grew on me as a custom and at this point, I really enjoy that idea. It seems like it comes from the Ugandan custom of greeting and hosting someone. Sarah told us stories of the village, where you can barely get anywhere because at each house someone invites you in, gives you tea and food and asks after your family before they finally see if they can help you on your journey at all. That was another thing I noticed while I was there – the hospitality of people there, without expecting anything in return. I think here when we offer something to someone, like food or drink when they stop by, or anything really, most of the time it’s tinged with the person’s small hope that you won’t take it so they can keep it for themselves. Either that, or you give someone something with the expectation that they’ll give you something in return later (like birthday presents). I know I’m completely guilty of that sometimes. Ugandans have given me something to work toward for sure – the ability to give without expecting in return, and to take anyone who comes by your door in with open arms, at least for a little while. Ugandans I spoke with who had traveled to the US or Europe were appalled when people answered their door and after seeing what the person wanted, if it didn’t involve them, would just shut the door without asking the person inside for drinks or anything. If I can be half as hospitable as they were to us to people in the US, I’ll definitely be happy.
In terms of my project, it’s given me some food for thought regarding development and aid more than it has given me any sort of conclusions. I certainly learned a lot about how to do international development projects, about overcoming barriers to your work, about working in schools and with NGOs and companies abroad to make things happen, and has shown me that with enough hard work and good luck a lot of things can happen in a good way than you would ever expect. At the beginning of the summer, I wrote that I was incredibly skeptical of the entire OLPC movement for a variety of reasons, including sustainability, whether or not it was the most efficient way to use that money for development, and even if the laptops have positive results. Until we see how everything goes with our school over the next months and years, I don’t really have any answers to the questions I had, but I do have a few thoughts. I look upon the XOs much more favorably than I did at the beginning of the summer, for one thing. While before all I saw was $200 that could be spend to provide more water infrastructure or textbooks or things that are normally labeled as more essential needs, I think in a very different way it is a worthwhile investment. Like it or not, the world is in a computer age, everything is done via email and on computers, and yes, of course people in developing countries still need clean water and food and everything else that other development targets, but giving them access to computers and teaching them computer skills gives them a huge jump into the 21st Century that they otherwise wouldn’t have. If we just keep trying to cover basic needs when we help people, then there will be a constant game of catching up that happens, and the lag in technology and development will only continue to widen. There were very very few people that we met there who were computer literate that were around working age, and if they were they only had very basic knowledge of them. And if that’s the case, how can their businesses ever expect to compete? Everyone we met there wanted to learn to use computers because they saw it as a connection to the world, as a way of moving forward, and as a symbol of progress and modernity. Other development still needs to happen, but by just trying to meet people’s basic needs everywhere with NGOs and aid work, we’re not really helping them develop as much as we could. So no, the answer to all of the problems in developing countries doesn’t lie with the XO laptop, of course, but can it make a dent, improve some people’s lives? Maybe.
Another issue that I spent a lot of the summer thinking about was sustainability, and what I thought about doing things like OLPC did this summer, which is to just give a school laptops. In the past, the projects that I have worked on have been more along the lines of passing on knowledge to a community that they can use to fix some problem or improve their own lives in some way, as opposed to coming in and just dropping something off, like many aid organizations do. So many NGOs and aid organizations just come in, give some money or some things, and then leave just as quickly, and there’s no continuation of the product that people can make. As an example, one of Amy Smith’s big projects, charcoal, usually involves going into a community, showing them how to do a burn to produce the charcoal with agricultural waste, then how to crush and press the charcoal into charcoal briquettes. And each of the steps in that assembly line can be made into a business, which is how it becomes sustainable – someone from the area can create a new business with the knowledge that she brings, and thus the project continues long after she leaves. Since that was the first kind of development that I was exposed to really, I was extremely skeptical of the more common model, like the one OLPC uses. There is no way to make laptops sustainable no matter which way you look at it. But is that really bad? Sure it’s not as ideal a model as Amy’s, but is just giving something a bad thing? Before I would’ve said yes, but I’ve come to realize that there are some things, like 100 laptops, that no matter how much you try and make it into a business, or to somehow get the school to buy into the program, they will in no way be able to do so. If we hadn’t just given the laptops to Kampala Primary School, there is absolutely no way that they could have gotten them, and I think that the XOs were and hopefully will be highly beneficial to the school. So I guess that my view on just giving things has also changed a bit, but I think it is important to be careful with giving things away too often because it could also still screw a lot of things up. But I’ve come to agree with my friend Anne who described NGOs as the thing that can fill in the cracks where the governments in developing countries can’t or doesn’t do their whole job.
Lastly, this summer has taught me a lot about myself as a person, about where my limits are and how far I can push them, and what I value. Being a little hungry and a little thirsty some of the time doesn’t seem like such a big deal anymore, and I really know how to penny pinch if I ever need to like that again. I know now that I don’t ever want to be a pop star or anything even close to that, and that I need my own time in my own space every once and awhile to stay sane. I also know that if, at the end of my college career, I still want to do the Peace Corps, that I could do it and I could last that long away from the US without too much of a problem. The longer I stayed in Uganda, the more I felt like I could’ve stayed longer, so I suppose that bodes well.
Uganda’s a really truly great country. I’m not sure I would go back, mostly because I feel like I’ve exhausted a lot of the things to do there and there are so many other places I want to see, but I’ll definitely remember it and its culture fondly. Uganda’s rich in so many ways that America can only ever hope it will be – in generosity, in hospitality, in sincerity, and in hope. The country has the potential to move forward greatly, and I really hope to see it do so soon, to slowly move some of the people out of the poverty that grips much of country. But even if it doesn’t, I know the human side of the country, and know that the people of Uganda are miles ahead of the States in their ability to make someone feel at home, and in how generously and selflessly they will take you in, and give you the best of their food, drink, and shelter without asking for anything in return. In the next few years, I hope to retain some of that and try and spread a little Ugandan cheer in the US. 
![Awesome. I want one. [it's a gecko]](http://puddleofhope.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/smiths-green-eyed-gecko-sw.jpg "Awesome. I want one. [it's a gecko]")
