Uganda Has No Underwear
And other thoughts about sh — tholes
“We have to collect underwear donations too because, you guys, UGANDA DOESN’T HAVE ANY UNDERWEAR!”
She said it just like that. Or something like that. Surprise and shock left me scrambling to remember the exact wording but her point was clear. There was no underwear in Uganda and we needed to send some.
She didn’t purposefully intend to denigrate an entire country (did she?). The need regarding panty-less Ugandans was supplemental information. The primary focus for the mostly white, upper middle-class women present was a campaign collecting menstrual supplies for Ugandan girls, who often missed school during their “time of the month”. So far so good, right?
But following an impassioned plea for donations came impassioned fiction. “Uganda doesn’t have any underwear,” the leader said. None. Zilch. Nada. Hakuna, as Ugandans might say it, in Swahili.
Some in the clearly uninformed crowd gasped. It was the perfect story. The lingerie-wearing, financially comfortable women would now rush to the nearest Target and break off a few bucks for a package of Hanes cotton briefs. Half-way around the world there was a country where underwear could not be found. They were women on a mission. And the mission, I discovered, had a buzzword. “So get those ‘Ugundies’ in, OK ladies?” said the woman in charge, amused by her cleverness.
I looked around as the word “Ugundies” bounced throughout the room. There were only two other women of color present. I wondered what they were thinking. Would a Ugandan mother, seeking to empower her daughter’s education with our contributions, find the term “Ugundies” cute? Would she chuckle alongside those sitting in that room? It seemed to me that one sentence, just a few extra words, would have transformed this moment of demeaning cuteness into one of respect. “There are some students in the project we are supporting who don’t own underwear, so we’ve been asked to send that too.” But this, obviously, was not the time for respect-full wording.
As a black person I’m aware of how our country’s history of racism influenced the leader’s willingness to believe her own words. We have yet to purge our national psyche of centuries of lies regarding uncivilized, brown-skinned people and their need for white saviors. The leader of this charity project declared a country of 41 million people as a land without any underwear. It was fiction. The kind of fiction that transforms a ordinary donor into a nation-saving superhero. The trouble, of course, is that superhero stories are also just fiction.
As an American, I sensed the powerful drug of American exceptionalism driving this plea for “Ugundies”. Of course, we Americans were the ones who needed to fix this fiasco. An entire African Nation needed our help, not just a few girls in a particular village. The black and brown people of poor, sh — thole countries always need US.
It doesn’t matter if President Trump used that special “s- word” or not when discussing certain countries filled with black and brown people. We are a country founded on the poisonous, two-fisted cocktail of racism and American exceptionalism. This administration is merely the natural outgrowth of what dwells deep within our national soul. Some of us can admit our collective sickness when we look at this President and his blatantly racist rhetoric. But can we admit our sickness in the face of “Ugundies”?
What should have been a simple campaign to help some Ugandan girls stay in school became yet another conduit for the toxic attitudes of racial and national superiority. For what it’s worth, I’m certain no one intended for this to happen. But that’s exactly how it happens. The evils of our past continue to seep into our present. It’s so normal, that, for some of us, it’s imperceptible. If you aren’t paying attention you end up stuck, knee deep in your own sh — thole of ignorance, where the only stories you believe are the lies you tell yourself.
In tradition of Medium, I’m supposed to ask you to clap. But I really just want you to share this post with a friend. Thanks for reading!
Follow me! We need each other.
