In coming to Africa, there has been one thing I have wanted more than anything else: perspective. While here, I have endured cycles of happiness, sadness, joy, homesickness, self-defeating thoughts, and courage. In retrospect, I had already known that the things I have come to see existed, and it haunted me. Now that I have seen it, I know it will haunt me the rest of my life. Sometimes I wish that I could live with the perspective of a child, who knows nothing more than his or her needs. Yes, that is selfish, but I am now overwhelmed and guilt-ridden over my love of the American life.
Secondary to perspective, I have sought self-worth and purpose in Africa. What I have found is confusion as to how to live my life and how to proceed from here. The guilt I now feel will surely not leave me. I know now that every death statistic, AIDS statistic, malaria and TB statistic- those men, women, and children all have a name and a face and a personality. They are no less important than your mother or child. Why do we treat the lives of those in third world countries as if they are expectedly and normally transient? Those people are just as loved as we love our families!
In the slums, kids have to worry about little worms that can enter their feet from standing water. These worms then fester for weeks until they finally leave the body—wherever they choose—in a long, long strand of matured parasite. Yet, many kids have no shoes to wear and go around barefoot. Yesterday, I witnessed this in Kasansero, where the first cases of AIDS in Africa were diagnosed. In this cruddy, dirty shantytown along Lake Victoria many little children didn’t have shoes in the pouring rain. (Random note: a little kid- around 1 or 2- instantly burst into tears upon seeing me; I may have been his first musungu! [white person/foreigner]) This past Friday, I was in a Kampala slum while PCA fed the kids one of the two meals a week it can provide. A teenager brought over a dish to my two friends and I and insisted fervently that we eat it. We told him that we weren’t hungry, that we had just eaten lunch beforehand and that the other children should get it. He was much more concerned that we, the well-fed musungus, were given lunch even if others were hungry. Eventually the plate was passed down to three kids sitting on the floor awaiting Neosporin and bandaids, who scarfed it down together. On this day, we taught a group of boys-I would say around 8 to 17- the alphabet and how to form words with consonants and vowels. Some kids already knew these concepts but others struggled to write out the letters. Paul, the leader, wrote on an old overused chalkboard while the kids wrote on the cement floor with some paper and pencils. We then went over the alphabet song- theirs is different than ours- and played a few games. One of those was musical chairs, except that there was no music and we used a bench- in the end, it was who sat down first, not who couldn’t fit. It was…an interesting experience. Not happy nor particularly sad; in a way, it was just a regular day.
Today we were given the opportunity to watch a circumcision as a part of the Rakai Health Services Project that we are currently visiting. Circumcision is a very important HIV/AIDS prevention method for various reasons that I won’t go into now. Obviously, this is a huge breach of privacy but it was no less allowable then seeing into patient rooms at Mulago Hospital. We were dressed up in gowns, face masks, and hair nets, took a couple pictures of how silly we looked, and then entered the rooms. Men were laying down, naked outside of a shirt, on the metal tables and watching us. (Only local anesthetic was used.) I looked at their faces and felt what I had felt years ago getting my spinal check-ups pre-surgery- exposed, anxious, and angry at my perceived loss of dignity. I felt that those doctors had lost their realization of how profound these feelings could be for a scared patient with no control. I had to leave without seeing the circumcision, not because of discomfort at blood but for each man’s sake. Everyone deserves their sense of dignity, and we as undergraduate students who are mostly not even pre-med had no right to be in there or to strip these men of their pride. Maybe that was not the reality, but it’s what’s in the perception that matters.
Being in Africa also inspires me to often think about my career plans. Intern during my senior year, graduate, intern with the UN, go to grad school, get a job…I feel internally and externally pressured to be successful. I wonder if, even upon achieving my goals, I will happy in the end. And then I wonder if that even matters. Is it not selfish to be happy, when other people suffer and you could sacrifice your happiness to make a contribution to theirs? [By happiness, I am referring to stability, material comfort, entertainment- the American dream. At the same time, however, I am also referring to the state of mind: if you truly are sacrificing yourself for others, it would be a struggle to be “happy”.] Is happiness really what we should be pursuing? Is that pursuit even ethical?
To live without complaint, to love regardless of flaws, to appreciate every moment of my life: those are my new goals.
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