There have been a lot of campaigns lately on Facebook, enlisting the support of users like you and I, to help in the plight of Uganda’s child soldiers. These are glossy, heart felt campaigns that are meant to elicit in us an emotional response, not a critical response. Most of us are good people who want good things for ourselves and good things for people all around the world, right? So why not financially support something like KONY 2012, it’s as little as $10 a month, right? It seems simple, but unfortunately it’s not. Well, I can give you a few real simple solutions right now that will greatly help to alleviate the problems we all really care about in Uganda:
- Make sure that any soy or soy based product that you purchase has not been made from soy crops grown in Uganda.
- When buying tea, check to see that it’s not sourced from Uganda, and if it is, it should be labeled FAIR TRADE.
- Do you ever buy roses or other plant products that originate in Uganda? Change your flower choice to something locally grown and produced.
- Coffee is a big export from Uganda, so is tea, and unless it’s FAIR TRADE...
- Both cotton and tobacco are other large export crops from Uganda that serve to keep the indigenous population at a severe disadvantage.
- Do you like and use essential oils of eucalyptus, geranium, or citronella? These amongst others are often sourced in Uganda.
Here is a link to see all of Uganda exports:
I’m sure you’re beginning to see a trend here. So why would avoiding products like the ones I’ve listed above help to alleviate the suffering and oppression of child soldiers in Uganda? Well, it will involve a tiny history lesson, so I’ll keep it brief.
Uganda began as a colony created by Britain. The colonists (capitalists and missionaries) imposed boundaries that grouped together a wide range of ethnic groups with different political systems and cultures. The economic fruits of colonization are still being gathered today, by foreign interests and corporations, but the Ugandans themselves have been left to forge a political and economic system “on their own”, already deprived of much of their country’s own natural resources. They only achieved “independence” in 1962, and have been struggling to forge their own identity ever since.
Here in Canada we have witnessed first hand the result of “colonization” on our own First Nations groups. The long term effects of residential schools and treaty negotiations can be seen in action today. It only takes a little imagination to see how a territory, artificially created to encompass more than ten distinct ethnic groups, would have difficulty finding function. Add to this a situation where all vestiges of previous cultures have been abolished, all lands have been “re-assigned”, and all resources are already in the hands of foreign investment. In a place that has over ten distinct ethnic groups, according to census data nearly 50% of that populace is Roman Catholic. This is a story all too familiar all around the world.
Great steps are taken by capitalist nations to “modernize” other “primitive” nations, and people are stripped of their culture and religion in a very systemic fashion. The lands of the colonized are divided up and parceled out according to the economic plans of the colonizers, and then the people are left to fend for themselves in a country that was created for them, with a religion that was given to them, with a culture that conquered them. If they want change they have to somehow find a way to use the political system that was imposed upon them by the colonizers. (And we here all know about the magic of democracy, do we not?) This breeds a terrible amount of unrest.
We in the West are allowed to witness the dysfunction and the terror, but we are not made privy to the reasons behind the creation of such atrocities. If we were made aware that the chocolate we eat, the sugar we consume, the tea we drink, the clothes we buy, the flowers we give to our loved ones to let them know we care - if we knew all of what we bought was directly related to the health and welfare of Ugandan children, then the corporations would not be able to keep such a crippling grip on the people of Uganda. Perhaps the people of Uganda, if they had self governance and control over their own resources, their own destiny, perhaps they might not have a reason to think that it’s necessary for children to wage war.
It’s difficult in our time of economic turmoil, in our time of work and life, to find time to think about things, really think about them, investigate them. We are too consumed with our lives, our work, our children, our art, to search out answers. We trust. We feel. And these are very good things. In our globally connected community, we have to find ways to help our fellow man and to create abundance for all in the world. It’s too much to have to soft through all the information, find the good charities, and the not so good ones. The way I see it is this:
If someone is asking you to send money, to spend money, they obviously don’t understand the big picture. And if you send them money, unfortunately neither do you. The beauty of our connectedness as a global community is that money is currently the international language. So where we put our money matters. It all goes back to that idea of thinking, locally, shopping locally, it’s not just a fad. Really.
No comments:
Post a Comment