Uganda on the Coattails of Hope

Thursday, 25 December 2008

Uganda Photo
by Jennifer Gilomen, BAVC Lead Developer, Strategic Initiatives

In November, I had the opportunity to travel to Uganda for the first production trip of my new documentary, Bank of Suubi. The film is about a social entrepreneur named Fred Ssewamala and his attempt to solve Uganda's orphan crisis through innovative finance and savings accounts. I hope, through the film, to look at the touchy subject of international aid and its reinvention, exploring themes of opportunity, "insider" vs. "outsider" status in solving social problems, and the outlook for the next generation of the world's poorest citizens.

But this fall, we were just getting started, and the film was just a bunch of those ideas and questions waiting to be realized through the experiences, relationships, patient observation and labor that is the process and joy of documentary film development. The trip was challenging and special for me, and coincidentally, I have the privilege of sitting next to BAVC's webmistress, who, when looking for articles for the BAVC blog, need look no further than over the rims of her glasses at me. So here we go, a little sharing of hope, in time for the holidays and that little inauguration thing.

Context

Fred Ssewamala was orphaned when a militia group raided his family home in a turbulent time and place: 1984 in rural Uganda during the Obote II regime, nearly five years after the overthrow of Idi Amin dictatorship, which was made infamous by the 2006 Hollywood take on the subject, The Last King of Scotland, for which Forest Whitaker earned an Oscar and numerous accolades. Fred found himself without parents at age twelve, but against all odds, set himself on the path to where he is now: an Associate Professor of Social Work and International Affairs at Columbia University in New York. He's one of the most inspiring people I've ever had the privilege of knowing, and his personal story of perseverance, adaptation, and selfless dedication that took him from that rural village to the halls of American academe would make fine fodder for a film in and of itself. But that is only the beginning, and what we went to Uganda to capture was the start of his newest journey, one that has the potential to change the way the world sees international aid and development.

Over the past decade or more of his work, Fred studied individual development accounts (IDAs), and experimented with using savings accounts, or "child development accounts" (CDAs) as a way to change life trajectories and outcomes. Fred emphasizes that his current research, while centered in Uganda -- one of the world's poorest countries, with one of Africa's longest-running wars, and in a nation heavily impacted by HIV/AIDS -- has implications wherever there is poverty in the world. And last I checked, we've got quite a bit of that, in every country on earth. The idea, put simply, is that people behave differently and become self-empowered when they own assets. The hope that such assets provide causes people to take fewer health risks, believe that they have opportunities, pursue an education, and generally, to feel that they have the power to change their own futures. All this, and more, starting with a mere $25 per child. For the new generation of orphans in Uganda (where, due to AIDS and civil strife, over 50% of the population is currently under the age of fifteen), this hope has come to represent the hope of a nation.

The trip

So along comes Fred, wearing the Columbia baseball cap that almost never leaves his head, landing in Kampala with a suitcase full of chocolates, an enthusiastic and dedicated PhD student (Elizabeth Sperber), and a documentary film crew (myself and producer Rachel Benson) in tow. He is returning to Uganda with a new, prestigious grant from the National institute of Mental Health to test out this concept with 600 kids and their extended families in two districts of Uganda that have been hit hardest by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. We are an unlikely bunch with a ridiculous amount of luggage, but everywhere we go -- to the homes of Fred's extended family, the offices of bank managers, rural village schools and homes, the parish where he got his start, or the shaded hotel lawns where Uganda politicians hold court -- we are preceded by Fred's good name, and ride on the coattails of a wave of suubi ("hope" in Luganda, the local language) that spread through East Africa when Obama was elected. I thought it was going to be difficult to board a plane the day after the election, primarily because of a case of F.O.M.O. (Fear of Missing Out). But it ends up being a bonus, flying to East Africa with Obama Mania. A question: "American?" with my response begetting a thumbs up or a high five? What new world are we living in? I've been to nearly twenty countries, and this I've never seen.

It is one of those action-packed shoots, a cinematographer's dream, following life as it unfolds, visually arresting and infinitely interesting, and yet we do a lot of waiting for things to happen. It takes us a while to settle into Uganda Time, this general and elusive sense of when something might happen, when everything might come together for, say, a meeting with 100 parents who have come from villages all over the district to meet with Fred. At some point, there was probably a time set for this thing, but life gets in the way. Life becomes the things that happen to you, not the things you do. There is a fuel shortage, children to feed, water to retrieve, miles to walk to get there, a broken down car, a cow in the road, a neighbor who needs a lift along the way. The power is out, the priest comes down with malaria, and the computer at the office blows up when you plug it in. (All of these things occurred.) You get there when you get there, and when everyone else is pretty much there, you know it's time, and you begin.

And so, we begin. We follow Fred in his work, we meet and film with his extended family; we watch him convincing bank managers and governors that they, too, could be a part of the grand experiment that the world will watch. We train Fred to stop introducing us in Luganda with sentences that contain the words "Arnold Schwarzenegger," intended to explain our camera and film project. (I can't express how disconcerting it is to when the "Schwarzeneggar explanation" results in people nodding at you with a curious blend of understanding and concern.) We wake up one morning to the haunting sound of 400 kids singing in unison at the steps of the parish where we stayed. We make friends with the teenage girls who were turned away from school for lack of fees. We go on a safari in a beat-up sedan with a nervous parish priest, and a hippo plows through the lawn as we sip gin and tonics with him. We negotiate the tricky aspects of field production in a hot, dusty place with intermittent power - difficult, technically, when shooting HD with P2 cards and the plethora of hard drives, laptops and accessories that go along with such a production. We party with the locals, see herds of elephants roaming the savannah, and meet a family of baboons who gaze back at us with the same curiosity we have for them. I couldn't help but think what they were thinking: "What the heck happened to those baboons' butts?"

Stars rise in Africa

The full impact, and really, the full weight of what Fred is doing sets in late in the trip in a few dramatic moments. In the meeting with the parents (which did, eventually, get underway), a woman rises, approaches Fred, and drops to her knees to thank him for what he did for her family, because a child in her care had participated in Fred's pilot research project. We don't need to understand Luganda to perceive the thanks in her eyes and in the gesture of the gift that she gave him, a giant avocado. The meaning of a gift, after all, is in where it comes from. And Fred is from here. In a remote village, at the end of something that just barely earns the status of "road," two women drop to their knees in profuse thanks, then go to the field next to their mud hut and arrest their prize rooster, bind its feet, and thrust it to Fred in thanks. I'm rolling the whole time, even as my mouth drops open. I reach out and touch the hands of kids who run alongside the car, squealing with glee at the spectacle that we must have been. And as we set off back up the "road," complete with an extra passenger and a rooster, we begin to see not just that what he's doing is important for these people, but also that it works. Given the right tools (in this case, a small financial incentive and basic financial training, enabling children to remain within their extended family structure and to get an education), administered with true understanding of the place, the challenges, and the needs, the world's least privileged citizens can help themselves. And that is true hope.

Uganda is proud of Fred Ssewamala, their rising star and the bearer of that hope. Fred is Uganda's child, and the country is full of beaming mothers. And here, in a country that merely borders Kenya, people are also proud of Barack Obama. It isn't fondness, it isn't political, even, it is pride. They have "OBAMA" bumper stickers, they know facts about him, they feel like he is one of them. And they tend to put way too much hope in him; in his ability to change their lives in a meaningful way. That is the danger in putting your hope in any one person, other than yourself.

But along with that individualized hope lurks another one -- the elephant one -- for our collective future as a species. I think we've all felt a bit of that as we ride the coattails of this historic election together, with a world of problems and a prayer, and this one guy walking toward the podium. But if we can empower people to help themselves and to have hope in themselves, as Fred is doing, the hope begins to create its counterpart in reality. Not because of one man, but because of one man's ability to inspire us to hope for ourselves, and to shift our collective thought. Put that on a bumper sticker.