Home sweet, toxic home
I recently visited a new home care HIV/AIDS care initiative in an urban slum in Kampala, Uganda. While parts of Kampala can be green and pleasant, this area looked, felt, and smelt like shacks on a toxic waste site which is what in fact they were. These are truly the frontlines of providing care in the rapidly urbanizing developing world. And who leads this care? It certainly doesn’t appear to be the government, but rather the NGOs with their bursting, financially-strapped hearts. While platitudes are appropriately rained down on the game-changing activities of PEPFAR and the Global Fund, a few steps on the mountains of trash, a quick hop over a filthy, putrid stream and one can see the harsh reality of a situation not captured in yearly reports.
Photo: The streets of Mbuya, one of the nicer urban slums of Kampala.
4 comments:
Religion has been getting an increasingly bad rap in the past few years as a divisive and socially harmful practice. Yet, a GREAT deal of humanitarian work is done by those who feel "called" to help.
Out of curiousity, what percentage of "the NGOs with their bursting, financially-strapped hearts" you encounter are religiously based? Christian?
It is not that the movitation matters to those in need, it is simply that those in need matter. And what motivates that!?!
Thanks for your comment. I can't cite specific numbers but the contribution of faith-based organizations (predominantly Christian) here is sizable, and I have posted on this issue before. One such organization I work with is quite inspiring; you can check them out at www.reachoutmbuya.org.
I am going out to Mbuya to work on a project in conjunction with Reach Out Mbuya. We plan to build a community garden and form a gardening 'club'.
Do you have any advise for a complete newcomer to all things African?
Thank you for your comment Maggi. You raise an interesting question about how to prepare for a significantly different culture from your own. Perhaps even raising a larger issue of how do those in the developed world relate to those in the developing when we are so removed from each other in our daily lives? You are doing the best thing which is to go there and experience it in person. The surrogates in my mind would include beginning with prose and pictures--good books (including well written guide books like the Bradt guide) and good pics (like the recent movie about Idi Amin). From there though I think there are great materials out there to think more deeply about this issue, including scholarly work and more general audience material. Just amazon.com search uganda, africa, hiv, development, and culture and you will see. Safe travels!
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