To be clear

Because of a previous blog post, someone wrote me and said, “I have to agree with you. Blacks are cursed by God.”

Thank you for writing, so I can clear up what must have been a misunderstanding. What I said was a minister we know believes that.

I don’t.

I don’t know why Africa has so many problems, but I don’t personally believe God would curse an entire continent.

Instead I believe that men will be punished for their own sins, and not for Adam’s, or anyone else’s, transgressions (AofF 2)

African Americans and those with dark skin around the world have proved over and over again they have equal potential of being just as successful as anyone else.

I believe in being color blind and I believe God is too. In fact, I picture Jesus as having much darker skin than is normally portrayed in paintings—after all, he was Middle Eastern.

Religion has a very sad history of reinforcing racism. I want to distance myself from that. It embarrasses me.

I do not endorse anyone who has ever stated that people with black skin are inferior, interracial marriage is sinful, or racial prejudice of any kind is acceptable.

Just to be clear.

My friend from Sudan, K.G., one of my favorite people I met in Cairo.

Why visit Africa?

Despite all of its problems, Africa, for me, is addicting.

I know I’ll want to come back.

Here is one reason:

When you go to Europe, everything is polished and perfect. You know exactly what to expect. You know the experience you’re going to have and nothing is going to be that bad. You’re not ever going to be in a traffic accident—not when you take the metro and not when traffic is so orderly. The worst that will happen is you will get pickpocketed, or that it will snow. You’re not going to get food poisoning. You’re not going to hold your breath as you carreen around narrow corners in an overstuffed minitaxi passenger van. The architecture will be beautiful, and people aren’t going to disturb you. Everything is going to be…perfect.

And everyone knows perfect can be boring.

Africa does its own thing and anything can happen. Whether it’s the side of the bus bursting off and falling into Jacob’s lap, or walking in a madhouse of a market where people are selling insects to eat, or experiencing overwhelming and powerful smells that have never greeted your nose before, or making friends who are sure in America there are no such things as lakes, Africa is a surprise.

I like surprises.

I like Africa.

African Realization

Riding Kampala Coach bus service into Uganda

It was in Church in Uganda that I had my realization about Africa.

The lady next to me in the Kampala Kololo Relief Society said this:

“We Africans are lazy! And God knows this about us. A long time ago I went to Europe. And I looked at the thermometer and it said it was –10 degrees outside! I called my sister and I said, “I’m bout to freeze here just like a chicken!” So God hasn’t given Africans winter because He knows we’re too lazy and we’d just die…Life in the village is so wonderful. We can sleep as much as we want, and when we’re hungry we just climb a tree and get some fruit. God has blessed us. We don’t have problems with earthquakes and tsunamis like Japan. We have everything we need.”

And I realized:

Wait a minute. It’s true. The land here is so green and lush. There is no winter. There are no natural disasters.

It is, or could be, a blessing to be born in Africa.

 

Africans have a wealth of resources right underneath their fingertips. The animals, the vegetation, the diamonds etc. It is up to them to capitalize on them—it’s not up to America or Europe. We’ve “helped” (and damaged) them enough already. Africans must learn to help Africans.

Living in Africa is an awakening. It’s seeing lives lived with problems that seem insurmountable. Where to start? The governments are unstable, the police are corrupt, 3/4 of people are unemployed at any given time, there are droughts, famines, AIDS and malaria outbreaks, child soldiers and prostitution, alcoholism (Uganda has the most alcohol consumption per capita in the world), illiteracy, lack of neighborhood cohesion, witch doctors for healthcare, no pride in one’s country, violent crime, war.

Most surprising of all, though perhaps it is to be expected: the family is broken apart. Some stats say that 90% of Kenyan men are unfaithful to their wives for example.

I asked a Canadian girl who had lived in Africa for years:

“Why do you suppose Africa is always at war?”

She replied, “That’s a very difficult question. I don’t know the answer.—But then, America is always at war, too, isn’t it?

I paused, taken aback: “True.”

Anyways, the question of why Africa is so besieged with problems could take years of discussion.

Jacob believes it’s the lack of winter—winter forces development.

I believe it’s lack of entrepreneurs—almost all the people who own businesses that we’ve seen in East Africa are actually Indians. For all the people we see just sitting around, it’s really amazing that more people don’t try to start a business. The hotels we stay in are foreign-run, and often even the tourist activities are headed by foreigners, not Africans. Economic problems breed hatred here—hatred toward leaders and toward people who are successful.

 

A preacher we met in Kigali genuinely believes that Africa is cursed. It certainly feels that way, let me tell you…

But these problems are created by the Africans and they must be solved by the Africans. I don’t believe we can be the saviors of the world, though Americans sure try to be… We can, of course do what we can to help. But---

We cannot force on people what they do not want for themselves.

African people must want development and must work for development. They must vote for leaders with integrity. They must build their own schools and not chase away talented and intelligent people with wrongheaded policies and low quality of life. They must stop allowing corruption. They must build businesses. They must plan for the future so when the drought or famine comes they have stored food. They must learn from their mistakes. They must get married and stay married. They must stop practicing witchcraft on one another

(Jacob has been hexed already. He thinks it was a joke. Let’s hope. He cast a spell on them in return.)

They must learn to serve one another, the main focus of all successful businesses.

And they can do it, but they must want it and they must do it—the African way.

We can’t do it for them.

What the West-aiding-Africa culture  has engendered, though idealistically it sounds humane, in real life, is Africans literally expecting things from us just because we’re white. If we go grocery shopping the guard of the mall, armed with a gun, naturally, says, “Even this one I want” pointing to the drink Jacob is drinking. Children follow us and demand, “Give me money. Give me pen.” Not so much as a please or thank you. The shipping of free clothes to Rwanda means that everyone wears US brand clothes instead of buying clothes from Rwandans, destroying the clothes industry there because why buy clothes from Rwanda when you can get them free from America? Everyone in Ghana assumed I worked for an NGO, because why would a white person visit a black country without plans to “help”--

Just because we’re white and they’re black. We’re American, and they’re African. It sucks and frankly, we’re getting tired of it. If anyone comes here to work in an NGO, I wish it could be African Americans, to show that it’s not skin color that marks success. But the African Americans I know don’t even know which country their ancestors come from. They are remarkably separated from their history, and the NGOs that I have seen are run completely by white people.

The president of the United States of America’s father came from Kenya. The most powerful person in the world is black.

Anything is possible for the people here too, but I don’t know that they have that kind of vision.

Another Sunday in Rwanda, I sat through a testimony with tears dripping down my face as a youth spoke of his conversion to the Church. He said that he was starving and he asked his family for food and they didn’t have any and he asked his neighbors and they didn’t have any and so he started begging on the side of the road. And an American girl came and told him that his Heavenly Father loved him, and to come to Church with her. And he is now an English teacher and he’s not hungry anymore and he lives with hope for the future.

I will never know what it is like to go hungry. I will never know what it is like to grow up a poor African child and see wealthy, well-fed white people come visit my city.

I’m glad to know that I can still be affected by the misery that we see, and I don’t want to become jaded, but I can’t help but feel this:

Africa, it’s time for you to take some accountability for your own.

Homesick

So I have to admit: Since coming to Uganda I have felt homesick.

Can I indulge in some things I am missing?

~Libraries.

I know I have a Kindle, but I miss exploring the shelves and flipping through books and smelling the pages and seeing the typefaces. I miss library computers where I can look up any book I’ve been interested in and read it, for free.

There’s a bookstore in the mall next door and I settled into one of their cozy armchairs with some books and spent a comfortable hour reading about Rwandan and African problems. Surrounding me were other Africans sitting in their respective cozy armchairs, reading as well. However, when I left, a store employee said: “What did you buy?” Me: “Nothing this time.” Employee: “I saw you reading over there, and you didn’t buy anything? That’s bad. You should buy at least one.” I felt discriminated against as the only white (therefore, wealthy) person. Maybe all the other Africans bought a book, I don’t know. I haven’t gone back to that bookstore.

~Shopping with girlfriends.

I’ve complained about shopping in the past, but it’s not shopping that I don’t like—not really. It’s shopping alone that is boring and a nuisance.

~Good internet.

Without good internet, it’s difficult to communicate with friends and family—Skype goes too slow. Furthermore working becomes a chore when every 5 minutes the internet goes out.

~U.S. holidays.

We’ve been traveling for nearly 2.5 years now, and we have missed a lot of holidays and celebrations. I’d love to decorate Easter eggs, or make an Irish dinner for St Patrick’s day, but our situation makes those things difficult.

~Cooking.

I would really love to cook for Jacob. He would really love it, too.

~LDS Church, American-style.

Church is different in Africa. The speaking style is very straight-laced and rote for the most part. Interesting anecdotes or critical thinking discussions are absent. Instead, questions are asked like, “How should we fast?” and then people answer it for 30 minutes in very typical ways. Then the next question is “In what ways should we fast?” and the answers are exactly the same, and it seems to go over the teacher’s head that it was the exact same question just phrased in a different way. Sometimes the discussions are so weird. For example, in Ghana we spent an entire 3rd hour talking about blood. “What is blood?” “Why do we need blood?”

~Salads, cheese, Mexican food, and no worries about Delhi belly.

Anyone who’s lived abroad for an extended amount of time knows that food can be a real heartbreaker. America is the best food destination in the world, Jacob and I agree. (Italy comes in a close second). African cuisine isn’t varied or creative or even tasty on the whole, although there are options for other cuisine—usually Indian. I’ve had food poisoning in 5 places over the last 2.5 years: Turkey, Morocco, USA, Thailand, and Uganda.

~Clothes

With poor planning on my part, almost all the clothes I packed were pink. Then, the day I said to myself, “I am tired of wearing pink!” I washed an Indian skirt which was pink and new and it dyed Jacob’s clothes pink too! I had to laugh. We are still washing pink dye out of our clothes. I’m ready for some new colors.

~Convenient transportation

It’s difficult to get around here. The traffic is bad, the drivers reckless and boda bodas are the easiest way to get around but I refuse to use them because they are dangerous. They’re motorcycles with bad track records and no helmets. To cross the street is an act of daring with no crosswalks and endless streams of cars.

~Distance from loved ones

I’m missing a lot of milestones in friends and family members’ lives.

 

This is our choice to be here though.  Africa is a difficult place to live—that’s one reason we’re here, to see how a large majority of people live and maybe get some insight and empathy into the Dark Continent. The other reason is because Jacob is training athletes here and actually he has been offered to play on the professional Division I team so this is an exciting opportunity. He doesn’t know if he’s interested, but –Jacob just showed up in a foreign country and got offered a professional basketball position! That is pretty dang incredible. So please excuse my homesickness, I don’t think it will last long and we are definitely grateful for the experience thus far.

Uganda has the wackiest birds I’ve ever seen and they live just outside our window.