Attitudes that kill me

Why are these people poor? This is the question I kept asking myself over and over during my first few weeks here. Compared to other areas in Africa, Uganda has a lot of resources, not the least of which is very fertile land. So what is going on here? The answer is that it’s complicated- there are a bajillion reasons which I will perhaps attempt to tackle at a later time. One reason, which I will elaborate on here, most certainly relates to attitude.

Two families, different outcomes
In preparation for writing a grant proposal to FSD, I’ve been doing a needs assessment over the last couple weeks in Ssenyange subparish, the hill behind Masaka. It's an area Buddukiro has identified as a major source of kids coming to the street. Yesterday, two of the families I interviewed highlighted an interesting theme that keeps repeating itself in the people I meet.

In the first family, there were two able-bodied parents with one child, aged 16, who was out of school due to lack of fees (more on that in my other post). Like many, they were struggling to make ends meet through occasional odd jobs. The second family, a single mother with six kids, all in school, was struggling but managing somehow. She is a ‘fishmonger’ (seller) in town, and also belongs to a savings group.

I’m sure there are many factors involved, but I can’t help but look at the two families and wonder- why is the one with the seemingly harder circumstances somehow making it work while the other cannot? This is another question that I keep asking myself- Why, when faced with similar circumstances, do some people manage to scratch out their food from the soil, and others don’t have enough to eat? Why are some able to cobble together school fees for their children while others cannot? I think the answer is very much rooted in attitudes.

The downside of giving
Every day, people see that I am a muzungu, assume I am rich, and ask me for money- kids, adults, poor people, seemingly well off people, co-workers, total strangers. Even the teacher I talked to at Ssenyange Public school (see previous post), came out and told me that she’s a widow with six kids. She’s having trouble paying their fees, and can’t I help her? I know it sounds harsh, but I was thinking, “Take a number and get in line lady.”

Granted, it may be true that I, even without an income at the moment, am comparatively rich. However, there is an underlying attitude here that is extremely problematic for Uganda’s future. For so many years, Uganda was facing war and calamity, and international aid agencies flooded in to provide help. Good, people in crisis need assistance. However, among too many, this has left a legacy of idle hands, held open to receive help, rather than being set in motion to change the circumstances.

Aid/development work is actually pretty big business here- I think it might be the 2nd or 3rd largest industry in the economy. Most everyone associates NGOs (nongovernamental orgs) with money, and looks to them (rather than the government) for the majority of their services. Among Ugandans there is also a culture where anyone who manages to earn a decent living faces a line of people in their own family expecting a handout. (There are some aspects of this generous, family-oriented culture that I really admire, but there's a down side too in terms of incentive.)

Two types of people, two different outcomes
There seem to be two main types of people that I am meeting, who seem to have very different outcomes in life:

Go-getters
**There are people like my host mother Jenipher (see my previous blog entry about how, when widowed, she went from crying for help to working hard to make a way for her six kids).
**There is also Frank, who was one of the first street kids Buddukiro supported. He just completed university with a degree in development studies. He hopes to start a project to help vulnerable kids, like he once was.
**There is also my friend Fred, who worked his fingers to the bone to earn his school fees after his mom died when he was 12. He is now a doctor who is managing to pay the school fees of his younger siblings, create jobs for his unemployed friends, and build dreams of starting his own hospital one day.

Characteristics Jenipher, Frank, and Fred share: ambition and drive, a willingness to work hard, an eye for the long-term, a tendency to make the most of opportunities, and a feeling of responsibility for their own destiny and that of those they love.

Pic: Frank standing tall at the Buddukiro drop-in center, where he began as a street child and grew into the first college graduate in his family.





Sit-and-give-me-ers
**There are others who are able-bodied, but either unable or unwilling to make the leap to find a way to pull themselves up. Jenipher herself said that for two years after she became a widow, she wasted her time crying and looking for someone to help her, before finally realizing there was no one but herself to look to.
**Some of the boys who were in Buddukiro at the same time as Frank were also supported by BCA to go to school, but decided to drop out. These days those same boys, now men, are often still on the street, or even in prison, and ask him for money when they see him around town.
**One classmate of Fred's was supported by a sponsor for all of his school fees, but somehow lost steam and dropped out in Senior 6 (just before finishing.)
These individuals seem to share: a feeling of entitlement, a short-term focus, a tendency to squander rather than capitalize on opportunities, a feeling that good outcomes are the result of ‘luck,’ rather than hard work.

Pic- Asheraf, a 17 year old that Buddukiro recently placed in a year-long carpentry apprenticeship (his third and final opportunity, as he has dropped out of two other programs already.) This past week, he skipped out three days in a row. (Did anyone else just hear the sound of my compassion being exhausted?)




What makes a ‘go-getter’ versus a ‘sit-and-give-me-er’? Is the go-getter, entrepreneurial attitude innate, or can it be learned? Perhaps both. One thing is for sure- in considering my ‘mini project’ in Ssenyange, I would sooner do nothing at all than contribute to perpetuating the ‘sit-and-give-me’ attitude. The ‘bone’ I’m gnawing on here is how to design a project that encourages the community to work together, using its own resources to address its own problems, rather than looking to me, the muzungu, with open hands.