#Kampalalife through a lens

Sitting in the back studio of the Kampala National Theatre my drumming teacher, the lead of a resident dance and music group based, stopped, sat back and asked me.

“What are your dreams?”

Taken aback, I found that I couldn’t really answer. I dodged giving him just the next 5 years of “a comfortable life, maybe a family, a job I enjoy”. He’s not the most animate of people, and sat in silence for a few moments.

“This is what I want to find out for my solo piece. I ask many people this. For Ugandans they want employment, then a house and, most importantly, education for their children. And they will strive hard for this. For Europeans, they want to travel, they want to see the world and they tell me they want to make a difference.”

He’s an impressive guys is Oscar.

The leader of a dance group that has performed in Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, an extremely talented musician on several instruments, and doing well to keep a resident spot in the National Theatre.

We continued talking for a bit, as a few of his rehearsal group filtered into the studio. We talked a bit about the health system, as often is the case with Americans as much as Ugandans, he was shocked at how the NHS works.

“But, no one in your country has AIDS.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant by this and we talked for a short while before the subtext came out.

“But, AIDS was created by Americans”

By this point the other 4-5 guys in the room were listening, and nodded a murmur of agreement. One guy in particular was vocal:

“It is even the same with Ebola. The Americans are so, so clever. They released AIDS after a cure was found for malaria – they needed something more to control the African population. I was at a meeting in Hotel Africana on Friday, there was a man there who had the evidence to show that Ebola was created in a lab in Sierra Leone.

Let me say, I have one piece of evidence that makes me believe the Americans are so powerful – they can even create oxygen. The very air which I need to breath. If they can do this, they are too dangerous. With AIDS itself, I used to believe it came from God, as a punishment for those who were sinning, but now, for sure it came from America.”

I guess the “American perpetrator” is a fairly well peddled myth, one that you might read about and dismiss as preachings of a mad guy on a rush-hour roundabout. But today the nodding murmur room again seemed to agree. I asked him, if we went to the street now and asked him out of 100 people how many would think that the Americans created Ebola?

“At least 90, for sure”

As someone who has been around East Africa a bit, I never fail to be surprised and today was no different. Sure, the guy was probably exaggerating, he might have been preached upon and swept along in a frenzy of a conspiracy theory. But the room seemed on his side, and to be honest, even he was half right, it was still pretty  concerning…

I guess the message for me was never to forget to step outside my western shoes and try to look things from an African (forgive the generalization, but it will have to do as a shorthand) persons perspective. Everyday I find another oversight on my side, generally given my line of work it’s in health:

-       Why doesn’t this person take their hypertension medication, even when I tried to explain that it causes damage to their veins? Maybe because they never finished primary school and to them a body is not a set of intertwined physical and functioning systems

-       How can this coordinator on an NGO with a Masters in Public Health believe in faith healers and juju? Maybe their family belief is so strong and his whole culture growing up in rural Sierra Leone was based upon faith in these mystical powers.

-       How can the Doctor studying for PhD believe that she saw a preacher cure a 4 year old’s blindness on stage in front of her eyes? (I still don’t know the answer to this.)

And today, how can anyone sensible, let alone a significant proportion of the population, think another country would use biological warfare to control a whole continent? Maybe because on a backdrop of 50 years of intermittent brutality, a series of infectious health disasters has swept the through your country, everyone loses a friend or family – a mother, father, brother or sister, daughter, son – dying emaciated and consumed, most probably at home with their family watching by. And, who’s there to help? For many years (and in many places still), pretty much no one. But you do know of this all-powerful country of America with planes, trains, automobiles, rockets to the moon, why doesn’t it help? Maybe, because it wanted it to happen – is that so far fetched an idea?

All of this is conjecture on my side. But the truth is, I really don’t know; I can’t really imagine what was like for this guy to grow up potentially poorly educated, with possibly illiterate parent, without access to up to date knowledge, in a small African rural town. And consequently, I can’t see things through the same lens he does. But, I am constantly reminded that if I am going to get on at all in this country or another like it, I should never underestimate what things look like through this lens. In a broader context, this lesson has and is being learned in West Africa as we speak, but the framework is so much wider – just like the American perpetrator myth, radical ideas and the process of radicalization has firm roots in people’s experiences, and so arguably the first step to change is to try and understand and look through their lens and never underestimate what you might see. So, I look forward to what Oscar create as he represents different people dreams from a Ugandan and a Western perspective.

Before I sign off, just to add two caveats. One, I have made generalisations about “Africa” and the personal perspectives I’ve recounted don’t represent everyone. I clearly haven’t talked about the the ever-increasing population of “Afro-politans” who are better educated than I am, and are more comfortable many-a cultural situation than I am. Or the rising tech-savvy and increasingly education African youth. Secondly and related, some people may think that this blog is patronizing, if so I apologise, and please let me know what I’ve missed, I’m always happy to have my eyes opened.