Tell Me The Difference

It's no secret that I am having a head-over-heels love affair with the entire country of Uganda. 

Uganda. It is my happy place.

Hence the name of this blog. 

I get a lot of questions from friends and strangers who are simply curious, and mean well, but often ask me Why Africa? Why not focus on helping the children who are suffering here?

My answer is always that I do both. Because I do. Here in Chicago and in Kishanje.

Some people that do not understand exactly what life in Uganda is like, who have neither visited or even studied third world crisis, tend to believe a "care for our own" policy.

My belief is yes, we must care for our own children. We must. We can not ever ignore the enormous amount of children in this country who suffer just as much pain and violence and hunger. The pain here is immense. Yes, always, care for our own.


But we also have a duty, as human beings, NOT to ignore the 47 million orphans living over seas. The children who literally spend six years slowly starving towards death. The children starving for education, for rice, for health care, for someone to pick them up.

"Care for our own" is just another way of saying "we are above you." It is just another way of saying "you are less visible to us." It is just another way of saying INEQUALITY in 2014.

Think about how we actually managed to colonize this country. We established a country that believed it was okay to oppress people in order to compete in the world. And we thought we were doing it all in the name of Freedom.

Think Indian Reorganization. 
Slavery.
Mexican-American War. 
Jim Crow. 
Japanese-American Internment. 
Anti-Semitism.

Before any ethnic/religious groups won their equal rights in this country, policy-makers, politicians, wealthy white heterosexual male Christian folk said the same thing...."care for our own." 

How barbaric the United States were when they were "caring for their own." US, the 50 states...the UNITED States were divided because people with money in their hands said "us" not "them." 


Once we started caring for each other, regardless of difference...we realized how stupid we were. I see this everyday when I teach the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement and WWII to my fifth graders. They are dumbfounded by how ignorant our world used to be.

So, we are learning from history. What then, might we learn in the next 50 years? Will we look back in 2064 and think how dumb were we not to pay attention to female gendercide in China and India? How ignorant of us not to pursue drought crisis and famine solutions in Sub-Saharan Africa? How completely absurd that we did not educate 2/3 of the generation responsible for caring for this planet once we were gone? 


So. My answer is always that I do both. Because both matter. And because in both cases, children are involved. And to me, every single child is equal in value to the next.

If I can help one person in Chicago, that is baby steps for a suffering city. If I can help one person in Kishanje, that is baby steps for a suffering city.

Tell me the difference between these smiles.

So, my answer is always, do both, when you can. And when you can't? You are only human. Just do what you can where ever you can. Whether you "do" in Southside Chicago or Evanston, Illinois. Or in Washington, D.C. or the D.R.C. or the Domican Republic. Just DO. 

For every John Smith working in Singapore, I pray for a Judy Smith working in Columbia. For every John Doe donating dollars to Liberia, I pray there is a Jane Doe donating in Bulgaria. For every new Charter School built this year in Chicago, I pray for one in Detroit and Maryland and San Juan and Kiev.

For me, by spontaneous coincidence, it was an opportunity to go see Uganda---and I just, very simply, fell in love. I just like it. The same way you might like the NBA or bacon (cause who doesn't?) or vacationing in the Caribbean. It's an interest of mine outside of Chicago.

So----- Whenever possible, try not to believe that international borders should serve to act as human rights dividers.