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.