There and back again

It happened again, the same thing that happens every year... We had to leave Uganda and go home.

This post was supposed to be my re-cap of how this years AIM Programme has been carried out, challenges met and challenges overcome etc., but if you don’t mind, I think I'll instead let my thoughts wander on some of the things seen and some of the questions asked over the past month in Uganda.

1. When we meet people in insane situations, like a teacher teaching 250 kids without desks on the dirt floor with her own 1 year old kid strapped on the back, or a ten year old lifting buckets of cement up and down a ten meter high scaffolding all day long, the beggars without neither legs or a pot to piss in, a pregnant lady in a region without water who has to bring and boil her own water to the hospital when she’ll be giving birth in two weeks – the only way we are able to cope with stuff like that is because some minutes, hours or days later, we can have a sit down with a full stomach, a beer, some music, a coke, a piece of chocolate or a cigarette and contemplate it. The only way we are able to stand the crazy things in Uganda, is because we have the opportunity to get it at a distance and think about it. So how the hell are the people teaching 250 students at once for 100 dollars a month or a beggar without legs able to cope, when they seemingly do not have that luxury?

I have no idea, but my guess is that it’s because of this, because people are so insanely occupied with just getting through one day after the other, that things like planning way ahead, reflection over progress and innovating shit is something you basically don’t do in Uganda. You don’t have time for it. (And this doesn't exactly reek of development is my point).

2. Sustainability and doing stuff from the inside out
This is something frequently discussed by some of this year’s AIM participant’s, and it’s some of the most important stuff to discuss when you’re involved in aid work in development countries, no matter how small your projects are. Because if the sustainability of the aid projects are lacking, this means you just have to keep on coming back and coming back, and very little gets developed or goes forward. But does this mean aid work is ridiculous? Of course not. But aid work that makes people dependent on it, without possibilities to get up and away, that’s pretty lame. Aid work that is the equivalent of giving a guy a fish hook to fish for himself however, rather than just keep giving him fish - that is pretty smart.

3. Not that this is the goal of the Aid In Meeting Programme, but how do you manage to get a country to develop and grow from within? Another deadly important question, with a ton of aspects within, and one frequently discussed at Bushenyi Guest House with its owner Arinda Gordon. Education and innovation seemed to be the key words to that one.

I could go on and on, but I think it's time to wrap this whole blog up. I can just say first that the above mentioned stuff is what first came to mind, so maybe that means it is the most important. I don’t know.

Anyway. I will end by saying this years Aid In Meeting Programme has been the most successful so far. A piggery has been opened in Bushenyi, school buildings will be built in Arua and buckets of other aid contributions have been carried out because of AIM 2009. Besides this, cultural understanding, cultural exchange, learning about aid work and friendships formed is just some of the side effects of AIM 2009.

Thank you so very much much to all the contributors of AIM, and thank you to the readers of this blog!

Lion Terry out!