The endless stream of night visitors

I'm not sure what someone would do if they got an endless stream of night visitors. It seems like someone comes every night or several people come some nights. Last night I laid down and tried to sleep, we had one window glass open so the cool breeze could come through but I bolted upright when I heard a metal object hit the pavement. I went to the open window to investigate and heard footsteps hurry away. So, we slept in a hot stuffy room last night.

So, we don't sleep with the windows open much. Even though it has bars, it is too easy for someone to cut through the screens and work a desired object towards the window and then out.

When I say theft is bad here, it is pretty bad. The car doors have been hanging open in the morning at least 5 times in the last month. Our house was broken into and electronics stolen. We have since bought one padlock and have been using kitchen utensils to secure the other 2-3 spaces on the metal doors which one would also place a padlock. Three spots on a door to place 3 padlocks. Seems excessive but usually there is a provision for the thing that is necessary. Most people have curtains. Our curtains are at least 20 years old and they aren't the right size to cover the windows.

This morning I got up and saw someone had opened the back door key hole door in order to reach inside and test the locks.

A number of people I've met who have had some small encounters with Ugandans have at times talked about the theft problem. They sort of excuse these people, wave their hands and say, "Oh but they are so poor, that is why they steal."

I watched that theory out for a while. Certainly, there are many poor peasants who don't own their own land and they steal their neighbors fruit or matoke. However, the most serious robberies are performed by those who have purchased weapons. This is not a poor suffering individual. Additionally, the neighbor who likely stole our electronics has a very nice car, beautiful curtains which cover every corner of every window in his and his mother's home. Light bulbs in every outdoor socket which burn all night. (Most people with limited funds do not do this because of the energy costs.) They cook indoors which means they likely have a gas stove, while everyone else cooks outside on the charcoal bucket.

This is one among many instances. And I have come to dis-believe the theory that it is the poor who steal. It is actually the educated and the well off who make theft into a career. What would a poor illiterate person do with a laptop? If a poor person actually stole a laptop, it would only be through a knowledgeable handler. In that case, who is the one who is really stealing?

Every day multiple times a day, someone tries to steal something from me. I look at tracking devices int he states which help you "find your misplaced items" and I laugh. Here these would sell like hotcakes.

Accompanied Home

In light of recent events, I am sorry to assume the 30 something man with hippish looking attire was anything but well intentioned when he walked me home from the market today.

I went to the market to get charcoal to cook breakfast this morning. It's a short walk and the girls always love to accompany me. But walking single file with two toddlers is a learned process. Of course I get the usual fan-fare. People wanting to say hi to the twins etc. Up till recently, they have screamed at people and wanted to hide or run away. Because recently I have been bribing them, telling them that I would give them a treat if they shake people's hands. This morning however, I really didn't want them to shake this guy's hand. I guess he was working close by and came to try to get the girls' attention. Gracie gave it to him but Glory refused. Before I knew it he was holding Gracie on his shoulder--Gracie's favorite spot. I scratched my brain on how to get rid of this guy and couldn't think of much as I don't expect any young men to offer to carry my child home for me.

On the walk home I chatted with him a bit and looked him over as he did me I am sure.

He had sort of hip long shorts and a scarf like item around his neck to use as a sweat towel. It had a gaudy gold medallion on it the size of my fist. He had shades and hip shoes. A smallish beard that came down in a point. Smartly dressed for this culture and taste. He asked me if the girls had breakfast. I answered truthfully of course, saying, "No... I am getting charcoal so I can cook breakfast."

"You cook with charcoal? You don't use gas?!" he queried. "You don't have a maid to help with the kids?"

"Yes, I cook with charcoal and I take care of the kids myself."

"I don't believe you. This girl is telling me you are lying," he counters.

Here we go again, I thought. And I was even carrying the 3 handfuls of charcoal in a sack for all to see.

I began trying to figure out where I should lead him to pretend I live there. I can't walk past my house, as the girls will protest and give me away. I could cross the street and go past the store they like going to because they will willingly do that. So, that is what I did. Meanwhile, those who actually lived in the area peered at me oddly. But I shook him and he went back to where he came from.

My mind is spinning wondering what this is all about. Obviously, he is finding out where I live for a potential unannounced visit. He seems to be a vain guy, so I am sure he has to support that lifestyle somehow. He believes he has encountered someone with enough money for a hired maid and gas cooking. This doesn't look good. I am glad I am going to be moving out of this hotbed of thieves in a short week or two. I wonder if he is after my stuff or after the kids, since he tried and succeeded in establishing a connection with them?

Of note here: Preconceived conceptions are so strong that even if presented with evidence to the contrary, no one is convinced. This is how iron tight social status constructs are. You will fulfill your duties no matter what.

Mining: Sounds like a good way to get killed.

Here, everyone is always looking for their big break. People are always looking for someone else to pay for their lunch. I overheard in Café Javas the other day, one lady commenting to her friend, “Where is the money from the sale of your Mother’s house?” As in, that should take care of lunch, right? Not so fast.

In the process of seeing the inside workings of the mining land my husband’s family owns, I have learned first hand how the owners of this cursed property rarely see a cent. So, someone has found minerals worth mining! Excellent! Everyone starts to imagine how they might profit from this. When my husband told me this, I said, “Managing that project sounds like a good way to get killed!”

This week has been a case in point. Two people have been killed within the space of a week. One of them, a young man, was the son of a tenant. The other was a tenant. The young man was hacked to death with a machete. Money and the greed for money was involved. The young man’s friend was taken into custody. It was found out that the young man’s friend had stolen a motorcycle from 80 miles away and had brought it to the mine to help him make money. He became the primary suspect until the dead young man’s mother went to a witch doctor to purchase a spell to “kill the case.” The witch doctor went to the police and now the mother is also in custody.

The other individual who died was a male tenant who was either poisoned or died from juju, as the report says.

Dog-eat-dog

Having a hard time today. Being white and female cages me in much more than my free spirit would prefer. I went to Café Javas for an expensive cup of sanity and the familiar and I went alone. The security officer who checked my vehicle at the gate commented on my being alone, “You are alone?!”

“Yes, Thank you.”

“This is not safe,” he commented. “You need protection. I will protect you.”

Why did I have to say this but I did, “I will protect myself. Trust me. (Withering stare)”

For one, I am having a hard time with the way income is up and down and down down down, most of the time. Before I got here, I knew Stephen’s income was about $800/month. When I got here it dropped to $500/month. Now, it is $300/month. To me, it feels like the free market economy is blown completely wide open here, without stabilization buffers. 5% of the population is employed at an 8-5 job. The rest are running their own business and are in direct competition with each other to sell goods or services. Everyone is always in a mad scramble on a daily basis for getting their next meal. Income from one source dips and one must be agile enough to go and madly chase it from another source. If you are too kind. If you are not fierce, you will be crushed by the crowd.

I can’t track how the money comes in and goes. People here find it hard to keep an account of cash-flow in and out. I have a choice to either work together with Stephen on budget, which seems extremely hard for him and me because I rarely like what I find out in those discovery moments. OR I could simply make demands for what I want/need on a day-to-day and leave the how and where the money comes from to him (that seems like an undue burden on him). OR I could simply find my own source of income and skip thinking about what contributions I will get from him toward daily expenses.

In this struggle, I feel like I am constantly running into a barrier of a particular sort. Stephen has an extreme dedication to helping others and toward working for the benefit of his entire family and toward things he deems a project worthy of investment. When I am not here and sometimes even when I am here he will dedicate his whole day, forfeit breakfast, lunch and evening meal to making it happen. He will collapse late late at the end of the day and eat a small snack before falling into his bed and rising the next morning to do it all again. In that crazy cycle it is hard for me not to feel like I am the last investment on the list. Living in America, while he was in Uganda for the first 4 years of our marriage did not help him get a true feel of the absolute need I have for him to provide for our family’s well-being.

Aside: That cup of coffee/sanity cost $2. On a $300/month income it was 0.67% of my income.

The poor people.

I didn’t enter Africa on a mission trip or some other humanitarian outreach. I came with my husband, which puts me in an entirely different experience. In some ways it feels like I’m coming through the back door. I’m held at arms length—there’s fear and intimidation under the polite greetings. I came with my own limitations and needs. I didn’t come holding a banner saying, “Free help for all,” or “get saved here.” So, naturally people wonder and have no category under which to receive me and neither do I. Somehow that puts me through the back door and I see things the mission trips and delegates don’t see. The stories I cite below are just a small sampling of what I have seen so far. There are many more I've heard and encountered like them. If I would write them all out, they would fill 20 pages.

What worries me is the distinct difference between the poor people I see and the poor people I have heard about. I see the poor people and I wonder if I am seeing the same poor people as the ones who are seen on mission trips and humanitarian outreach. This is not some trumped up right wing monologue about how the poor are poor because they have done it to themselves or that they are poor because they are lazy. I never take that position. There are those who are genuinely poor because they are caught on the bottom side of a macroeconomic cycle. There are children, hundreds of them here who by no choice of theirs suffer from their parents’ choices or simply suffer the situation they were born into. For the powerless, I feel empathy and compassion. But mostly I don’t see or interact with these women and children. I see the people my husband interacts with and does business with. I see the people he works with and helps and quite frankly, I’m not so impressed.

Slowly, over the years, I have gotten the back-story on this or that person. There is the “cousin” who some years ago approached my husband about buying a taxi for him so he could make an income and make Stephen a profit as well. In concept it sounded good I’m sure but after financing this thing Stephen discovered the cousin was regularly loaning out the taxi to a third party for enough money to drink himself silly for the day. Meanwhile the third party would drive the taxi into the ground or into another vehicle so that it needed to sit in a repair shop for the next week all financed by the guess who—not the guys who did it! Everyone on the road knows to avoid taxis at all costs because the guys driving them are mere patsies who run when a serious incident occurs which implicates them, which makes for some horrible driving conditions because 50% of the vehicles on the road are taxis, who don’t care if they get into an accident. So, there is one system and rules which makes one person responsible for 3 people’s negligent behavior in the process toward the 3 people getting an income.

There is another relative who needed to make an income and wanted to have Stephen finance a brood of chickens for him. This involved building a chicken house but Stephen decided to build it on his own property so that at least he could retain the structure if all did not go well. Incidentally, one brood of chickens was raised and sold, after that not one coin was repaid to the financer nor was there ever another chicken raised.

There were some poor farmers “renting” the inheritance land in my husband’s family. They had been paying ground rent reluctantly for some years. But recently there had been interest in mining the area. The renters struck it big when they made a deal with the miners to turn their field into a miners quarry. The miners paid this poor farmer an equivalent of 40 million shillings for the privilege to mine. But when it came down to paying for ground rent to his landlord or even notifying the landlord that his property was being completely destroyed, the poor farmer couldn’t seem to cough up a single coin anymore. Although, one could point out that he was able to pay rent when he farmed. There were hints of a rumor going around about how he sat with the local council and police force and they all agreed how much of a cut/bribe every important person in the local community was supposed to get. (So, it may be a combination of 1,3,4 and 6 below).

So, the question is always, what happened to the money that was earned? Often it disappears into thin air. My main concern is, what happened to the wife and children of the guy who handled the money? If you go to the village of the poor farmer, you will see others like him who have raked in just as much income or more. You will see their children and wives dressed in the same tattered, dirty clothes every day. You will see their lives have not improved much or at all.

Truth is I’m not sure what to think. I’m not sure what has happened to the money. I know I have just become quite a lot more skeptical about those doing the business deals and handling the money.

I’ve heard numerous back-stories behind where the money went. They range from mere vice to the ridiculous. Here’s the start to a list.

1. It disappeared at the local tavern.
2. It got distributed amongst the locals in last night’s gambling match.
3. It truly got stolen by someone. This happens way more often than it does in the US. Someone gets wind of the funds someone else is carrying. A gang of guys shows up with machetes to relieve him of his life savings. This might actually contribute to the “spend cash now” mentality because if you keep it, you will be relieved of it.
4. Someone swindled it. It’s a dog-eat-dog world where instead of watching television, people entertain themselves by creating live soap operas, involving all the intrigue and deception.
5. Ghosts came and stole it.
6. Not sure if this is ever a cited reason but the guy has 3 wives and 23 children. Wives and children tend to survive without income from the male species that sometime chooses to neglect or abandon.
7. An employee mishandled the money. My husband has repeatedly had a whole month’s worth of income disappear because an employee has either stolen it or was negligent and had it stolen from them.
8. Bad investment. I’m told of the story of a few family cousins who have repeatedly sold family property to someone else—including the very property under their relatives’ own homes. They get a down payment from someone and then disappear when title transfers are scheduled to take place.

The rampant taking of things one did not work for seems somehow involved in making people poor. Because somehow the taker in his taking becomes schooled in taking again and again. He creates a shortage in the life of the one he unexpectedly takes from, Sometimes the shortage is so severe, the one he steals from is completely ruined. The taker learns no work ethic. He does not encounter the value of a thing, through working for it. He begins a pattern for himself that has no positive consequences and creates expense in the lives of those he takes from. A farmer understands the value of work because he is consistently rewarded with harvest for work put into the ground. But here, I have known of farmers who have cut down their mango tree to save a crop of corn. The mango tree was like a pot of sweet irresistible bait for the entire village, who came to feast at the tree in a young cornfield. So, the farmer cut down the tree to save the corn. 

Greed and poverty. The two usually go hand in hand. Where-ever one finds extreme poverty, one also finds an intense amount of greed in the house next door. Greed causes the poverty and destruction of one's neighbor. Sometimes it destroys one's own family.

While I was in the US. I rarely had to worry about having things stolen from me. Most people have the same sorts of things and don't covet another person's stuff. That is the beauty of the middle class. Here, unless you have absolutely nothing, what you have more than likely will be taken from you. The maid we had, before she was relieved of her duties went through the house and took the things she most coveted, a phone battery, my husband's hair brush, little stuff which didn't matter too much. But I've noticed even the relatives come to your house and take this or that or go into you wallet and take a bill or two. But then there is the big stuff people take: land. I have never heard of so much land grabbing and stories of deceit and theft and ruin, and murder, with respect to land grabbing.

Thoughts on the destruction of a community.

I'm a chemist. I remember well the warnings my chemistry professors gave me on Mercury toxicity. They even told of a fellow professor who was working in the lab with a component of Mercury and had later been diagnosed with Mercury poisoning. Unfortunately, the period for treatment had passed and the professor died due to his exposure.

Mercury poisoning is extremely toxic because even parts per billion are lethal and destroy entire communities. Here is one article about detection in the human body as well as symptoms.

https://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/mercury/tab/test/

The following article is about reducing environmental impact by reducing concentrations of mercury in aqueous solutions. It also touches on airborne contaminants.

http://www.nist.gov/tip/wp/pswp/upload/137_aqueous_phase_mercury_removal_strategies.pdf

This is merely the tip of the iceberg. Social, economic, communal and environmental concerns are daunting at this point in this micro-situation which seems to mirror all the other micro-situations of artisan mining in Africa and Asia.

Ultimately, I stand by helpless watching from a distance as a community embraces its own destruction gleefully. Joyfully. Somehow, it smacks of perfect evil, of greed.

I spoke with a young man from the community who is originally from the community pictured here. He has his degrees and is employed by an organization that monitors oil companies across Uganda, who are drilling for oil, ensuring that they do not destroy native habitat in the process of extracting oil. I asked him about this new development in his community. He responded, "Yes my father is a leader in this community and the caretaker of this property. But I am but a child in the eyes of my people and they would only say I am trying to keep them from gaining any wealth should I protest in any way at all about the artisan mining."

What does one solitary person do to stand up against the crush of a whole village of extremely eager people as well as more powerful greedy people stand waiting to exploit those people?

Documenting the destruction of a community.

Aqueous mercury baths emptied to run down the hillside into the swampy areas of the community.

A barefoot child carrying harvest walks through the path of waste drainage.

The ore that everyone is stumbling over to get their hands on the profits.

Panning in pools of aqueous mercury.

A shanty town of services supporting the miners has erupted overnight. The small rural population of farmers now supports 20,000+ extra people. As of now, the locals clasp their hands in glee as they speak of their good fortune and grab any piece of residual wealth they can get from the flow of capital. Who is to blame them, poor as they have been?

Carrying the burden of wealth.