Higher and Higher

Today one of the clinical instructors did not show up to work.  When someone asked why he didn't show up to work, another instructor said that he was at the prison.  Why was he at the prison?  Because his mother was there.  Why was his mother at the prison?  Because her neighbor's goat had eaten vegetables in her garden so she took the goat and locked it in her bedroom.  The police were called and the mother was arrested and the clinical instructor had to explain that this is not normal behavior for his mother.

At lunchtime the 45-year old woman who has been serving me lunch for the past 4 months got up the nerve to ask me if I would let her touch my hair.  She got what she wanted and now she won't stop smiling at me and I love it.

After work I was driven in an instructor's car to the other university in my town to check out the basketball courts that I didn't know existed until today.  On our way we passed about 20 Ugandans and 2 whites wearing Red Cross vests.  The instructor said that I looked exactly like the white male and that he had actually met him the other week, apparently they are both Germans who live in Bushenyi.

The students were upset today over an issue of money they paid for their mental health practicum.  When I asked what was going on and the situation was explained, a clear response formed in my mind, and to my great satisfaction two other instructors voiced exactly and more articulately what I was thinking before I even said it.  If you want to diffuse a situation between two people or groups of people, being clear and transparent is usually the absolute best thing you can do.  In this situation, explaining the breakdown of where the students' money goes seemed logical, and it did to a couple other teachers.  In the end, transparency was not chosen as, "That is not how it is done in Uganda."

While this last story is vague, I include it for two reasons.  First, most of what I write, including the first two stories, may present Ugandans as somewhat naive and silly.  That is not what I am aiming to prove.  I write the stories I think are funny or make me laugh during the day, stories that I hope will make you laugh.  Most of my days are filled with a normality that wouldn't make me want to read, so I include the extreme.

Secondly, this situation proved what I believe and highlighted why I like my organization.  When I vent frustrations about situations involving Ugandans skirting around an issue and not being direct, I am often met with the mantra, "It's not their culture."  Well, frankly, fuck that.  I had two teachers who saw this situation exactly how I saw it and laid out to the other teachers exactly how they should respond and why, and they were as Ugandan as everyone else in the room.  I agree that a lack of directness is cultural, but acceptance of a lack of directness does not bring me to a higher level of understanding, it says to me that here is a group of people incapable of solving problems because their culture demands it.  If being transparent is merely a cultural difference like Americans preferring to drive on the right and Brits on the left, I guess it wouldn't matter.  But it isn't, transparency fits on a ladder of better and worse, it's hierarchical.  I am proud to work with a group of teachers that see that difference and strive for the higher and harder goal.  I am proud to work with the teachers that are trying to see that difference.  And I have a reason to be here when there is a gap to bridge and a group of people that accept me enough to try and see it too.