Life outside the Eco-Lodge
One of the “eco-resorts” we stayed at in Uganda offered what they called tours of the local community. It totally sounded up our alley — we like to think of ourselves as “cultural tourists” — so the next morning when we got up we asked for information about the tours. As it turned out, there was no formal tour. It was more of a self-guided thing. And by self-guided thing, they meant walking down the unpaved road that the lodge was on, and encountering locals by chance. We weren’t really disappointed, though — if anything, this would be a far more authentic experience.
Shortly after we got past the guard shack, a group of four young children approached us and said hello, then began following us. I had the feeling that “mzungus” aimlessly wandering down the road here was a pretty common occurrence. Past experience probably taught them that a charitable tourist might share things with them.
The oldest girl couldn’t have been any older than ten years old, and she was caring for her three younger brothers, literally carrying the youngest on her hip as we walked a mile down the road. I deeply regret that I’ve forgotten their names. Most of the children were in clothes that must have been years old. Earlier we had passed by their school when it was in session, and they were all in smart, tidy school uniforms. Perhaps their uniforms were the nicest clothes they had.
The girl was clearly tired carrying the toddler entirely on her own, so eventually one of the Ugandans in our group offered to carry the child for a while. After that the girl was smiling ear-to-ear, happily skipping alongside us. In one of the more oddly surreal parts of the trip, we walked by a home where Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler” was blasting, and the girl started humming along with it.
We were a bit like pied pipers as we attracted more and more children on the road. The younger kids decided to follow us to see what we were up to. The older children were working in the field. A young boy wheeled by on a bicycle collecting wood, and another was tilling the ground. One boy was lugging a large container of water.
It made me think of my own sixteen year old son — he spends a lot of his time programming at his computer and playing games in his room. It made me wonder if these kids were among the most talented computer programmers, scientists, or academics, and the world would never know it.
The kids didn’t really seem to know they were impoverished — no one begged or asked for sympathy. You hear stories about children panhandling in the city streets of so-called developing nations, but this was rural Africa. I suppose they were living their lives as they always had.
It’s difficult to come from a wealthy western country and be confronted with poverty like this. There are lots of layers to the feelings you have. Is it presumptuous of me to take pity and help them when they aren’t asking for it? But how can I do nothing? What should I even do? And western imperialism is partly responsible for their conditions — am I responsible for that?
We decided that a few of us would head back to the lodge early and bring back some snacks and water for the kids. When we got back, we handed out the things we had collected.
The girl we had met at the beginning of our walk had captured the heart of my wife and I, so we wondered if there was something else we could do for her and her brothers. We went back to our room and rifled through our clothes to see if anything would fit. My daughter had a dress that might be a tad big, but maybe it would be OK? We had a few T-shirts that were clearly too large for the little boys, but perhaps they would like them anyway? We grabbed a few clothes and headed back down the trail to the road to find the girl.
When we found the girl, her mother joined the kids. We handed the clothes over, and she inspected every shirt, seemingly unimpressed with those that were clearly too large. So, again, that weird feeling of trying to help without being insulting… was this an act of kindness toward them, or are we really only doing this to assuage our own embarrassment at our wealth?
Fortunately she seemed happy with the dress. When we were walking away, my wife managed to look back at the daughter holding the dress up, and both the mother and the daughter were smiling. I guess we didn’t screw up that badly. Perhaps someone else can use the T-shirts.
