Does Your Skin Allow It?

“Does your skin allow it?” Stella asked me.

“Can we work the fields? Well, we normally have machines do it, but yes we can.” I replied.

“But don’t you have slaves?” she continued.

Needless to say, I was stunned. Me? A slave-owner? Her words echoed over and over in my head. “Does your skin allow it? But don’t you have slaves?” I immediately explained to her that our country has not had slaves in a long, long time. She nodded understandingly. Deeply ashamed, I scrambled for a new topic of conversation—I didn’t have the heart to find out if she knew where our country’s slaves had come from.

With any cultural immersion, I have found, you are going to run into misunderstandings on both ends. Luckily for me, these instances, like the one with Stella, have been rather few because most Ugandans with access to a TV or radio understand American culture quite well. Our music, movies, and TV shows are well-known, and the US has a habit of making headlines in the World News section of the newspaper. Right now, I am only beginning to grasp how much influence the US has on the rest of the world. For those that are less technologically connected in a rural town like Kumi, they may not see this influence, yet it remains. Familiar brands like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Pampers are purchased and hand-me-down clothes from the good ol’ US of A are worn. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw a man walking down the street with a shirt that read ‘Team Edward’ as he unknowingly campaigned for a vampire heartthrob. For better or for worse, our country shapes the futures of those outside our borders.

A batch of SPOUTS filters ready for quality control tests

Hopefully, the work of SPOUTS of Water (my employer) will be an intervention for the better and not just well-intentioned. SPOUTS  is part of an ideological shift from charity to social entrepreneurship—as the old saying goes, give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day; teach him how to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime. Social entrepreneurship differs from charity because instead of simply giving it aims to empower people by creating a business that generate jobs, meets a need (in our case, clean water), and stimulate the local economy. The idea is that if there truly is a need/market, the impact will be sustainable in the long-term.

Okay, I’ve gotten far too serious in this post—way too much text not enough pictures or jokes. Can you blame me though? Did you really want a textbook graphic of slavery or a diagram of social entrepreneurship vs. charity? I didn’t think so. How about one of me about to slaughter a chicken?

Don’t worry I wasn’t going to post an action shot—that’d be gross. To be honest, I was a little nervous about the whole thing and thought I might CHICKEN out (bah dum chh) at times. I felt it was my obligation as a chicken-eater to understand the whole process from cradle to plate. I think we’re too removed from the killing aspect of meat. We’d definitely have a few more vegetarians in the US if we weren’t. 

On the whole, I’ve gotten acclimated to Uganda and have been able to zero-in on my work: making our filter production as smooth as possible so we can sell quality, inexpensive filters. More on that next time!

Last but certainly not least…

Bearded Boda

Here’s an action pic of the beard while riding a boda boda. BONUS PIC!! Here’s my Somalian friend and neighbor Rasheed on a boda boda so you know what one looks like. If you look closely you'll notice he's reppin' the Boy Scouts of America haha.

  

P.S. cherish ketchup. I miss ketchup.