Interview

In Uganda I (together with the other World supporters from my group) had an interview with a girl from our age. I’m really bad at remembering name’s, I also accidentally forgot her name. I do remember how she looked. She looked like a typical African girl, just like they all look there. Short hair and a really big friendly smile. We asked if we could interview her and she really liked that! So we sat down in a circle. We asked here some things about school. We we’re wondering why all the girls had short hair, even though they all wanted long hair like us. She told us that the school was afraid that the girls then would care a lot about their hair and their school performance would suffer from it.

We also asked if you were allowed to have a boy/girl friend (relationship). She told us that that wasn’t allowed. They were again afraid their school performance would suffer from it. Next to that, their religion didn’t always allow them to have a relationship at their age. The girl we talked to was Christian, but one of her friends who joined us was Muslims.

The question we than asked, was the one that I still don’t understand. We asked why all the kids where screaming, bye mzungu! Bye! and some sometimes even jump or run after our busses (when we’re driving). She told us, that the younger children see us as gods. Someone than asked, only because we’re white?  Yes, some never saw a white person before and others know your rich. It kind of shocked me that the children see us as gods, only because where white. That’s when someone told that she asked a child at a project where she tought money came from at our place. The child answered with: “from the tree’s.” . She literally thought that our money grows on tree’s! I came to Uganda to see the truth. I wanted to see if it was really like the tv spots, I wanted to help. But the people there don’t know a thing about Holland. They think our money comes from tree’s and we’re gods. They will never be able to see the truth behind all the stories, like I did. I found it really confronting, and wanted to do more for them then possible in the 2 weeks I was there. I then decided I would once come back. The girl told us, she didn’t see us as gods, but the same as her but than a little bit wealthier. That was nice to hear, that some people saw us just as we are.

She really showed me that it really is a total other world. We once ruined their world. When we we’re developing, we used them as slaves. Their world didn’t develop because of that. So we were the once that made their world undeveloped, so now we need to help them to develop. That’s the least we can do, since we ruined their world.