#14: "It's all Cultural"

My last blog post was a harbinger — one that I could feel sounding my internal alarms even before I went back to AMHC in March. 

I went to Europe with the goal of resting, recuperating, and finding motivation to return to Western Uganda with a full cup. This unfortunately was not the case. On top of my bag being stolen on a Swiss train, I think I may have felt my first experience with reverse culture shock. Instead of the comfort and support I was looking for, I found myself having to justify the work I was doing to the vast majority of people. There was not an inherent trust in my moral backbone; there was an inherent distrust. To a certain extent, I completely understood. Yes, what I was doing felt bizarre, especially to a socialist culture where nearly everything has an official, governmental, or NGO backing. What are your credentials for this? How are you really going to help? Yes, the treatment of women sounds really sad, but little old you is certainly not changing an ingrained cultural system! “It’s cultural!” What happens if you are an island in your town and things go south? It’s brave what you are doing…but it just does not seem smart. And you are Christian? So you are trying to impose Christian values on this system? Saylor…historically speaking, when has that ever done more good than harm? For all of these questions, I understood their concern. They were the questions I had been asking myself on a daily basis. But I also had a lot of responses that felt racist and sexist to me: “The longer you spend in Africa, the more racist you will become.” “C’est juste comme ça lá bas [It is just like that down there]. No one will listen to a little girl like you. You cannot go down with cultural superiority and try to impose Western Culture. T’oublie [Forget it].”

Safe to say, by the end of my time in Europe, I felt even more mentally and physically drained than when I had arrived. I went back to Uganda knowing that I was not rested, not optimistic about positive change, and worried about the future. When enough people tell you to be scared, you start to be scared. When enough people tell you that change is not possible, you start to question if change is possible. I did not know what Albertine would hold for me, but I returned in a worried state. 

But I still had hope. From my personal religious standpoint, at every step on my way back to Uganda, I still felt like I was supposed to return to this hospital, continue to learn, but also start to advise and speak up more for where I felt like change could happen. No, I did not have an airy, deep voice of God in the back of my head telling me what to do, but the only next logical step forward was this. Logistically, I had already purchased many things for the hospital and wanted them to be used! Emotionally, whenever I asked God “Where can I go to help people? What can I do that will push me farther in these gap years and keep me learning?”, no other answer came to my spirit than to keep pushing forward where I was. No, I was not going to change the culture of Western Uganda. No, I did not have an institutional backing and that did make me more vulnerable. Yes, I could definitely do more harm than good if I was not cognizant of where to speak up, where to fight, and where to choose silence. But I still could not come to any conclusion to support leaving the hospital permanently. If someone tells you that they feel called by God to be somewhere or to do something, I understand being wary. I am wary of anyone that says that! I have read about and seen the harm this mindset can do when the actions of someone with a “calling” do not actually follow a path of servant leadership, love, equality, peace, and justice. But in a prayerful spirit, reflective daily on where I could do better, I decided to return. 

One day will come in my life where I will recount everything that happened between March 20th and April 5th. I feel as though that time period was a complete year of my life. I have been deeply affected by everything that has happened and the ramifications of all that I have uncovered will not only have personal consequences but hopefully institutional consequences for where I was working. Feel free to call me or my immediate family for all of the details — the good, the bad, and the ugly that I encountered when I returned. There is a lot that I cannot say at this point — people have confided in me, and I will not betray their trust; my silver bullets of evidence become bronze (or even pewter or lead, ugh) if they get back to the perpetrators at the wrong time; and finally, I need to take precautions for my personal safety, since I am still living in Eastern Africa. I need to be smart and relatively tight-lipped. 

And I try to reflect everyday on my own actions — did I follow the morals given by my faith? Did I act out of love and kindness? These were not easy questions to answer as situations got more and more complicated, but I can promise you that I strived to fight for justice, equality, love, and truth every single day. Surely, I have acted imperfectly. But I also know that some of the slightly dubious means I used were, in my mind, in service of Goodness (yes, capital G). I pray every day that all of my actions would be used in years to come to make things better at this hospital. I would love to be invited back one day and to help put in place some positive infrastructure and checks of power that would allow Albertine to live up to its motto: “We treat, God heals.”

But this is going to be a HARD battle, one bigger than I ever imagined it would be. If you are religious in some way, I would love your prayers for discernment and justice. If you are not religious, I would appreciate your thoughts as I navigate this moral quandary.

While I lean amillenialist now, I still believe that in this world, those that choose to manipulate the truth and hurt others to keep power should ALWAYS be held accountable for their actions. I believe that there are good people across every nation in the world fighting for transparency, justice, and equality. Historically, I can think of hundreds of cases where power has been manipulated, but then overwhelming forces come together to oppose that manipulation and a new equilibrium is won. It’s complicated, it’s not black and white, and I cannot know for sure that the world is going to keep getting better and better and better for all eternity. But I can say with confidence that there is no time in the past when I would rather have been alive. I’m happy to be alive in the present, and for me, that is evidence enough that things are better than what they were. For just one example, my rights as a woman on this earth are better than any other time in history. 

There are a lot of voices around me saying “It’s all cultural.” Sadly, this is coming from some people who I really thought I could trust and people with a lot of power.

But there are also other voices, the ones I am choosing to listen to, both within and outside of Ugandan culture, that reaffirm my belief that there are limits on what we can define as “culture.” Just because something is more culturally permissible on the fringes of a culture does not make it acceptable. If people are being harmed, and you have evidence of that harm, then stating “It’s all cultural” is just a way to absolve you of taking any action. That is cowardice. I would not have been able to live with myself if I just left without trying to help. So, I am trying to help. It may be foolish, and I will reflect on these choices for the rest of my life. But day by day, I know that I am at least not an island. I have a lot of people who agree with me and I am not alone in this fight. 

Many of my counselors have reminded me of the starfish story. I will end with it below, because it has helped me justify many of my actions over the last month: 

And finally, stayed tuned for my next blog post about the DRC. My cousin and I have been joking: "You are one of the few people in history that needed to flee to Congo." I could not be more thrilled to be with family for the first time in months; I feel like I am around people that understand me, my past, and my present. Oh, the blessing of family.