Kampala & primary school

Still in Africa, still alive.

We ventured into Kampala, Uganda’s capitol, the day after everyone else arrived. By taxi, it’s only about 15 minutes to city center. After converting some cash at the foreign exchange, we walked around for a bit and got a feel for the city. The actual urban area is not that big, and you can walk pretty much everywhere – which most people do anyway, because cars are so expensive. Since traffic laws aren’t very well enforced (SLASH aren’t actually enforced AT ALL) the city streets are really congested and noisy. If you don’t want to walk, you can either flag down a taxi (which will pick you up even if they already have some passengers) or charter a boda boda. The bodas are motorcycle taxis that FLY through the streets, swerving through traffic and cutting everyone off. We’ve repeatedly seen them run red lights at one of the only three stoplights in the city. The bodas are a little more expensive than cabs, but I guess the trade off is that they’re WAY faster than sitting in a cab in traffic (unless, of course, you DIE).

Kampala is definitely a developing world city in SO many ways. A lot of the buildings have tin roofs and everything is covered in a blanket of red Ugandan dust. You’ll see vendors and construction workers walking through the streets with wooden carts or riding by on bicycles stacked with straw or sticks or other supplies. However, since all the wealthy Ugandan elite live in the city, the shanties and beggars are contrasted by luxury SUVs and sparkling new buildings. On our first trip into the city, our taxi was passed by a police escort made of probably four shiny cop cars, six to eight more cops on motorcycles (much newer than the bodas), an ambulance, and three brand new BMWs. This is a pretty good illustration of how wealth in Uganda is distributed – the handful of elites at the top control the parliament and the resources, and everyone else is left to fend for themselves.

Walking by the offices of Parliament reiterated this. The government buildings, which in theory are there to give all Ugandans due representation, are surrounded by vast green lawns and high gates. In the few days I’ve been here, a few of the youth have asked me what I study at university, and when I tell them I study international politics, they scoff. “I don’t like politics,” one told me, “because in politics, nothing ever changes.” I guess you can’t bring about much change in policy when the people in power never change.

After our day in Kampala, we jumped right into life at the youth center. We’re part teachers, part camp counselors here, though unfortunately it’s much harder to pull out my old camp counselor tricks when not all the kids speak English. They are all absolutely adorable though, and SO much easier than American children to entertain. We colored in pictures with them, and as we handed out the papers and markers, not a single child complained or asked for a different paper or color, and then they all just sat quietly and colored intently for 15 min. We gave them stickers when they finished and they were SO excited. A few of them put them on the front of their school books and then ran over to show us because they were so proud. Some things are kind of sad though — one little boy handed me what looked like a folded up newspaper that he had out his sticker on. I was like, “That’s great, but why did you put it here?” I then opened it and discovered it was actually his school notebook, of which apparently didn’t have a real cover so he had put the newspaper around it instead.

It’s interesting because all the kids here, from primary school to high school-age, are so intent on going to school and learning because it really is a privilege to be able to. We have one Ugandan youth leader who is 17 and an incredible dancer, who is taking the year off of school because his mom is sick and in the hospital so his family can no longer afford to send all the kids to school. Some of the other youth leaders go to school but pretty much have to fend for themselves and work to pay their own school fees. More so than feeling badly for them though, it makes me sad to think that so many kids in the US goof off and totally take their education for granted.

We’ve been teaching at a couple schools in the area, which is trippy because they are so incredibly different from US schools. Aside from the aesthetics ofit (peeling plaster walls, rough wooden benches, hand-drawn educational posters on the walls) the teaching methods here are SO RIGID. They basically don’t incorporate any creative/interactive learning into their schools, so even though the kids are really smart (bc they have to memorize and relay back EVERYTHING), every time we ask them to be creative or think critically they’re soooo hesitant to do so. One of the younger teachers who was a little more down with what were trying to do actually told a couple of my friends not to be offended that none of the kids wanted to share their opinion or work with the class, but that the kids were just not used to being asked their opinion about anything. Ibra, one of the youth center’s co-directors, explained to us too that in Uganda, until you’re 18 and living on your own you’re still considered a baby, and no one really cares what you think.

So it’s really interesting to see the same kids who are so timid and quiet at school come to the youth center afterward and be loud and crazy and talkative. That I think is one of the things their most focused on with their non-profit — empower kids so they don’t grow up to be passive adults like so many of the poor lower class here.

Alright I got to run — eating lunch than headed to market (like, straight up African bazaar). Another update coming soon.

WASSUP everybody I'm in Africa

Mari and I, and our friend Natalie who met us in Amsterdam, arrived safely in Uganda last night. The flight went pretty smoothly EXCEPT that there was a medical emergency in the air so we had to make an emergency landing in Rome. Kind of cool, since I’ve never been to Italy, so we got a cool aerial view of the Italian shore. (Though not so cool for the person getting medically evacuated I guess.) We ended up getting to Kampala two hours late and pretty exhausted, but we finally found our bags and got through the airport to find Divinity, the director of the youth center we’re working at, waiting for us with a VERY excited group of Ugandan youth leaders from the center. They were all super psyched that we were finally here, and shook all our hands and took a million pictures. We all squeezed into the van they had rented (SO typically African… we were practically piled in there) and drove back to the house.

The house that accommodates the youth center is in a little village outside the city, up a hill in a little neighborhood. The buildings are all stucco and the roads are a rusty colored dirt. There are clothesline hanging across the road and tons of kids running around playing ball. Our house has a big wall around it with broken glass on top to keep out robbers. The house has a couple rooms and a washroom in back for the girls, and the boys are in separate building across the yard. The washroom has shower head, which is fortunate, but less fortunately the water is COLD. I sort of stood to the side a splashed myself this morning. There’s also “toilets” in the back, which are actually latrines, so going to the bathroom constitutes squatting over a tiny hole in the floor. If there’s one thing I will miss most on this trip, it will be modern plumbing.

I’m running out of time, so I got to wrap this up, but so far we haven’t seen TOO much of the area except on the walk over to the Internet cafe. Kind of hilarious, since the whole time we were walking, the little kids we passed would get really excited and yell “MUZUNGA! HI MUZUNGA!!!” which is what they call anyone foreign. Some of them even made it into a little song. It was definitely more adorable than offensive, since they were just so excited to see someone not Ugandan.

I’ll try to post another update as soon as I can! Love you all and hope everything is well in the States, New Zealand, etc.

Poll Finds McCain, in Tight Race, Is Still Tied to Bush - NYTimes.com

Poll Finds McCain, in Tight Race, Is Still Tied to Bush - NYTimes.com:

This poll found evidence of concern about Ms. Palin’s qualifications to be president, particularly compared to those of Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, Mr. Obama’s choice for a running mate. More than 6 in 10 of those surveyed said they would be concerned if Mr. McCain could not finish his term and Ms. Palin had to take over. In contrast, two-thirds of voters surveyed said Mr. Biden would be qualified to take over for Mr. Obama, a figure that cut across party lines.

75 percent said they thought Mr. McCain had picked Mrs. Palin more to help him win the election, rather than because he thought that she was well-qualified to be president. By contrast, 31 percent said they thought that Mr. Obama picked Mr. Biden more to help him win the election, while 57 percent said it was because he thought Mr. Biden was well-qualified for the job.

Maybe the American people aren't as stupid as the Republicans would like to hope?

Although, I will be honest... I just breathed a sigh of relief.

Ordoliberalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ordoliberalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ordoliberalism (also called German neoliberalism) is a school of liberalism emphasizing the need for the state to ensure that the free market produces results close to its theoretical potential (see allocative efficiency). The theory was developed by German economists and legal scholars such as Wilhelm Röpke (who spent the Nazi period in exile in Turkey), Walter Eucken, Franz Böhm and Hans Grossmann-Doerth from about 1930-1950; Ordoliberal ideals (with modifications) drove the creation of the post-World War II German social market economy and its attendant Wirtschaftswunder.

Ordoliberal theory holds that the state must create a proper legal environment for the economy and maintain a healthy level of competition through measures that adhere to market principles.^[1] The concern is that, if the state does not take active measures to foster competition, firms with monopoly (or oligopoly) power will emerge, which will not only subvert the advantages offered by the market economy, but also possibly undermine good government, since strong economic power can be transformed into political power. Quoting Stephen Padgett: "A central tenet of ordo-liberalism is a clearly defined division of labor in economic management, with specific responsibilities assigned to particular institutions. Monetary policy should be the responsibility of a central bank committed to monetary stability and low inflation, and insulated from political pressure by independent status. Fiscal policy—balancing tax revenue against government expenditure—is the domain of the government, whilst macro-economic policy is the preserve of employers and trade unions." The state should form an economical order instead of directing economical processes.

Is Google Making Us Stupid? - TheAtlantic.com

Is Google Making Us Stupid?
by Nicholas Carr

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets’reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link. (Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to related works; they propel you toward them.)

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

from theAtlantic.com

I read this a while ago, but it came to mind immediately tonight as I struggled through my IPE reading.

Economic Scene - Perhaps, Time for Someone to Play Offense - NYTimes.com

Economic Scene - Perhaps, Time for Someone to Play Offense - NYTimes.com

Interesting. And necessary. I admit I'm really a bit of a Keynesian when it comes to these things -- it is important, after all, for those governing us to ensure that we're not all spiraling into financial ruin -- but I also like to employ this thing called "common sense" every so often. Let's stop saving imaginary money and be realistic, yeah?

Message to McCain: Get Smart.

Let's say you have to choose between two candidates for a VERY important government job.

Candidate A graduated from an Ivy League university and went on to attend the best law school in the country, where he was chosen to be editor-in-chief of the most prestigious law review in the country. He graduated from law school magna cum laude.

Candidate B was accepted, largely based on legacy, to one of the most reputable military academies in the nation. He graduated 894 of 899 and immediately entered the military. He did not go on to obtain an upper level degree.

So, uh, who'd you pick?

Reading the credentials of Candidate A, I think it's pretty obvious who were talking about here. It's well-known that Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University and went on to become the first black editor-in-chief of the incredibly prestigious Harvard Law Review. Judging from his academic history, the eloquence of his speaking, and the political shrewdness displayed in his campaigning, Obama's intelligence is undeniable.

On the flip side, John McCain's intellectual capacity remains, to me at least, a bit of a mystery. I think that while many people are aware that he entered the Naval Academy as a third-generation legacy student, few realized that he graduated 6th-to-last of his class of 899. That fact doesn't exactly inspire confidence in his cerebral capacity. He entered the military immediately after graduation, as required of an Annapolis grad. Don't get me wrong here - McCain's military service as military captain was indubitably honorable, especially the six years he spent as a prisoner of war. But, I feel that the attention given to this experience often glosses over the fact that he subsequently retired from the military, left his wife for an heiress 20 years his junior, and then used his young wife's gargantuan bank account to finance his entrance into the political realm.

Twenty-six years in office later, McCain has no doubt accumulated a shrewd political education. He did not, however, deem it necessary to ever return to school to compensate for his poor academic showing as an undergrad. I know that as an upper middle-class college student, I sound very judgmental and even elitist for criticizing him for this. There are many successful, brilliant people in the world who never even attended or completed college (case in point: Bill Gates). However, McCain is not a Wunderkind whose genius allowed them to eschew traditional models of higher education. In fact, his academic showing at Annapolis was miserable and, arguably, despicable. Access to education is certainly an issue of great contention in this country, but John McCain, as a wwalthy, white American male, certainly had ever resource available to him to pursue some form of greater education in his twenty-six years retired from military service.

I'm sure some people would consider this a non-issue and throw around terms like "book-smart" and "experience." But this is the President of the United States we're talking about. Why shouldn't we expect the person in this position to be of superior intelligence? For eight years, we trusted a man who believes "misunderestimated" to be a word with this office, and look we're that's gotten us - engulfed in two wars, $400 billion in debt, and slowly finding ourselves being manipulated into destroying fragile American wildlife to further profit gluttenous oil companies.

I expect my president to smarter than I am, ok? And as a college student who aspires to one day obtain a masters AND a doctorate degree, I cannot respect a man who just barely managed to graduate college. In a country where so many communities desperately desire higher education, McCain's educational track record makes a mockery of their aspirations.