6/1/09 – KAMPALA, UGANDA

Politics. Ech. They say you can’t without them but I can barely survive with them. I’m not the biggest fan and it is way far down on the general interest list. Not that I don’t find the things they deal with on a daily basis fascinating, intriguing, appalling, confusing, otherwise worth my tie...but I often think of only the “appalling and confusing” when the political framework is thrown in to the mix. It was hard to listen to questions being asked and wonder if weren’t getting straight answers because they didn’t understand what we wanted to know or because they had no intention of letting us know. Health, specifically malaria, and the LRA’s activity. Central focuses for today’s discussions with the Ministers of Health and Youth respectively. I could have tried harder...but I came out no more enlightened and all the more frustrated with the topics at hand. As near as I could glean, they are both doing things and solving nothing. Tackling symptoms without addressing the fact the country is sick. Again, like yesterday, I’m sure some of the same could be said of the US. Which, on that note, if I had any doubts about how others felt about America before, doubts erased. Our new Islamic friend’s soap box style tirade was both intriguing and infuriating. We make bad choices in US, believe me I know, but I am not the president. Some people think those things about you – but I am fact am not one of them. Some are abrasive and cruel but would you stop looking me in the eye like it is all personally my fault! It gave me a peek into Arabs in the US, however. How they must feel to be turned into a representation of all that is wrong with their faith, their country of heritage, their allegiances. To take the blame on behalf of others’ bad choices, leaders’ destructive calls. Being American doesn’t make me the beloved or hated George W. Bush or Barak Obama for the matter anymore than the Egyptian sitting down the table yelling at us was Osama Bin Laden. I think the more culturally sensitive we become, the more we realize the faults in the culture of our own.