*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 10^th 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 20^th 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!