Uganda Luxuries

In the United States, having a maid, a cook and a tennis instructor are all indicators of an extravagant if not wealthy lifestyle. This is not so in Uganda. These services are the mechanism for which wealth is distributed here. The world simply does not run the same at all. Trying to incorporate our Western way of doing things is just not relevant to the economies or speed of things. For example, in the United States, almost every household has a washer and dryer and those with wealth in abundance (I say wealth “in abundance”, because here ALL Americans are wealthy in comparison. The simply fact that every child can attend school for free makes us a very rich society.) But, I digress, back to the topic at hand. A washer and dryer in Uganda would be neither normal nor a luxury – simply put, it would be irrelevant and unusable. Let me explain. Electricity (aka power) is not only expensive, but weak and inconsistent. Out of the three weeks, I’ve been here, I have been without power at least 50% of the time. And when there is power, it is hardly strong enough to heat enough water for a shower. Now let’s say that you have a generator to power your washer and dryer. Why would you pay an exorbitant amount of money to power those power hungry appliances, when you can pay someone to wash your personal clothes by hand for 5,000 shillings (translates to roughly $3 US Dollars). The cost for someone to sweep up my cement floors, beat out my rugs, and change my sheets is 3,000 shillings ($2). In the United States, we do not pay people to do, what machines can do for us. Most of the world does not function that way. The mentality in Africa, is why have a machine do, what you can pay a person to do. It is in this way, that the wealth trickles down the all classes of the society.