Culture Shock

Before my trip, I thought that sine I spent many years moving to different places, culture shock will be the least of my worries. Now, 7 weeks in to my internship placement in Kampala, I’m surprised to see how difficult it is to bear with certain things that were extremely interesting at the beginning of my trip.
After 7 weeks I find my self comfortable enough to go to different places and do grocery shopping and etc. however, it seems that my tolerance for being stared at most of the time has decreased quite dramatically. It turned out that after all, I don’t like the spot light as much as I thought I would.
Due to feeling like a “Mozoongoo” (it is a phrase in Lugandan which means a ‘white guy’ that I hear on regular basis) all the time, I am no longer enthused to travel a lot. Traveling to touristy areas via public transportation takes away the comfortable feeling that I get in the community that I live right now. I have established an interesting relationship with the people in the ‘village’ and even though I am only a “Mozoongoo” to them, they help me out in the things that I need and I always slip an extra dollar or .50 Cents which surprisingly makes their day.

The conversations that I have with people are starting to make more sense since I am more accustomed to the slangs and accents. However I still have hard time understanding the conversations that contains shortened sentences. These “short” sentences are like an abbreviation of a sentence. It is when they only say 2-3 key words of the sentence and automatically assume that you know what they are talking about. To be honest with you, I am starting to get quite irritated by it, but I keep telling my self that I am in their country; therefore I have to adjust my self. I admit that it could be quite challenging at times.
The traffic of the city and the pollution has a tendency to put me in a not so friendly mood. But what amazes me is the calmness of people despite of being stuck in traffic without any movement for about 2 hours (true story).
I guess it is a given that I am also beginning to see how people treat me differently compare to the locals. This is something that I failed to see at the beginning of my trip. But now I see some people being nicer to me and some being able to cheat me the way I never though I could be cheated.
After 7 weeks I noticed that I have drawn closer to certain people and drawn apart from those that I used to hang out with all the time. It’s as if everything is transforming and more do I find my self thinking about home and my friends and family. Don’t get me wrong, I am not home sick and I still enjoy everything that is out here, even the times when I just want to scream at people for acting so calm and slow in certain situations. I am enjoying everything about it and all the feelings that I get while being here, however it seems like in 6 weeks time, I will be more than ready to head back to my home and the people who I am close to.
In the meantime, I enjoy being a “Mozoongoo” even though it pisses me off sometimes. At times, I need to remind my self to appreciate the differences, however I still find my self happy every time I put a smile on the faces of the children by simply just waving at them. I must admit that none of the things that I mentioned bothering me earlier prevents me from admiring Ugandans and Africans in general. I have had a chance to meet with many refugees from all over Africa and more and more do I become amazed by their tolerance and the hope that exists amongst them. I can say for certain that this trip is not going to be my last trip to Africa and I know, from now on, my interest in this region will only increase.

Environmental issues

Ever since I arrived in Kampala, I never really came across a detailed conversation or discussion about the environmental issues and the mainstreamed notion of Global Warming. The only time that I can remember talking about Global Warming was that one time when I asked when the raining season ends in Uganda, other than that I cannot think of any other conversations about the environment. To me it seems like the people of Uganda are consumed with other issues in their lives (different diseases, increase in food prices and etc) that they fail to encounter the importance of environmental issues that people out West are constantly distressing about.

Although people do not pay enough attention to environmental issues here in Kampala, every day that I finish a bottle of mineral water, I am reminded of the lack of attention to such issues. For the purpose of this assignment, I asked my land lady about recycling in Uganda. She said that in Kampala, there are no separate bins for recycling; in fact there are “private” companies that suppose to go through the garbage to avoid the burning of the plastic bottles. She was as skeptical as you probably are right now but she didn’t seem to be really disturbed by it.
Uganda was identified as the “Pearl of Africa” by Churchill…I am pretty sure he was not referring to today’s downtown Kampala. The city is polluted by car and noise pollution. Almost all taxis send out enough CO2s that can increase your chances of getting lung cancer by more than 50%. The most I have seen people do is to pull their windows up so they won’t DIRECTLY inhale the pollution. Quite a few times I have been laughed at by people for complaining about the amount of CO2s that I inhale on regular basis. But can you really blame them for making fun of me?

At situations like this, I keep forgetting that most of the residences of Kampala are so consumed and troubled by their day to day lives that they fail to encounter greater issues that is affecting people on a larger scale, i.e. the environmental issues. Aside from people’s enthusiasm for Obama, I haven’t seen people being too consumed about world news. Even though they read news papers almost religiously, they fail to pay too much attention to what is happening outside of their continent. Some may call it ignorance, but to me, I think that it is due to their troubled lives. When a family is worried about finding food for themselves or the threat of HIV, I am pretty sure they couldn’t care any less about issues that might affect them on a larger scale.

Going back to environmental issues, I think that the struggle that people face on a day to day basis, fails them to pay any attention to the environment. However, since consumption is quite limited due to people’s lack of capital and access, the exploitation of the environment is happening in a more sustainable pace than any where in the Western world.

Animal Rights

I don’t think I ever mentioned that my office is in the building that belongs to the Foundation for Human Rights Initiatives. The other day I was entering the building when I found a cow wondering around the entrance of the building. I thought it was quite ironic that an animal had found itself by the building for Human Rights Initiatives. I thought maybe he had lost his way to the building for Animal Rights Initiatives or maybe it wanted one of us “activists” to refer him to the animal rights section. I then, snapped out of the little fantasy world that I had created for my self and thought about animals here in this part of the world.

initiative

When I first arrived here, I was so excited to find different kind of farm animals on the streets of Kampala. It is quite common to find cows, goats, rosters, chickens and dogs. And I must say that it is also common to see them be in the worst possible condition which is not so easy for animal lovers like myself to witness. Being a social science geek that I am, every day I began to observe people’s behavior towards these animals on the street. After a few times that I had to say something to a few kids who were throwing stones at a dog, I was all of a sudden aware of my western perspective towards animals and my urge for “animal rights”.

I started to think about the definition of animal rights and tried to be as objective as I could possibly be. I tried to describe it for my self, and every time I ended up having the Northern/Western perspective which apparently is the perspective of the rich who have hard time realizing what its like to not have meat for months. I brought this point up in a conversation with a few Ugandans and their argument was that people in Uganda (Africa) are too consumed with sympathizing with the unbearable condition that most of the people live in that they have lost their compassion towards animals.

This got me thinking. If the most parts of the continent of Africa have been suffering the “unbearable” living conditions for human beings for years and sympathy towards animals has been the last thing on their minds, can someone argue that “sympathy” towards animals is no longer part of their culture? in case this statement is true, than can we argue that animal rights is not so much of a “universal right” but it is a right that the western culture has created and have imposed upon different cultures in the word? I don’t know about you, but to me it sounds like the way that “animal rights” is currently practiced can be seen as a form of “cultural imperialism”.

I know that I could be creating a huge debate over this, but don’t forget that I am all for “animal rights”. The only thing is that I think I have been socialized this way, and if I was to be socialized elsewhere in the world and was never exposed to the Western media and culture, I most likely would have been violating “animal rights” with out feeling guilty.

However when the argument comes down to the illegal hunting of animals that are distinct such as tigers and panda bears, I don’t think that it is the culture that is the driving force, rather it is the market.

After all I think in most cases, what we call the violation of “animal rights” in the East is inherited in the culture, and in cases that are otherwise, the violation is driven by the market forces, i.e capitalism. Culture is one of the most complex concepts that were ever created; therefore questioning the culturally inherited violations of animal rights opens a can of warms that has many sociologists and anthropologists thinking for years.

I am not too sure whether you can label my views as liberal or conservative, but I believe that since we all live in a globe where many cultures coexists, striving for one form of culture (which is usually the dominant one, i.e. the Western culture) can only destroy the beauty of the multi coloured planet that we call the Earth.