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No-Holds-Barred
By Peter G. Mwesige |
Shock, surprise, as Americans,Ugandans chat
Jan 29, 2004
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BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA-Last Saturday, a Ugandan colleague and I went out with two American women who have recently returned from Uganda. Our conversation turned out to be one of the most riveting I have had in recent times.
Museveni rightly attacked those know-it-all parachute experts. "Someone comes here and after two days he calls himself an expert on Ugandan affairs," he said. "We shall not accept it" (Problem is "we" have in fact accepted it). Our company (I'll call them J and G) had a far more commanding knowledge of Uganda. In fact, I thought their outsider position gave them an extra edge over many Ugandans. It enabled them to capture little details that many of us take for granted. Likewise, our outsider status in the United States allowed us to capture aspects of social relations here that our American friends never pay attention to. At some point, J asked us what the biggest surprise of our experience in the US has been. Much to their amusement, I told them that reports of American women being "loose" around African men were exaggerated. Of course since I met my fine Ugandan wife in my early days here, I never had much time to prove those reports. Or is something wrong with me? That was a question that again sent all of us cracking. The other Ugandan, who had earlier spent time in California, said it was shocking to see beggars on the streets of Hollywood. To that I added the story of the neighbour who came to our apartment to ask for sugar and tea leaves on a couple of occasions. She was a white single mother who had never exchanged a word with us until the first time when we answered the door at her hour of need. In many Ugandan communities, this is a common practice (perhaps tradition). All the stories about the individualism that goes with American capitalism had not prepared us for the same kind of sharing in the United States. My Ugandan friend also talked about occasions when his car broke down on the road and Americans stopped to offer help. Yes, after all the tales of individualism and racism, it was a surprise that White Americans could stop to offer help to black strangers. But he also added that on several occasions, he thought White people were more "relieved" when they discovered they were dealing with a Black African, not an African American. Well, what surprised you about Uganda, I asked our American friends. J said she had not expected to find an upper middle class in Uganda. "Well, as you know we grew up with images of the famine in Somalia, starving children, poverty, you know..." When she first came to Uganda, she had thought there was poverty all over the place. "That was a good surprise," she said. However, the growing gap between Uganda's rich and the poor majority disturbed her. J was also surprised by the hospitality of Ugandans. You visit somebody who is so poor but they welcome you with a warm heart and share with you whatever little they have, she said. She also talked about the mess on Kampala's roads, saying that when she first arrived, she thought it was "chaos." But as you start driving, "you discover that there is some order to it," she said. All the drivers know how to go about it. On that we disagreed. "It's chaos," I insisted, "but many drivers know how to negotiate the chaos." For her part, G was surprised by the pushing and shoving in the queues at the main post office. Given that "survival for the fittest" has long been a feature of capitalism, she said, one would have expected more shoving in America than in Uganda. Like her friend, G was also surprised by both the hospitality of Ugandans and the existence of an upper middle class. However, as she lived longer in Uganda, working with an NGO in the war-torn northern parts of the country, she began to develop "a resentment" toward the Ugandan middle class. Her major qualm? The Kampala-based middle class is ambivalent about the war in the north, which as she reminded me later is, "the world's biggest, neglected, ignored" humanitarian crisis according to the United Nations. I had earlier argued that in the first years of the NRM, many Ugandans south of the Nile did not care about or pay particular attention to the war in the north and the concomitant human suffering there. In more recent years, however, the rest of the country appears to have recognised the so-called northern war for what it really is-a national problem that has not only caused immense suffering but also diverted funds from other pressing problems. Our American friends didn't appear to buy that. To them, the rest of the country is still ambivalent about the suffering in the north. G later emailed to tell me that both of them had later commented about "how refreshingly candid and funny our conversation was." I still hope they are wrong on Uganda's middle class and the war in north. |
� 2004 The Monitor Publications
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