Privilege

During my internship I went out of my way to meet with refugees who had camped outside of an office building that dealt with refugee laws and etc. Every time I would go there, I met young kids my age being in a very challenging phase of their life. Most had lost families to the war in Congo and many of the girls had been raped and had never been HIV tested. Every time I went there, they would approach me as if I was going to do something for them. In most cases I just offered them my ears and had them throw their hearts out. For one of the Congolese girls who had been raped about a year ago and had not been HIV tested I tried to find an Ngo that would offer her a free medical treatment.

Many of the refugees would come to me and ask specifically why I was there. Many of them had assumed that I was there to provide money for them. They automatically assumed that since I was from Canada, I had lots of money to help them out from their challenging life style. Many times I had to tell them that I was a student and didn’t have much money to offer them.

My trips to see the refugees, who I had made friends with, were a strange experience. I wanted them to know that I was not just ‘observing’ them, but in fact I wanted to get close to them and perhaps become friends with them and remind them how special they could be to a total stranger like my self. However, every time that I went there I was perceived as a ‘saviour’. A Muzungo (white person) who is here to hear us and help us, mostly financially. But I wasn’t. Even though I was fully aware of my privilege to come from a place like Canada and had the life style that I have been having, especially compare to the refugees who had left everything that they have had to come to a mess that I had perceived in Uganda, I was also aware of how unprivileged I was not to be able to help any body out.

Many times my privilege was quite a barrier for me to really get close to the people and try to understand their pain. I was always fully aware of how my privileges had created an unequal paradigm that was mostly seen as a barrier for me to get close to the people. Many times, throughout my trip in Uganda, I did different things to hide it, but in many cases the colour of my skin kind of gave it away.

Although in many cases my privilege created a barrier, but I didn’t forget how it is because of my privilege that I look at the differences as a barrier. If I was not privileged enough, I would not have recognized the difference and I definitely would not have tried to create some sort of equality with the people who didn’t have my privileges. I guess my privileges always acted like a catch 22. If I didn’t have them I wasn’t happy and now that I do, I am still not satisfied.

Gender

Even though I am originally from Iran, which is considered as a Muslim country and there is a huge gender difference in everything from politics to the domestic life, I was still quite surprised to see a few things in Uganda that were not so gender sensitive. The interesting thing is that every time I pointed out these gender issues, many Ugandan women looked at me as if I was way too “westernized”.

My first day in Kampala, I had to walk by my self in the city’s busiest section. I was suppose to go with the driver from our office who seemed like a very nice guy. When we parked the car to walk to the central bank for me to exchange my money, it was interesting for me to see that the Driver was walking 10 steps ahead of me and every 100 steps he would look back to see whether I was still behind him or not. Although I had see this before in Iran, but still I found it interesting since it was definitely a cultural practice. While I was trying so hard to keep up with him, I was also very scared because I thought that since I was a white girl, I was probably going to be verbally harassed by all the men who were hanging out on the street shouting for people to buy something from them. This was definitely my assumption. I was quite surprised to see the very few times that I was verbally harassed by men in Kampala. This was definitely against my assumptions.

One of the most fascinating gender differences that I noticed was in the concept of marriage amongst the local Ugandans. When my housemate told me that her father had 4 wives and has have kids with 4 other women beside his wives I was shocked. Iran, which is a patriarchal society doesn’t even have that. It was challenging for me to understand it at fist. But they talked about it as if it was something quite natural. I also came across a few young ladies who were in their mid 20s who were proposed to become the second or third wife of a wealthy man in their neighbourhood. At first I thought that it was normalized. Alice, my housemate, told me that her mom raised 3 children that were brought by her father whose mother she did not know who they were. When I asked Alice how her mother felt about it, she admitted that her mother was always very sad. But she never really had a choice to say anything. I went to their home once, and I must admit that I didn’t get to see much of Alice’s mom since she spent so much time in the kitchen preparing food for us and of course the head of the household who was Alice’s father. I tried to help her in the kitchen so she could perhaps join us for a nice talk; she felt insulted almost and asked me to go back to the living room. Alice later told me that her mother feels like she owns the kitchen and no one should interfere with her business there.

I guess it all comes down to what makes people happy. If I had the life style that Alice’s mom has had, I don’t know how happy I would have been. But seeing her so happy and upbeat reminded me how we are culturally diverse and how we must learn to accept our differences.