Blessing as a curse?

WARNING: CONTROVERSIAL

I’m still mulling a lot of this over, but it is an interesting thought.

Caleb and I had a pretty interesting discussion on the taxi out to one of the schools today (I think I’ve determined that intense conversations are the only type of dialogue I’m capable of…). Anyway. We talked about a lot of things, but one especially interesting point came up. Uganda, and this is something pretty much no one will deny, but Uganda is absolutely not hurting for resources. The soil is more fertile than they know what to do with. Crops literally grow wild here. It is, in a very literal sense, a land of plenty.

Talk to me about it and I’ll talk about mismanagement of land and misallocation of resources. It’s not that the resources aren’t there, they just aren’t getting to the people. The infrastructure isn’t strong enough to support the economy, which in turn is even further bogged down by massive inflation and unemployment, which isn’t helped AT ALL by the heads of state. Not that I’m entirely deterministic about it, but I will admit that I do think of the government and economy almost as living organisms which directly influence the tides of our lives/society, which in turn influence the government and economy. We are not ruled by our institutions. We rule them. But, sometimes we rule them poorly and it goes a bit Frankenstein on us. It’s a give and take, but one that I see as control coming in a more top-down sense. This might change as I learn more and wizen, but it’s how my mind is inherently geared to look at situations, it’s essentially why I’ve chosen the course of studies that I have: so that I can learn more about the function of government in people’s lives and hence how that government can be managed/run/etc. to improve the lives of “it’s” people.

Ok, now, talk to Caleb about it and he raises some interesting points. As background, he served his 2 year Latter-Day Saint mission in Uganda a couple years ago so not only has he spent a substantial amount of time living and working with the people, but lived looking at life here from a religious perspective. He’s considered things I haven’t especially given that with regards to this sort of stuff, I tend to be a staunch secularist. Caleb sees many of the issues here as a result of a lack of individual morality and integrity. If people would just live by the Christian principles they claim to accept, we wouldn’t see the type of people in power that we do. Whereas as I see a lot of the issues as results of having an imposed European modeled government dumped on a society where it didn’t jive with the culture, and thus there were gaps for people like Idi Amin to rise to power. If we can find a model that actually takes the society into account, things might work “better.” Rather, Caleb sees it as a problem with the society itself, and thus necessitates a change in the society. It’s two different perspectives, with some nuanced overlap.

What I did find especially interesting was Caleb’s point that because there are SO MANY resources growing here, it creates almost a sense of satisfaction and complacency that discourages discouraged workers from seeking out jobs. If you know you can grow enough to support your family on your little plot of land, why work to earn money to support the family? You could point to our “human nature” of being greedy (arguable, even though I’m no altruist) but then you add in the zillion issues that make education and finding a job such a struggle, and you find yourself sort of squished between not wanting to work and having no reason to work. I dunno. It’s interesting. It’s a different paradigm here with a different approach and perspective on life that I definitely don’t fully understand and thus can’t say a whole lot about. I think Caleb’s point leaves room for some questions, like why “struggle” is such a catch phrase here, everyone appears to be working so hard all the time just to get by (Caleb will say they actually aren’t working that hard, if you follow a Ugandan for a day, you see all the time they take breaks and chill and don’t work), or the people that DON’T have what they need to survive, that don’t have enough food, etc. But even, so, it raises an interesting question, could Uganda’s blessing of plenty actually be a curse?