Profess Something, or The Two Africas (you can nap, now)

"What a long, strange trip it's been...."

--> In Tolkein's The Hobbit, Bilbo is hired by his elven masters  to burgle Smaug's loot: "You are the burglar.  Go down and burgle something" Thorin Oakenshield says to Bilbo.

Well, as a professor, I suppose I need to "profess" something I may have learned in my “professorial”  experiences at Muteesa I Royal University.

Here goes.

"How was Africa?" is the typical question I get upon my return.  "Great" or "Amazing" or "Pretty messed up” or “Complex” I say, knowing that any attempt at even a superficial accounting would fall far short of doing the continent any justice.

What I want to say is "How much time do you have?" or "What is your basic knowledge of Africa, so I can have a reference point to answer your question?" knowing that eyes would glaze over, people would look at their watches, fake a phone call, or run off to rearrange their sock drawer.  Very few of us really want an answer to "How was/is Africa?" because it’s often not very good news.  Most people are in a sublime state of willful ignorance when it comes to Africa.  It's way over there, very poor, and generally a source of rich country guilt or anxiety.  Most people just don't care.

They should.

Hornbill

Africa is on the cusp of finally breaking out of its torpor, after 500 years of foreign exploitation.  This is largely due to a renewed interest in its abundant natural resources.  Indeed, there is a new Scramble for Africa, not unlike its 19^th century predecessor, but one based less on a “civilizing mission” and one based more on cold, hard cash—usually in the hands of the already rich—that “other Africa” we don’t envision when we think of “The Dark Continent,” the one full of “natives” and big game, and armies of macho Ernest Hemingways hunting Kudu.  That Africa is still there (minus the big game, unless you’re in a park), but it becoming increasingly less relevant and left in the dust amidst the mad rush to “modernize” “globalize” and “digitize.”

Local pest too smart to go extinct

Indeed, there are two Africas, actually hundreds of them, but I'll stick with two for obvious reasons.  Africa is splitting into a perpetually impoverished class and a rapidly rising minority middle class.  The divide will continue to broaden as the rich countries inject ever more capital in hopes of extracting cheap minerals: the rich will get richer, their children will get richer still; the poor will get less poor, but not at the same rate, thus they will feel as if they are getting poorer.

Uganda has the world's  2nd highest birth rate.

About those children of the rich, those lucky enough to attend university:  most of them are in such haste to adopt the Euro-American ethos that they haven’t taken time to consider what they’re abandoning.  Only slightly aware of this before my teaching stint, I incorporated a bit of anthropology into my course, much to the dismay of my students: an oral history project whereby they would interview the oldest available relative to ascertain and document what life was like in “the old days.”   Their findings have become the beginnings of what the university and the Kingdom hope will be an ever-growing collection of oral histories of the Bugandan people.  

Further, despite their rush to modernize and throw off the yoke of traditional African culture, my students still have some pretty traditional attitudes when it comes to modern social issues such as gender equality, civil rights, and the role of government.  Most of my students acknowledged the theoretical equality of men and women, but all the girls accepted the subordinate role of the wife in the family dynamic. Wives are to eat on the ground while their husbands eat at the table or on the couch.  Wives are to kneel before their husbands each day.  In my problem-solving unit of the course, most of the solutions the students proposed asked for greater government involvement (funding, advocacy, “sensitization”), and yet they all hated the government and didn’t want its powers to grow (sound familiar?).

The only mode of transport on Lake Bunyonyi

Both boys and girls in my class rejected outright any recognition of gay rights.  Uganda has the harshest anti-gay laws in the world, and my students reflected this attitude.  I learned that  I was wrong in thinking I lived in the most was the most conservative and homophobic city on the planet.  Even Mormons appear as liberals when it comes to gay rights issues in Uganda.  Downright persecution is tacitly approved and when I broached the topic of gay rights in my interview with the former Prime Minister he got positively hostile and basically told the West to jump in the lake if they wanted to impose their perverted value system on Africa--aid or not.   I do admire his moxy, but thus far haven't seen Uganda sending back any aid checks.

At the top of my “agenda” in teaching a course entitled “Globalization, Development, and Africa” was to teach critical learning, problem solving, and communication skills to my students.  The way information is conveyed at school is at the heart of Africa’s seeming inability to solve its own problems.  Students are “taught” theory and concepts, but not much application; no relevance to the real-life problem they see all around them.  So, I endeavored to teach practical skills.  My students were resistant to this new and more dynamic approach, so used to passive listening, then cramming for exams and forgetting what they learned were they.  Nevertheless, I like to think of the new leaders of Africa possessing great research, problem solving, diplomatic, and communications skills; but above all high moral fiber.  I only found evidence of cheating in about a fourth of the assignments (a bit disappointing considering my frequent forewarnings).  The best student for the duration of the semester was rewarded with a free laptop (used and donated by a generous Rexburger for just such a purpose).

But I digress.

So, the two Africas are not converging, but diverging.  The peasants are increasingly marginalized and oblivious to many of the changes taking place. One issue they are painfully aware of is the changing weather patterns in equatorial Africa attributed to global warming.  The rains are becoming less predictable.  The peasantry usually rely on small-holder “gardens,” often less than an acre from which most of their caloric intake comes.  In a cash economy, subsistence farming is not a moneymaker, but some money is generated with the surplus harvests, sold on the side of the road—every road. 

This Property Not for Sale, but call me if you're interested.

But subsistence agriculture does have its advantages, such as not feeling much of the pinch of the global economic crisis.  Peasant farmers’ money is in the ground.  While we fret about losing our 401k, they hoe their sweet potatoes and life goes on as it always has.  When the crash hit, it was not the peasants, but the city folk that had to pay double and triple their usual food costs.  Peasants made out like bandits leading to yet another setback in their well-being: land grabs. 
Much of the land tenure in sub-Saharan Africa is tribally orientated, meaning a chief would give away plots with vague boundaries.  At independence the new governments tried to survey and plot the bewildering system, bequeathing land titles to those who could pay.  Peasants generally had no money, nor any proof of ownership except a verbal acknowledgement from the chief who no longer had any political power in the new system.  Some push back from the tribal system, but generally this has been a losing battle for traditional land tenure in Africa.  Land grabs and title fraud are still a problem as sub-Saharan Africa merges onto the 21^st century highway.

It is this 21^st century shuffling of the global economic and political deck that could serve to Africa’s advantage if its people can take advantage of their many opportunities.  China, India, Europe and the U.S. are all clamoring for a bigger slice of the African Cake (colonial metaphor intended).  The Scramble is on and China is winning, at least for now, and it is the already empowered who are profiting immensely. The divide widens.  Will technology be the X factor in allowing the poor to participate in the Scramble?  Not if current president, Yoweri Museveni, has his way.  Each time I’ve visited Uganda I’ve noticed an growing military and police presence-now on virtually every major intersection rests an army truck fully loaded with M-16 toting soldiers in fatigues; and three or four traffic police shaking down truckers (or the unawares professor driving peaceably with his family).  If the current powers-that-be have their way, there will be no Arab Spring south of the Sahara, regardless of what Twitter or Facebook might symbolize.

On a hike somewhere on the Rwanda/Uganda border

What did I learn from my extended stay?  What can I "profess"?  I learned that Kampala is growing so rapidly, and the state cares so little for its improvement, that it will likely just collapse in the next decade.  The overwhelming confidence that the Private Sector would solve all problems has led to an individualized and selfish mentality, exemplified by the 25,000 private mini-buses (called taxis); and the 75,000 motorcycle taxis (called boda-bodas).  No central planning, or vision, for the city has led to a city of four million people with no public parks, no public transit, no logical street system, no centralized sewage system.  The government's hands-off approach to development has made the city almost unbearable to live in.  Museveni (President) will most likely just wash his hands of improving the city, and build a new capital somewhere friendlier to his dictatorship (like his home district)

Most homes use either latrines out back (medieval) or a septic tank system, both of which are contaminating the entire water supply.  Water is collected either through ingenious rain collection from rooftops, or pumped up from the never-ending supply from the regular rainfall—we are in the Lakes District, after all—the Inter-lacustrine region for my stuffy professor colleagues.   

I learned that despite the abundance of water, and the glorious tropical climate which grows enough food to support the world’s second highest birth rate (3.8% per annum), Ugandans grossly under-exploit (typical American perspective) their natural resources; that life expectancy is at an eye-popping 52 years in a land that knows no hunger, but is the epicenter to endemic diseases like Ebola (break out while we were there), HIV/AIDS, Marburg’s Disease (break out while we were there), West Nile Virus, not to mention protracted civil conflicts.

Why the rampant poverty amidst such potential and plenty is still a conundrum for me.

I learned that despite all of these setbacks to development, coupled with the widespread poverty and lack of access to education, Africans are, ironically, happier than we Americans who take our many luxuries for granted.  Each time I visit Africa I relearn a lesson I have not incorporated into my daily life: “stuff” does not make us happy; it makes us miserable.  There is a baseline of necessities (adequate shelter, food, some clothing, a few dollars in the bank, and most importantly good family and friends) beyond which we begin to covet, become jealous, and feel like failures for not owning.  The latter sentiments are products of the many products we have available to us and is at the heart of the Western model of development: more jobs are created by making more stuff, which creates more jobs to make more stuff.  This is all relatively new to much of Africa, and it is not healthy (physically, in the form of the hamburger/soda diets; emotionally in the form of materialism).  

This is the lesson I take back each time I visit Africa, and yet if I could just get the new 7” iPad and a pair of Beats by Dr Dre I know my life would be much easier.

Meet John K.

"Enjoying" Ethiopian Food in Entebbe

John K… is a walking, talking miracle.  His whole village and all his family were killed in the Rwandan Genocide (1994).  He was four years old, shot in the leg and buried alive on top of 89 neighbors and family members.  Rwanda was so blown apart and helpless to its people that he lived on the street until a lady smuggled him into Uganda where he’s been ever since.  The lady died three years later, when John was barely in primary school. He lived on the streets of Kampala for a few more years, visiting a local Pentecostal church & singing in its choir.  He had his school fees paid through the church, until it went under, and he was linked to an American sponsor who goes through our little charity, Enough to Spare, to pay his school fees. 

We visited his school, Merryland High School in Entebbe, and took John to dinner in town. In the three years he’s been attending that high school he’s never had a visitor—until yesterday!  We found a little Ethiopian restaurant (Mary: I didn’t think Ethiopians ate.”) and we had a great time.  John was especially happy to have us take him to the supermarket and fill up a cart of things to take back.  We are happy to know John.  He’s 22 and a sophomore in high school.  He said that there was one student from Sudan, aged 35 and with a family, trying to get an education.  Civil wars and violence are so disruptive and have such devastating effects on family and education. We often take for granted what opportunities we have right in front of us.

Trees, Monkeys, Tarzan

Just one of hundreds of species at this "sleeper" of a tourist trap.  We were the only ones there!

Hornbill

Entebbe Botanical Gardens are one of the least know/frequented tourist scenes in the area.  Very cool selection of plants, trees, birds, monkeys, etc. just next to the zoo.  Many of the zoo animals are AWOL at the gardens.  The Gardens are where the original Tarzan series was filmed.  We ended up playing George of the Jungle, swinging into trees, instead of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan technique, but we got to swing on the same vines.