I think most Americans’ mental images of Africa – or at the very least, mine prior to this trip – are of some sort of cross between a National Geographic special on savannah wildlife and a Christian Children’s Fund television appeal for donations, replete with starving children sporting desperate eyes and distended stomachs. I’m pretty… Continue reading The Politics of (Near) Starving
I am used to being a spectacle. You can’t have a six inch, half-black half-white Mohawk and not expect stares. (Indeed, in retrospect, I am willing to admit that you can’t have a six-inch, half black half-white Mohawk and not want stares, at least to a degree.) Kids tend to be the most unfiltered in… Continue reading Mzungu!
Let’s play a game. It’s called the ULTIMATUM GAME. (Cue sinister music – but don’t get too excited). You have one-hundred dollars to divide between yourself and another person. You can divide it however you’d like. However, the other player will have a chance to accept or reject your offer. If they accept it, both… Continue reading The Project, Part III: Games!
*Almost nothing. There are so many things about Uganda that are radically different from what I’m used to that to try to select one thing to be the first to write about, and to hope that it would capture what I’ve experienced thus far in Uganda, is an exercise in futility. Instead, I’m stuck just… Continue reading Everything I know about Uganda*, I learned from a Boda
I really hated Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and not just because my 11th grade English teacher assigned it as summer reading. While our class tried to have a balanced discussion of whether the book was racist, given its historical context, I could never get past the fact that Conrad used Africa as a metaphor… Continue reading Heart of Darkness
Time for another thrilling introduction to my research! One sentence summary that says the same thing I said two days ago except in less than 500 words: I’m going to Uganda to evaluate what makes farmer cooperatives – organizations formed to help alleviate hunger by making farmers more productive, innovative, and market-friendly – succeed or… Continue reading The Project, Part II: Social Capital
I suppose it’s time I actually make an effort to explain what it is exactly that I’ll be doing in Uganda. Until now, when people have asked what my project is, I’ve told them that I honestly don’t know (except that I’m horribly unqualified to be doing it). That’s still basically true, but after doing… Continue reading The Project, Part I: Background
Alex V. Barnard - Sociology 