Week 5/6 Update

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The deeper I dive into my work and into this community, the harder it is for me to recommend a solution that I can truly see being successful without being impeded by all that encompasses daily life in Uganda.

In my opinion, when working with citizens of developing countries, well all people for this matter, the biggest hurdle to jump is the varying levels of knowledge between citizens. This challenge is magnified in developing countries where formal education is far from a guaranteed right and even further from normalcy. It’s important for me to note the relevance of this issue in my work because quite frankly, it is the cause of the whole waste management issue.

Bugembe Town has a population of 64,000 people, which makes it nearly impossible for a research team of one (me) to sample properly in the short time I am here. However, with the help of 4 translators, I was able to sample 110 citizens in one day, regarding their interactions with waste. I use the word “help” loosely because my translators were made up of people who have no background in research and I’m honestly still not sure if they understood my survey questions completely in order to translate properly, which is a different issue that I’m dealing with.

From my data collection came many expected results, but also many answers that have the ability to hinder my research deeply. For example, during the survey, 67% of my respondents said when they see waste on the street they pick it up and “dispose of it properly in a waste bin”. The only problem with that is there are ZERO waste bins on the streets in Bugemebe, but I guess they could be associating “waste bin” with the garbage heaps that pile on the sides of streets, but I am more inclined to chalk this up to fear because many believed these surveys were a propaganda ploy by the Town Council.

The other problematic responses came with the questions, “Are you willing to pay/ pay more for waste collection from the Town Council (government)?” and “Do you believe it is possible to reduce the amount of waste you produce?”. Fifty- one percent of respondents responded to the first question with a “yes”, while 70% of respondents believed it was impossible for them to reduce their waste production. These two responses have the ability to not only dictate my research outcomes negatively, but show the lack of knowledge the community has regarding waste and more importantly navigating the bureaucracy and corruptness of their local and national government in Uganda. In a nation where the average weekly income carry over (I don’t know if this is the right term or makes sense, but I just mean the amount of money they have after taxes and necessities) is 3,000 UGS (less than $1 USD), I have over half of my sample, albeit a small sample, willing to pay money that they just simply don’t have. This would allow the government to continue to tax its residents dry, but obviously not nearly as hard enough to receive enough money to improve its waste management system because there is just simply not enough money in anyone’s hands.

Not to mention, that they can EASILY reduce the amount of waste they produce, but this requires sensitization, knowledge production and time that is rightfully trumped by the time and work ethic they need to focus on providing for themselves and their family. On top of that, of the 30% of respondents who believed they could lower their waste production, said they could do so by burning their trash more frequently, which everyone does here and is common in most developing/ over-populated countries. Burning waste is not necessarily harmful, except here in Bugembe, and in most of the Nile region of Uganda, they do not separate their waste which leads to the burning of extremely hazardous and cancerous materials including plastics and metals. I can also point out in the past ten years, Uganda has experienced and influx of birth defects, which coincides with a growth in population and subsequently a growth in waste production (waste burning). But I obviously can’t say that is the reason for more birth defects and health issues, but is something that definitely needs to be researched, if it isn’t already.

So simply, as of right now, the data I have collected for my research can be used as propaganda to allow the local government to continue neglecting the safety, health and financial security of its citizens for literally an extra handful of US coins per week.

I was going to write about myself a little bit, but I’m not going to lie putting this information onto digital paper drained me and further supported the fact that my personal journey should be put on the back burner for a while.

Uganda Week 4

StickyCollege Life, Free Write, Personal Essay, Social Justice, Summer, Uganda, Uncategorized, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Work Update

I left my home 31 days ago, began my research 25 days ago and today I finally collected my first bit of generalizable data, which somehow puts me right on schedule because that’s how it works here. Today, July 17, 2018, I held an introductory meeting with 18 newly elected Town Officials for the Bugembe Town Council, including the mayor and representatives from Uganda’s National Water and Sanitation Agency.

My goal was to leave with some sort of general knowledge, from those in power, on the waste management processes utilized by the Town Council. After spending 380,000 Ugandan Shillings just to get the government officials out of their respective offices to my meeting site (which was ironically outside next to a heap of unaccounted for waste), I was able to learn about the many issues that plague the five respective parishes of Bugembe. I administered a short questionnaire and held a focus group discussion for about an hour and a half with translation help from the Bugembe Town Council’s Primary Health Inspector.

Some of the more important pieces of information that I received through the Questionnaires & FGD can be found just below:

  • Solid waste is not collected in some areas
  • Bugembe Town Council suffers high influx of people (over 70,000 people coming in and out every day) and little is done to plan for their waste collection centers
  • Social indiscipline- People litter garbage carelessly without care about the environment (However I believe this is more to do with a lack of shared knowledge than “care”)
  • Poor roads have made some collection points inaccessible
  • Specialized equipment for garbage collection needed
  • Insufficient fuel for garbage collection
  • Only vendors are taxed for waste collection at 10,000 UG Shillings per year (less than $3 USD), but many can’t afford that
  • Bugembe Town Council’s waste management budget is 70,000,000 UG Shillings per year ($18,900 USD)
  • 30 Tons of waste generated per week by the Town Council

 

After being stagnant for the past 2 and a half weeks, this meeting, thankfully, put my work back into perspective for me. Towards the end of the meeting, one of the three English-speaking officials, called me out for exactly what I had been struggling with last week. What happens when I’m gone? But before I could answer, the Health Inspector stepped in and explained how important my work will be in helping the Town get funding from not only my NGO, but from other Ugandan and international organizations, and how it can serve as a stepping stone as the Town Council lobbies for policy change. It’s been hard to see the importance of my work these past few weeks, which in turn has made it hard to progress against a lot of the ailments in front of me, but my work can and should make a huge impact on the lives of 64,000 people. Hopefully, this momentum will help propel me through the next two and a half weeks of field work before my research paper and dissemination takes place.

Personal Update

For the first time in my life I feel identity-less. I have not forgotten who I am, and what makes me who I am, but my identity really doesn’t exist here. Yesterday, I was asked why I had hair like Ugandans by a Ugandan lady, who when I told her I was Black, didn’t believe me. My identity is something I’ve always had difficulty with, like a lot of people, but I never really questioned what I was until I got here. I’ve always seen myself as Black, but ironically, now more than ever, it’s obvious the effects of my heritage and lineage being stolen from me.

Since I got to college, colorism has been a topic that I have been unable to evade, for valid reasons. In the Black community, being lighter skinned is often looked down upon because we are closer to what is accepted by society and thus afforded privileges that many darker skinned Black people in America don’t receive. I acknowledge this is true, but as someone who does not identify as light or dark skin, I often feel lost in the debate.

In America, I’ve never been seen as anything but Black, so I find it hard to acknowledge these said privileges for myself, although some might feel differently. But here, I’m seen as literally nothing. I have been asked if I was East Asian and even Chinese (I know), but besides that most people are stumped.

This whole experience has made me more aware of how complex Blackness is throughout the world. It is something that is challenged differently everywhere and is not necessarily unique to Blackness, but it is definitely more intense with Blackness.

My last point is unrelated, but today I found out I made more money to be here for 65 days than half of my host organization makes in a year. Capitalism is trash and will always be unfair and unethical. See you next week?

 

 

Uganda Week 3

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*Disclaimer* I was 500 words deep into this week 3 update and my Microsoft word crashed. And!!! Since I don’t have internet, the auto save/ auto recovery function was not working, so I’m starting from scratch.

Week 3 Update

I decided to switch up the update this week due to the fact that I’ve accomplished little to nothing this week in regard to my research. I spent the entire week going back and forth to the Bugemebe Town Council offices just to get my research accepted by the health inspector. This is normal for research, so I understand. However, it was just frustrating because the Town Council Health Inspector cancelled the meeting multiple times and then had me wait in his office for two hours one day just for him to forget that I was there and leave. But I digress, my job here isn’t to critique Ugandan governmental practices.

Before coming to Uganda, I told myself I would not be like the other academic researchers we all here about. Those that often fit the stereotypical white academia mold and who partake in research on a community, instead of with, and don’t ever disseminate their findings or truly leave the place they studied in a better shape than when they arrived. But sadly, I find myself drifting towards those lines every day, no matter how hard I fight it, because the institutions and powers I am fighting against, or working with (depending on how you interpret it), are a lot more powerful and experienced than I am.

As I set of 2,000 miles away from home to attend Northwestern, I told myself I was going to dedicate my life and my work to the cause. More than anything I believe in social equity and social justice in a country that is finding itself moving further and further away from those missions every day. Growing up in a relatively financially stable household for most of my life, I was able to understand at an early age the privileges afforded to me that most of my friends and my peers didn’t have. Not only that, I was able to, for the most part, effortlessly breeze through school and accomplish a lot of things that my peers couldn’t even dream of, mainly because they didn’t know they existed and couldn’t grasp their magnitude. Let me tell you this can cause a shit-storm of emotions, all typically ending with the thought that life is often not fair and there’s really nothing you can do about it. Although I’m a Black kid whose grown up with nothing but Brown and Black kids for my entire life, which is far from what most people would consider lucky in this country, I am just that lucky. It’s no coincidence that at 18 years old, and while attending the 10th best school in the country, I have the transcript of a third year, or the fact that my brother graduated from UCLA just one month after his 20th birthday. In our case, this is because of the hard work of those before us and a couple lucky rolls of the dice. But for those who aren’t as lucky, this is because of the oppressive practices that hinder a majority of the world’s daily life, no matter race, religion or creed.

I say all of this to reiterate the point that I set off to do this research because I have experiences that don’t normally fit the mold of the stereotypical white academia in research, and experiences that I hoped to use in order to help the world become a tiny bit better. However, at this point, I’ve fallen victim to the bodies of power in front of me. I shouldn’t fail to mention that these institutions have helped me to be in this position (NU, the Ugandan Govt., etc.), which creates a hard power cycle to evade, especially with no experience. This doesn’t mean I’m done with my goal, but I can’t really function without acknowledging the challenges ahead of me, which is what this is I guess. Also, one last point, since I began using this platform to release a lot of my thoughts and work, people have seemed to think I’m unhappy with my experiences at Northwestern and beyond, but that can’t be further from the truth. I just can’t live without critiquing the bullshit I see, even if some of it benefits me. I also realized that I cursed a couple of times in this piece, and I guess this is me coming to terms with the fact that I’m an adult and living 10,000 miles away from home right now, so who cares?

Around 100 people have been clicking this link a week, so to the 10/100 of you that made it to the end of this update, THANK YOU!

Uganda Week 1

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Week 1

 

After leaving my home Saturday afternoon, and traveling for 38 hours, I finally reached Jinja on Monday night.  I’ve been wanting to call this my pilgrimage since I found out I received this research fellowship through the Buffett Institute at Northwestern. Not because of the strenuous initial journey to get here, but because of the immediate and unforeseen implications this trip will have on my life and life trajectory.

I’ll be constructing and helping to implement a waste management system for the Bugembe Town Council, which has 33,000 residents, solely recommended by my own research. At 18 and while pursuing degrees in Journalism and Sociology, I’ll have grown men, with business and engineering degrees, gawking at my words and backing my decisions– I understand how backwards and ridiculous this is. I had planned to stay away from the pseudo eco-tourism that a lot of us college students partake in during the summer, and still hope to, but I now see how hard that is when working with universities and other institutions.

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Kakira

I’m staying in Kakira a small town in the Bugembe Town Council, which is right outside of the much bigger Jinja Town. Kakira is an entirely gated town as it lies on the land of  Kakira Sugar Works factory, a multi million dollar company that follows all the bureaucratic rules of any transcontinental entity, no matter its location (bordering one of the poorest slums in Uganda). I feel like economic inequality follows me everywhere I go and has become so apparent in my life and my awareness after my first year at NU, but I know it’s not following me. It’s just everywhere and in every capitalistic state. However, from my short observations, it doesn’t seem to affect daily life as much as it does in the US. This could be because it’s not as drastic as in the US– here you’re either poor or really poor (in terms of global wealth), and the way of life seems much more purposeful. You have your role, and you do it. That is up to your interpretation in comparison to life in the US.

Being Black

I’ll never stop being Black, so it’ll never stop being an issue. I’ve come to the realization (at this point in my life)  that it is honestly hard being Black anywhere on this planet. In the US, you are backtracked and stopped in your tracks by the institutional racism that hasn’t been capped or even truly combatted since this country’s creation. And from what I’ve been told, in European and Asian countries, you’re seen as an exhibit in a museum– met with stares and awkward touching. In Africa, at least in my experience as a lighter-skinned Black person, you’re met with looks of confusion. My Chinese colleague has been met with smiles and ecstatic greetings, while I’ve often been ignored, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing at all, but telling nonetheless. A lot of people think I’m Muslim and East-Asian, definitely a new one, but I can’t blame them. Our country has failed to teach the atrocities and true history of slavery, so how can I expect Africans to believe that I’m supposedly  one of them. The only difference is– I have generations of my family’s colonizer’s blood flowing through my body. Coincidentally, as I’ve been here I began reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and have had to combat his early Back to Africa beliefs. America isn’t ours, but Africa really isn’t either. Especially in a contemporary sense, after my week here, I’ve seen how impossible an African-American integration into Africa would be. The roots of our cultures may be similar, but not enough to bridge the intense culturally and psychologically gaps that separate us.

But to end this on a good note, my host family is amazing and they have two little children that I love. That is all, see you next week and Brazil is winning the World Cup.

My mind-

Free Write, Personal Essay, Poetry 
By: Adam Mahoney

I’m always trapped in my head.

It’s the only place that feels like home.

It gives me support, nourishment and comfort like no other place or person.

This might be because it’s the only place I truly know.

It rarely lets me out to explore the world,

But I know theres more to life, more to my life.

I wish I could explore it,

But my mind always calls me home.

It sustains itself on my thoughts,

Making sure no one else gets to feel them

Touch them

Hear them.

I think I love my mind because it loves me so much.

My mind loves me, right?

I love me, right?

Q and A with Dr. Lesley-Ann Brown-Henderson, Northwestern University’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion

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Students here at Northwestern University realize that this campus and its culture are both much bigger than just academics, as they live, sleep and eat at Northwestern every day, but do they realize the effort put into creating an inclusive and culturally dynamic community on campus? Dr. Lesley-Ann Brown-Henderson, Northwestern University’s Director of Diversity and Inclusion, discussed the school’s mission in attempting to create a more inclusive and diverse community, specifically for students of color. Her quotes have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q: What would you attribute the statistical rise in the number of black students over the past three years to be?

 

A: I’d like to say campus climate improving and black students feeling like this is a place they’d want to go.

 

Q: From an administrative standpoint what has changed in the way students of color are being treated on campus?

 

A: Now people in the community are holding each other more accountable, meaning students are trying to hold faculty more accountable in the classroom and that’s being further affirmed by staff and administrators. And then I think the number of things that we are trying to implement within the community, so from Wildcat Welcome to all these other things; we try to say that this is the community we want to be, these are the things that we are trying to do and these are the expectations of our community members. I think hopefully all of these things are starting to shift the culture on campus.

 

Q: Would you say the culture shift on campus has been implemented more so by the students or the administration?

 

A: I think the implementation has been done more so by the university, but I think the students have been pushing the university.

 

Q: After talking to a couple of students, a few feel like the push to creating a more inclusive and diverse campus has only been seen on paper and is not really being felt by the black community as a whole; what would you say in response to that?

A: I could see how students would see that or say that. When I think about the amount of training and education in Social justice education, which is one of the areas I oversee. To see they touched over 2500 students last year with educations on issues of equity, identity, power and privilege. So, programs like that, I know are on the ground doing work with students and I think sometimes perhaps students aren’t feeling it as directly as they would like to.

Q: Would you say with the current political climate and events like Charlottesville, has that changed any of your values in the office of Diversity and inclusion regarding to black students?

 

A: Our mission is to collaborate with the entire university to create a safe learning environment through the intentional engagement with difference, so we want our students in our university to engage with students who are different. So, if nothing else those events have furthered center our offices values, I think our work is even more important now than ever.