After three months, this is why I'm here -
A personal manifesto
A break in Kampala. I love Kampala. After an excruciating 14 hour drive, I made
it. It’s been over three months since I’ve
arrived in Uganda and I'm trying to write about what this time has meant to me,
how I’ve changed and how I will move forward.
I watched a documentary
last night about James Baldwin (great internet in Kampala!) and one particular
quote of his struck me deeply.
'I am saying that a journey is called
that because you cannot know what you will discover on the journey, what you
will do, what you will find, or what you find will do to you.'
Oh James. Yes,
James. It’s not just about what you will
find on the journey but what the journey will do to you.
Sunday, I had the privilege of meeting a phenomenal woman. As much as I tried to remain the ‘professional
researcher’ I am supposed to be, it was a serious challenge to hold back tears
hearing her story. I am constantly
uneasy trying to balance my role as a researcher with that of an individual,
a woman, who has deep care and concern for her ‘subjects’, ‘interlocutors’, ‘participants’
or whatever you want to call them. Some
feminist ethnographers go further stating the in order for the researcher to
truly break down power barriers, the researcher must fully accept the subjects
to become full collaborators. This, too,
makes me uneasy, not least because I am a control freak.
But as I sat uneasily balancing my role – knowing that I will at
least ever so slightly cringe when I listen to the recorded interview later, I
stand firm and confident in how Stacey describes the role of the feminist ethnographer:
The researcher herself is the primary medium, the
‘instrument’ of research, this method draws on those resources of empathy,
connection, and concern that many feminists consider to be women’s special
strengths (Stacey, 1988, p.22).
How else could I have
reacted other than with tears in my eyes as this talented, ambitious,
courageous, successful, and determined woman told me her life story?
How would you react to
such a personal and eloquent account of loss, sadness, abandonment, and
tragedy?
How would you respond to
hearing the harrowing story of a woman sitting in front of you – a woman
featured in national newspapers for her business expertise, her professional
success, a woman admired by so many – when she tells her story?
How she was orphaned at three years, abandoned
a world away from her childhood home before high school, brewed beer in an
attempt to go to school, audaciously went to the high school of her dreams and
asked for admission, made her way to university only to sleep in a secret place
for three years because she had no money for accommodation at university, found
a way to network to help pay university fees in the highest offices of the most
prestigious university in East Africa?
And then, just when you think life has finally worked out – you know her
current life – the life of a successful business woman, a happily married
woman, a loving mother – you find out that an horrific car accident paralyzed
her only a decade earlier and she had to learn how to walk, talk, and care for
herself all over again. How would you
react to that?
At one point during the
interview, when she herself teared up, she noticed me holding back tears in my
eyes and said as a glimmer of love brightened up her face, ‘Don’t cry. I don’t want
you to feel sorry for me. I am alive.’
Even with the tragedy I
have experienced in my own life, it feels minute compared the obstacles she has
had to drag off the road to her success.
The truth is, she is an
exceptional human being by anyone’s standards.
I sat in this interview trying to find the ‘right’ way to respond as a
researcher. But I am not just a
researcher. I am a feminist, an
ethnographer, and a woman who cares deeply about my research, I have a belief
and fire inside me, whether naïve or just plain empowering, that what I am doing
WILL MAKE A POSITIVE DIFFERENCE in others’ lives.
This lovely woman, even
with all her obstacles, is a rarity, an exception to the rule of what happens
to girls like her, not just here in Uganda, but all over the world.
I met girls in my own
country, particularly strong in my memory are my Bronx girls who had big dreams,
failing schools, and little to no resources to bring those dreams to
fruition.
I am still broken
hearted over a young woman I interviewed in Kenya who had so much potential,
with the highest marks in the region, but with one mistake, one mistake that
boys and girls alike make all over the world, a mistake that doesn’t ruin a
life in many parts of the Western world, resulted in her losing
everything. I found her sleeping on the
dirt floor of her grandmother’s shack in a Nairobi slum. She slept on the dirt floor with her newborn
baby boy so close to a kerosene lamp that for weeks I couldn’t sleep worrying
that in this tiny shack in which she had to sleep diagonally, she might spill
the lamp and accidentally burn down the place, end her life and the lives of her family members in
their sleep. Whilst there are many honourable
men in the world, those who are not simply walk away, no harm to their
potential, their ability to go to school.
But for her, all her studying, hard work, highest marks, meant
nothing. She is a slum girl who hopes to
make a living braiding hair. The girl who
dreamed of traveling the world with Kenyan Airlines is now begging for food in
a slum.
The incredible Ugandan
woman sitting across from me at lunch is an anomaly, an exception to the
rule. But what happens to the rest of
the girls? What happens to girls when
they spent literal blood, sweat, and tears to get an education? What happens when the sponsors walk away, the
funding dries up after primary or lower secondary or upper secondary? What happens to the girls? What happens to he girls who were taught to
dream big in school but then realise that the door that has been opened to them has now
slammed in their faces?
This is why I do this
research. Because their potential is wasted if we cannot bring them to the point
where they can stand on their own and make use of their education and skills. While
I care more about these young women’s well-being, it’s also bad financial
investment if they cannot thrive. An investment that might
make the Westerner feel good for giving, but doesn’t follow through enough to
change someone’s life for the better.
Had I not had a financially
able and loving family, had I not been born with all the privileges that I
have, those who know me know that I just may have become a drug addict, a
dropout, a loss of talent to the world. But
I didn’t. And I’d like to think that I’ve
spent my adult life sharing my talents and gifts with the world and hope the
world is better because of my being in it as a functioning adult and not a drop
out depressed, drug addict.
I have never believed
more in myself and my research than at that Sunday afternoon lunch.
I normally do not share
information about my research in such detail on this blog but today I make an
exception for the exceptional woman. I
make that exception because she herself is sharing her life story with the
world with an upcoming memoir published and to be released later this
year. She has given me permission to
share.
At the end of the
preface of her book, she writes, ‘You don’t need to be opulent and rich to make
a difference, you just need to care.’
It is in caring about
individuals, about my research that makes me believe that I can make a
difference. And Baldwin was right. It is because I care that I am finding out
what this journey is doing to me.
