Ugandapanda

The soccer world cup in Qatar is already sullied, perhaps even blighted. Unlike every previous edition I can remember, most of the pre-tournament hype has been negative. Qatar is rightly under fire on three fronts. First, their poor and even deadly treatment of migrant workers who built the stadiums. Second their poor record on LGBTQ+ rights, and of course the obvious –  their reliance on oil. Almost everything you see in the desert in Qatar – the skyscrapers, the highways, the stadiums was built through sellin’ that black gold.

So many have called for a complete boycott on the tournament. Many bars in Germany are not screening the games. Celebrities like Rob Stewart and Shakira refused to perform in Qatar. Cities like Paris have refused up fan zones for the first time, even while their soccer team is owned by Qatari royalty. Most of us will join the Parisian style hypocrisy by moaning to our friends and complaining on social media, while watching the games anyway.

So why shouldn’t we boycott the world cup?

Because we are complicit in the same atrocities on display in Qatar. We are part of that same blight on humanity. The nation of Qatar is not an aberration, but a reflection of the dark side of our murky lives and the shady dealings of our world’s governments. Instead of a fairly meaningless boycott, we should use this world cup to examine our own hypocrisy and change our ways.

We Treat workers Poorly too

For years our lives in the Global North have rested on worker exploitation and mistreatment, similar or worse than that going on in Qatar. Much of the west’s current wealth was built on a history of slavery and indentured labour. Although conditions and wages have improved in sweatshops and factories, much of what we consume remains far from exploitation-free. Right now some of the cotton in our shirts might well come from Uyghur forced labour, part of China’s ethnic cleansing program. Our clothes factories in countries like Bangladesh still have terrible working conditions. Food in many Western countries is made cheaper through migrant laborers who work long hours for lower than minimum wage outside of labour laws. High profile examples include the Sicilian Olive oil industry and a huge chunk of America’s food industry.

Our everyday lives still rely on our fellow humans working for a pittance in poor conditions. How then do we have any right to be incensed about the Saudi Worker situation?

We don’t take minority rights seriously

Us “morally upright” westerners love criticizing other countries about their human rights records, while both forgetting our own recent history and our implicit support of many minority-oppressing countries. I’m going to single out two minority rights abuses which I am personally complicit in. The Chinese genocide of Uyghur Muslims, and the funding of the LGBTQ oppressing Ugandan government.

When people ask me how New Zealand makes money, I often flippantly reply “We sell milk to China”, which carries more than a grain of truth. Our “kind” leader Jacinda just met with the Dictatorial leader of our biggest trading partner, President Xi. Did she meaningfully address the abuses of a million Uyghur Muslims who have been locked up in “re-education” camps, subject to mass sterilization and forced to work in cotton fields? Did she make ending the Uyghur genocide, what could be the biggest human rights violation of our generation a bottom line for trade with China? Of course not. I’m a New Zealand citizen and very aware of my own complicity. My roads, schools and healthcare were funded by cozying up and selling milk to a regime that knows how to oppress minorities of all kinds, just like Qatar.

Two “kind” leaders getting on great?

Western countries also give millions of dollars in military and police aid to oppressive governments like Uganda where I live, where like Qatar being LGBTQ+ is not only illegal but can lead to imprisonment and police harassment. America has funded Uganda’s military and police to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, some of which used to oppress minorities – not only LGBTQ+ communities but immigrants and political dissidents. Why are we all of a sudden incensed by a country’s LGBTQ+ policy while our taxes fund the militaries of so many other countries whose records are just as bad?

We sup that oil. We are Qatar.

Confession: Earlier this year I paid the Qatari Royal family thousands of dollars and spewed out about 6 tones of CO2 directly into the atmosphere flying from Uganda to New Zealand and back flying Qatar Airways.

We (in the west) are the reason that Qatar in its current form even exists. Our thirst for oil fueled Qatar’s meteoric rise from their humble desert roots, to today’s rich metropolis which is able to host a football World Cup. Our cars and planes built those skyscrapers. Our lifestyles paid for those migrant workers to build those stadiums. We sup Qatari oil without a second thought, and now we are the indignant ones? In one sense we are Qatar. We built that country, we constructed those stadiums. Qatar’s oil runs through our veins.

As a side note, we are not only hypocritical but inconsistent. COP 27 was just held in Egypt, another non-democratic country which spent the last 8 years violently suppressing anyone that dared challenge their autocratic military rule. Amnesty international wants governments to impose sanctions on Egypt and stop supplying them with arms. But no-one boycotted COP 27

Better to change than Boycott

So I will watch the world cup, with moments of sombre and heavy reflection on all the ways I am complicit in this whole mess, and I’ll consider how I can make change for the better.

The Qatar World Cup is a poignant opportunity to reflect on how we are complicit in all the things we are complaining about in Qatar. Let’s reflect on our own hypocrisy, pressure our governments to do better (Go Phoebe, my sister in law!), and change our own lives – Buy less, fly less, eat less meat. That might contribute more than a boycott towards a better world which refuses to tolerate human rights atrocities, and doesn’t sup the Qatari oil.

Although we are yet to clock 3 months since the start of this epidemic, this 10^th biggest Ebola outbreak ever has been full of twists, turns and strange tales. I penned this summary to help any regular Joe or Jill better understand to tell the outbreak. I tell a story, not trying to cover every detail. I’ve used three sections to tell the tale and have split each into three points, which I’m told is the way us humans like our information.

We start with Three epidemic Phases – how the epidemic has progressed. Key moments describes 3 key turning points, critical in shaping the epidemic to date. We then explore Three Upcoming Questions about the near future, before a final reflection.

Three epidemic Phases

Mubende steady spread – 1 month

The first month was defined by slow, steady spread in the epicenter of Mubende. Cases trickled in at only 2 new cases on average a day with almost all cases connected to known contacts. Luck was on our side with only a handful of cases spreading outside of the Mubende/Kassanda region. This was despite many stories of contacts escaping the district against government advice – some who even had Ebola. But Ebola never found a foothold in the 3 other districts where it briefly spread. For a time it seemed the outbreak might just begin and end in Mubende/Kassanda, but we were not to be so lucky.

Kassanda and Kampala clusters – 1 week

Just as it seemed we might have escaped the danger of a nationwide outbreak, two large clusters of cases emerged that threatened a national scale disaster. One large cluster emerged in Kassanda, the exact cause of which remains unclear. One possible cause was a body exhumed from the grave after a medical burial, which Dr. Geoffry Bire the assistant minister of health stated led to 23 Ebola cases in Kassanda.

The Kampala cluster however was the bigger worry as the city is highly populated, tightly packed and the gateway to the rest of the country for people, goods and diseases.

These two clusters led to as many new cases in just a week then we had seen in the previous month, and triggered the harsh Mubende / Kassanda lockdown, a huge U-turn from the government after they had “ruled out” lockdowns just a week earlier.

After these clusters emerged, the country held its collective breath as we wondered whether the outbreak really was under control as the government claimed? The Doctor’s association asked for a brutal Kampala lockdown, while many called for schools to be closed. The WHO rated the epidemic at having “very high” chance of national spread.

But in a remarkable turn of events, these two clusters haven’t produce the cascade of cases and exponential spread into a fully fledged epidemic that many expected – quite the opposite. We have seen an unexpected lull in new cases.

• Unexpected Lull: – 1 week

For the last week, we have only seen 5 cases. Hundreds of contacts from the Kassanda and Kampala clusters produced only a handful of cases, and only a few other cases appeared outside these clusters. If the Mubende epicenter has cooled, and Kassanda and Kampala clusters have been contained then there’s a chance we could be in the beginning of the end of the epidemic, and there even remains a small chance for the epidemic to be officially over by the end of the year.

Key moments

1. Late Identification of First Case: The previous 5 ebola outbreaks in Kampala were over almost before they started – for one key reason. Patient zero, the first case was quickly identified, contacts were traced and the disease wasn’t able to spread beyond a handful of cases. This outbreak however was detected far too late.

Patient zero was never identified and around 30 people caught ebola, half of who died before Ebola was even suspected. The first case tested positive perhaps a month after our mystery patient zero first caught the disease. This allowed Ebola at least a couple of cycles of unchecked spread in the community and outbreak wasn’t immediately snuffed out.

• Mubende and Kassanda Lockdown

The government re-iterated their clear position continually during the first month of the epidemic. President Museveni said “No need for a lockdown, Ebola is easy to fight”. The health minister repeated many times “there will be no lockdown”.

But probably for the better, they changed their mind and on the 15^th of October president Museveni announced a harsh 3 week lockdown in the 2 affected districts which allowed no public transport, evening to morning curfew and heavy army presence. We will never know for sure, but this lockdown could well have helped slow Ebola spread and contributed to the current unexpected lull.

• Kampala Death and Spread.

Everyone feared Ebola spreading within Kampala – and for good reason. As the only jam-packed, bustling city in Uganda, Kampala may be the only place in Uganda where Ebola has a realistic chance of exponentially spreading and becoming an uncontrolled public health problem.

And the worst case scenario happened. A man travelled while sick with ebola from Mubende to Kampala, stopping at 4 health centers and a traditional healer on the way. While on his deathbed in a huge Kampala hospital he lied about his identity to medical staff while his wife and brother who had been caring for him disappeared into the Kampala ether and couldn’t be traced. Until a few days after he died when his wife turned up to deliver her baby in a health center, sick with Ebola… Through a potentially country-saving stroke of luck or genius, some brilliant human (they deserve to be knighted) figured out the man might have had ebola, his blood was tested and his body intercepted on the way home. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Through this saga he spread Ebola to 7 people, with one of those spreading Ebola to 7 people and another spreading it to yet 4 more (see diagram below). Other contacts already under observation then caught Ebola. Fortunately, we haven’t seen spread outside of known contacts and based on the best information we have, we’re breathing a sigh of relief that the Kampala cluster might not lead to catastrophe.

Big upcoming questions

1. Is it really under control? The unexpected lull in the last with hardly any new cases has been an amazing development, and brings a huge sigh of relief, but we don’t yet know if this is the beginning of the end. Concerning cases continue to emerge, like this one in Masaka which appears not to be connected to a contact. Further clusters could still emerge out of sight of contact tracers.

• When will Vaccine trials start? At least 3 vaccines are ready for final stage testing, at least one of which will probably work. We have been told for weeks vaccine trials may start “in a week or two” but they haven’t yet started. If the outbreak is on the way out, could the arrival of vaccines even be “Too late” and they won’t even get tested properly?

• Will restrictions end? We are getting mixed messages on restrictions. The ministry of health called for early closure of schools, even as the epidemic is in a lull. Mubende/Kassanda restrictions are due to be lifted soon, and we’ll see whether they will really be lifted. As we saw during covid, lockdowns cause enormous suffering and can we really justify ongoing restrictions with so few new cases at the moment?
  

Final reflection – This strain of Ebola doesn’t spread easily.  

There have been so many missed cases, escaped sick people and other opportunities for Ebola to spread widely that never led to new clusters of spread. Here are just a few examples. Early in the epidemic a group of contacts including two positive cases escaped from Mubende isolation, some moving as far as Tanzania on public transport and never spread the disease. A medical student with Ebola broke isolation rules and travelled many hours to his home village with no consequences. A woman in Mityana’s mother AND baby died before anyone thought to test for Ebola, and yet again there was no spread outside the family. A small but significant number of cases haven’t been traced to any known case, meaning that Ebola must have spread on a small scale and fizzled out without public health officials ever knowing.

With this in mind, and after seeing so many “lucky misses”,  it seems that this strain of Ebola isn’t highly infectious like covid, influenza or measles and may even be less infectious than other Ebola strains. This strain of Ebola doesn’t spread easily. Given what we have seen so far in this outbreak, it’s hard to imagine Ebola ever spreading beyond a few cases in country with a strong health system with high trust in government institutions. Despite late recognition of the outbreak, slow public communication about new cases, low public trust of government and numerous incidents where infectious patients had many community contacts, this outbreak hasn’t spread widely or got out of control.

This is good news for low income countries like Uganda that have functional health systems but can’t yet mount slick, tightly controlled public health responses to outbreaks. With help from exeperinced international partners, reasonable contact tracing and vaccines, perhaps Ebola as a public health issue is starting to seem somewhat less scary than after the horrendous 2014 West African outbreak.

But it’s far from over yet. Even though this strain doesn’t spread easily, a national public health disaster may still be possible if more mistakes are made and we are unlucky. Keep following our ebola updates every day or two on our St. Philips facebook page here.

https://www.facebook.com/stphilipshealthcenter

Stay safe Uganda

“While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper,  a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table. When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked.  “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me.

The poor will always be with you…”

These words are so profound I can’t do them justice, but here goes!

The disciples’ perspective “Why this waste?”

It should both empower and chill us to the bone that much of the money we spend on ourselves would be better spent by someone less well off. This makes intuitive sense. One extra dollar won’t even buy us a coffee and we barely notice if one extra dollar enters our bank account. But imagine if you only earn one dollar a day. That extra dollar buys the pen and book which allows your child to go back to school. So much value, relief and joy from just one dollar! This utilitarian thinking is behind that effective but oh-so-cringe fundraising technique…

“For the cost of just one coffee a day, you could feed/clothe/educate/save/empower….”

Experience, the disciples and science tell us that once we achieve a middle class income, every extra dollar we spend only increases our happiness by a tiny amount. As a 10 year old I was overwhelmed with joy when I bought an ice cream with my pocket money. I remember the euphoria of buying a watch with my first paycheck from a summer job. This dwarfs the negligible serotonin hit I get these days every time I buy a new Ferrari…

So if we have this remarkable power to love others with our money more effectively than we can love ourselves, perhaps the best thing to do is to give away every dollar we earn over a certain amount. The extra money will hardly help our happiness, but imagine what it could do for someone else? If we earn 70,000 dollars a year, how can we justify keeping more than say $50,000 when that extra 20,000 dollars could transform the life of someone less fortunate? Whenever we spend excess money on relatively frivolous things, the disciples’ cry of “why this waste?” rings in our ears.

Mary shocks the disciples when she pours out a half litre of high-end nard perfume on his feet. Imagine the cost of a half litre of Chanel no. 5. How would you react when it was poured out in front of you It’s hard to argue with the disciples’ logic “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

But Jesus immediately replies “

“Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me.”

Jesus sees her loving heart heart. What was a flagrant (fragrant?) waste of money was also an instinctive, selfless act to honour someone who had turned her life around. If someone had pulled you out of poverty and an abusive life controlled by men would you not have done the same?

Jesus knows that we are compassionate human beings, and there are moments where will lavish our resources on things that don’t make utilitarian sense. Maybe this isn’t the most logical or strictly ‘best’ thing to do, but it’s deeply human and hey, we aren’t perfect. But straight after affirming Mary’s lavish love, Jesus challenge goes deeper than we could ever expect.

“The poor will always be with you”

This is where the rubber hits the road. At first reading Jesus might seem flippant, dismissing the plight of the poor, but only because (unlike the disciples) we don’t know what he’s quoting. This is a direct quote from an 3000 year old Deuteronomy passage, which calls for the kind of radical economic justice that would shock even a modern day left wing politician.

“The poor will always be with you. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”

In Deuteronomy 13, God commands that his people should cancel ALL debts every seven years (what???), and they should lend people “whatever they need” even in the year before the debts are forgiven. After 6 years of service, richer Israelites should not only release any servants working for them, but send them off with animals, crops and wine to kick-start their new life. This economic agenda is so radical and so far ahead of its time it’s no wonder the israelites did a pretty bad job of actually implementing it.

Through invoking this passage Jesus goes deeper and takes us beyond simple argument about whether a lavish act of perfume  pouring makes logical sense. What matters is not whether this particular pot of perfume was wasted on a lavish act of love. What matters is that we devote our entire lives to economic justice. His point is that the poor will always be with us so poorer people will always be needing our love and help.

Serving others is a long game.  Become a person of generosity and love is not primarily about criticising others who might be wasteful, or virtue signalling on social media or voting for what we see as ‘progressive’ political parties, but about living whole lives of integrity and love. Lives bent towards those who are struggling and marginalised. Not just today, but tomorrow, and tomorrow next.

Jesus challenge “the poor will always be with you” is an invitation to follow him into a deeper journey, beyond from the hustle and bustle of trying to “make it”, the distraction of social media, and the polarisation of modern politics. A journey which will cost us much, but give us so much more. Are we willing?

And its’ no surprise that this whole thing happened while Jesus was visiting Simon, a man with leprosy, a crippling disease full of social and religious stigma.   

I was inspired to pen this piece after gawking at this Stuff.co.nz article. The writers’ intent was to demonstrate that high fuel prices were a disaster. But as I read I became confused, even incredulous. Was the article a spoof?  Some complaints seemed more positive then negative, a step in the right direction. Where people expressed inconvenience and frustration, I saw a glimpse of a better future. A healthier, more grounded and more sustainable world.   

I won’t deny there are downsides to the fuel price hike. Poor people suffer as with any price rise. Scumbag oil companies and governments find new pseudo-economically viable places to drill, which never should be touched. Russia funds their war machine through the sky high oil prices Germany and France continue to pay.

But fuel prices have to rise, a lot higher than even now if we are to have any chance to halt this climate crisis. Yes this current price hike is abrupt. Yes we aren’t ready. Yes our electric car infrastructure is non-existent. Yes Public transport isn’t fit for purpose. But what we see from these regular folks’ responses are small ways that high fuel prices can push us simple humans in the right direction. And our groaning creation takes a tiny breath.

So here’s why high fuel prices are fantastic

We Go Local

“I’ll have to rethink where my daughter goes to school in the future if it keeps increasing, because we school out of area,” King said.

Although its nice to choose where we send our kids to school, a great way to burn less oil is to share most of our lives with our proximate community. Local school, local shops, local doctor, local church, local friends. In New Zealand cities at least, most people live within a 20 minute walk (or 10 minute bike) of all important amenities and we don’t need to drive to reach them.

High fuel prices force us to do what’s painful, but better for us and the planet – spend most of our lives closer to our home. Attend local schools. Go to the local Thai restaurant rather than Macdonalds at the mall. Buy clothes from our local thrift shop. Make friends with our neighbours. A richer, more simple life. If high fuel prices force us to think twice or thrice before driving across town, the benefits might be deeper than ‘just’ mitigating the climate crisis.

We Go Electric

Last week I talked to a friend (who yes, has a pretentious Nissan Leaf) who was excited about unexpected conversations the fuel price hike had triggered. “Two of my friends are probably going to buy electric cars. And for the first time ever my parents are even talking about EVs!” We don’t have New Zealand data yet but other countries like England have seen a surge in EV sales as people balk at the fuel hikes. In just one week in early march sales surged by almost 40%.

If governments like New Zealand’s fail to incentivise electric cars through providing good infrastructure and significant subsidies, sky high fuel prices might be the catalyst we need to supercharge the transition.  

We Go Public

Presbyterian Support Northern manager Alistair Houston:
“One client has stopped using her car and only uses it for urgent matters. The car is now seen as a luxury she cannot afford to just ‘pop out in,’” Houston said.

Houston, we don’t have a problem – your complaint is rather a profound solution, the only way forward through our climate crisis.  “The car is now seen as a luxury”

Forgive me father, for I have sinned. While in New Zealand I loved fishing in the mountains. To reach the most beautiful places on earth, I drove hundreds of kilometers often alone in the car and released hundreds of kilos of carbon. Perhaps what I did is no longer defensible, but I am sure that it was a luxury. I made a luxurious, selfish trade-off between damaging our fragile earth and my personal pleasure and fulfilment.

In our current climate situation, whenever we use a personal petrol vehicle at the very least we should give thanks and be grateful for that luxury. For a convenient gift whose days are numbered.

Yes, moving away from the personal petrol paradigm is rough on poorer people who can’t easily access poor public transport systems, and we should already have non-petrol car solutions, but needs must. As cynical and populist as our governments’ sad move was to slash our fuel tax, they made a great move in halving the cost of public transport. A huge step towards normalising the only way forward.

Buses, trains and car pooling have to enter our common consciousness and become a norm. As petrol prices get higher not only are we forced to make hard decisions about our own transport, but governments like we’ve already seen in New Zealand will be forced to both improve and fund public transport to soothe the wrath of their penny-pinched populous.

So if the recent fuel price hikes push us even an inch towards go local, go electric and go public, then I’ll celebrate every cent of the hike.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”

We had our opportunity to be those blessed peacemakers – this war never needed to happen. As troops gathered on the border of Ukraine, we had the power to stop this war from ever happening. All trade with Russia should have stopped until the tanks pulled back. All Russian money in foreign banks seized until the troops immobilised. The oil pipelines which supply a third of Europe’s oil cut off until Putin promised never to attack. Even in little old New Zealand we should have seized the assets of Russian billionaires – just last year one Oligarch invested 100 million dollars in Kiwibuild! In just one day the west could have crippled Russia’s economy, brought the country to its knees and they could well have abandoned the idea of war. With close to zero foreign trade and foreign money Russia couldn’t function and they would have been forced to withdraw. We could have not tolerated this war.

We don’t tolerate sexism, we don’t tolerate racism, we don’t tolerate homophobia.

But yes, we still tolerate war.

Still more shocking is that  is that even after the war began, we didn’t cut Russia off fullstop. It’s bizarre that with all the useless rhetoric “condemning” Putin and Russia, oil still freely flows down a 1200km pipe from Russia to Europe. Money still flows between American and Russian banks. Russian ambassadors still sit happilyin plush offices around the world. It’s a sick joke that Commercial airlines avoid Ukraine, while they still fly in and out of Moscow.

Even the stock markets were surprised by how pathetic we were. Only a day after the start of a war, most global stock exchanges ROSE yesterday because they were surprised how light global sanctions were. Even cynical inverstors thought that perhaps the developed world would do better than business as usual – they were wrong.

Why is this? Why do we do nothing when we have so much power?  

We are far, far more selfish than we think we are.

We pretend to care that tens of thousands of people will die in Ukraine but we don’t really. We aren’t willing to sacrifice anything in order to live in a world where one country invading another without even a humanitarian pretense isn’t an option. Our Democracies therefore are working perfectly, responding to our selfishness. Our pragmatic governments know their citizens are selfish, so they leave Ukraine to rot. They know we would rise against them if oil prices went up 30% after we turned off the Russian tap. Biden bizarrely reassured us that “Our sanctions package is specifically designed to allow energy payments to continue”. They know we would vote them out next election if the world went into recession as it recovered from zero Russian trade. Our leaders know that our primary drive is to maximise our own pleasure and minimise our pain. They know the terrible truth that we tolerate war more than we tolerate inflicting even a little suffering on ourselves.

In Canada tens of thousands of people are protesting the government’s response to covid. In New Zealand the biggest protest in my lifetime is on the doors of parliament, and it’s mostly a selfish one. We used to protest about big stuff on behalf of other people. Against the Vietnam war, against apartheid in South Africa. Now all we can muster a decent protest about is the loss of minor freedoms.Where are the thousands of New Zealanders and Canadians banging down the parliament doors on behalf of innocent Ukrainians getting slaughtered? Where is the viral hashtag “NoWar” covering our social media feeds? Where are the journalists condemning our governments for their fatal inaction?

Many of us have foooled our selves that at the we really are caring, peaceloving people who would sacrifice something when the need arose. Climate change inaction should have already exposed this lie. Our response to the Ukraine invasion has proved it beyond doubt.

The myth of a progressive democratic utopian world is dead. We should be ashamed of ourselves.

At least we can take this opportunity to look in the mirror. Why do we still tolerate war? How can we do better? I’ll share three ideas. Yes they are flawed and naïve but perhaps someone will find them useful

1. Realise our own complicity. There are important societal awakenings of our complicity as individuals in issues like racial injustice and the climate crisis. The Ukraine war is no exception – we are part of what has allowed this to happen. Once we realise the ways our selfishness and greed play into the problem, we can find ways to be part of the solution. Am I willing to pay a price? Could I suffer higher petrol prices and inflation to make war less tolerable?

2. Bring the discussion home. It’s easy but perhaps not useful to obsess over the state of the war in Russia and muse about what might happen next. More useful would be to discuss what our own country could to do make the war end more quickly. Are there any Russian investments in our own country which could be targeted? Do our banks have interests in Russian oil? If we move the social and mainstream media discussion away from things we can’t change, and towards things we can then perhaps our politicians and government will feel more obliged to do more.

3. Revive the art of unselfish protest. Our current generation has become complacent in the art of peaceful, unselfish protest. We know from past efforts such as the global anti-Vietnam war protest and civil rights movements that when a significant minority rise up against complacent government, change can happen. If groups around the world protested against their government’s tolerance of war, then our democracy might be swayed away from complacency and towards action. Maybe oil pipelines could be cut. Maybe bank transfers could be stopped. Maybe we could move a step closer towards a world where war was finally intolerable.  

 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God”

N.B: Here’s a couple more great suggestions from Dr. Peter Hill’s comment below

– For the prayers amongst us, we can ask for forgiveness where we are complicit, and pray that those in power would do the right thing, including or own leaders and the young president of Ukraine.

– Write to your local Member of parliament. If they know that we care, they might be more inclined to act.

“But nothing’s getting through, so let me spell it out. A-B-C-D-E, FU!”. Now I thought that was a clever lyric, but my wife didn’t agree. What do you reckon? Anyway…

Although enormous predjudice, problems and disparities remain, us humans have made progress on some fundamental moral issues like ending racism and gender equality. This progress will only be further accelerated by recent movements such as “Black Lives Matter”, and “Me Too”. On my recent trip to New Zealand, I was encouraged by cross generational adoption of Maori language, and a wider public understanding of the mahi (work) that needs to be done to rectify wrongs and disparities both past and present inflicted on the first people of New Zealand.

This progress is reflected in pop culture, with mainstream outfits Disney and Hollwood making an effort to at least appear inclusive. New cartoons and blockbusters sport multicultural casts, highlight minority issues and give female characters more agency. One measure of this progress is the Bechdal test, which asks whether female characters have conversations with each other which aren’t just about men. Only twenty years ago 70% of big money blockbuster movies failed this test, now 70% of them pass. Forgive me for the flawed graph but it gets the point across.

This change has been rapid and stark. Go back and watch your favourite episodes of Friends or Seinfeld from just 20 years ago and you’ll find yourself regularly cringing or worse at the casual racism, sexism and homophobia througout the shows.

But there are many blind spots in our cultural ‘progress.’ And there’s one particular group who both society and pop-culture still seem free to abuse in both subtle and less-than-subtle ways.

Poor people.

Classism should be the next ism to to be binned in pop culture.

Many of you will have heard the aforementioned mega-catchy saccharine diss track “a,b,c,d,e FU” where a girl lays her ex out to dry. Be warned, listen at your own risk. It’s both truly cringe and truly stuck in my head, with the situation only getting worse while I’m writing this. Nah-nah-nah naaaaaaah, nah-nah-naah, nah naaah…

Although public abuse is a bona-fide terrible way to deal with post-relationship issues, I know this is a diss track and she may have some fair points about her ex. He did allegedly text her friends behind her back, and had a brief go at revenge dating. Also she does try to give credit where credit was due, to his dog…

But her subtle digs at poverty should not be acceptable. She says “FU” to his “broke-ass car” and his “craigslist couch” (trademe-ish for New Zealanders). This may seem harmless at first glance, but why is she using these vehicles of abuse? The implication can only be that its somehow bad to have second hand stuff. That her ex is a worse person, and perhaps has less value because he isn’t rich enough to buy new things.

We can debate the cause of major societal problems, but I shouldn’t have to convince anyone that it ain’t poor people. It’s not poor people driving up house prices. Money printed during the pandemic that was disproportionately given to rich people has contributed to the inflation and the increased cost of living which is shaking the world.  If pop culture is going to diss anyone, let it be rich people.

Imagine you’re a teenager who hears Gayle’s tune. You’re sitting on a nice old couch which your single mum bought on craigslist, making ends meet on her minimum wage job. You’ve already been struggling with self esteem and then you turn on the radio and hear the diss about the ‘craigslist’ couch. Maybe you feel your mum isn’t doing so well after all. Maybe you won’t go to school tomorrow because what’s the point anyway?

Imagine you’re a 20 year old guy who just got your first full time job on a building site. You’re pretty proud of yourself because you managed to buy your first car for a thousand bucks. It’s beat up but it does the job. Well you were proud until you’re friends started giving you heaps about it “Hey Nick, you aren’t gonna have much luck with the girls in that old dinger are you!”. Then you turn on the car radio and hear Gayle diss the guy with the “broke-ass” car…

Imagine you’re 80% of the population in Uganda, who can’t afford any kind of couch or car. What does this song say about your worth as a person? The messages we send through pop culture may seem trivial at first, but they help shape the false, toxic, normative narratives of society. That rich = good and poor = bad.

As well as eradicating poor bashing like that in Gayles song, we need more pop-culture role models from poorer backgrounds too. The same way we make every effort to be body-positive, we should take every chance to build up those on the tough end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Not just rags to riches or self actualisation stories, but where a poor person is the hero. This isn’t about glorifying poverty, but about increasing self esteem and hope across the socioeconomic spectrum. Perhaps the next iron man is a genius on the unemployment benefit who invented cold fusion in his bathroom lab. The next Batwoman could be a volunteer at a food bank who uses her personal connections to transform the underworld of Gotham for good. Contrived yes, but not much more than the current superhero narratives.

“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

It’s 4:00am

“Doctor, please come now”

I sleep not very well on a bamboo mat in our most remote health center Pwunu Dyang. The rain starts pounding on the roof, and soon also on my conscience.

Midwife Scovia has fear in her eyes and since I know how tough she is, her fear soon becomes mine too. To cut a long story short, Lucy* is in labour. She had 4 previous cesarian section operations to remove babies from her womb, so there’s no way Scovia can safely deliver her baby in the health center. If Lucy doesn’t get an operation in the next few hours, her womb might rip open and kill her and the baby.

Except that the hospital which performs the operation is 4 hours away

And the road is close to impassable, even on a motorcycle

And the rain pours

And its 4:00am

But we can overcome these challenges. Scovia’s husband had hired a motorbike for a couple of days, and is willing to brave the rain and the road to take Lucy to a halfway point, where she can catch a NGO ambulance the final two hours to the hospital. You might scream “how can a woman in labour with scars on her uterus travel two hours on the back of a motorbike on terrible road?” To which I can offer only an insufficient answer.

Because she must

But one challenge remains – Lucy has no money. And the motorbike transport needs money, as does the ambulance driver. She needs about 20 US dollars in total, not a huge amount even here but still money Lucy doesn’t have. But this time everything might just be OK, because the rich white man is here. The rich white man who can pull 20 bucks out of his pocket and not even notice it has gone. The rich white man who 10 years ago used to earn that 20 dollars in a mere half an hour. The rich white man who used to earn the same amount in a week as our incredible midwife Scovia who’s skills might save Lucy’s life earns in a full year of hard work.

This dragon who hoarded his wealth, is about to flick one of his thousand gold coins towards a suffering mother who might then survive the day. Should this dragon feel good about that? Am I somehow a good person because I “helped” someone with 20 dollars?

$#!%loads of money in this world

There’s Ugandan book that you can buy on the bus and in the market entitled “Why have you chosen to be poor when there is so much money in this world?” That could be a good question, if it wasn’t for the “chosen” part and the poverty shaming (we’ll get to that). There is in fact $#!%loads of money in this world, more than enough to go around. The per capita GDP on this humble earth is US$11,000 a year for every woman, man and child. With some change in our global systems we could all happily live on that much money. There’s more than enough money in this world to transport this woman to hospital. More than enough even to transform the healthcare infrastructure so that her transport and healthcare could be free.

But unfortunately that won’t happen tonight. The $#!%loads of money does not reach midwife Scovia, let alone labouring woman Lucy. And why is that?

Because we are dragons

A lot of us are dragons of various sizes, hoarding our wealth as we build our personal or family empire. Us dragons pour our money into bigger and bigger dragons dens (houses), bank accounts with many zeros and the kind of lifestyle the other half of the world can only dream of.

And the dragon problem is getting worse. Inequality during the pandemic has skyrocketed across the globe. In America during the pandemic, the top 1% of Americans looted an incomprehensible 50 Trillion dollars from the bottom 90% of the population. Those dragons must need a massive cave just to store that much gold. An estimated 300 new HUGE dragons (billionaires) were also spawned during the pandemic, on average one a day.

Many of us smaller dragons in Western countries like to take aim at much bigger dragons like Bezos and Musk, who to be fair are twisted enough to fly into space for fun while a global pandemic rages. Instead of cavorting into space, those two could have paid to vaccinate the whole of Africa for coronavirus by now*.

But I digress, because we are indeed dragons too, not just Jeff and Elon. Most of you reading this are rich, perhaps richer than you realise. If you own assets worth more than just $90,000, you hoard more gold than 90% of humans. If you have just $4000 of assets to your name, you are richer than half the people on the earth. I’m not saying this to evoke guilt, only to bring us to the realisation that yes, you and I might just both be dragons.

How did I become a dragon?

Well most of it was probably chance. There may have been sound decisions and hard work along the way, but your path to a healthy hoard was largely decided even before you were born. You won the lottery, congratulations! Or perhaps more accurately a series of lotteries. Two lotteries define the lions share of how rich we will become. Your birth country, and your parents’ wealth

Lottery 1: Your birth country. For me I spun New Zealand, and straight up won the lottery. Your birth country usually has the biggest effect on how much money you will be able to earn and save. A minimum wage earner in New Zealand might not feel lucky because they will understandably compare themselves to their richer neighbours. But by age 40 or 50, many minimum wage earners in New Zealand will find themselves in the top 10% of the world’s richest people. Even an unemployed New Zealander has a higher living standard than our amazing midwife Scovia, who is tertiary educated and gainfully employed but earns just $120 a month. While unemployed in New Zealand though, you will probably live in a house with more than one room (Scovia has a hut), have running water, electricity, free high quality education for your kids, free healthcare and perhaps even a car! I’m yet to meet a Ugandan nurse who owns a car.

Lottery 2: Your parent’s wealth. Even here in Uganda, if you are born to the tiny percentage who are rich, you will have a decent chance to amass a healthy hoard. While Uganda isn’t rich enough to provide your children with the ingredients for financial success, the good education and healthcare your children need can be bought. Even in richer countries, it has been demonstrated that you are better off being born rich than having ability or talent. In the lead author’s words

“People with talent often don’t succeed. What we found in this study is that people with talent that come from disadvantaged households don’t do as well as people with very little talent from advantaged households.”

Lottery 3, 4, 5 etc.. Your race, gender, orientation, neural make up and countless other dice were also rolled before you were born that might affect your potential to stash cash in this harsh world.

The lotteries of life are real. So perhaps we should not feel too guilty about our dragon status, because it mostly happened due to factors outside of our control. For the same reason we shouldn’t be proud of whatever hoard we have amassed. Much of the reason we are rich was probably because of our favourable background, more than our back breaking hard work. For the most part we don’t “choose” to be rich or poor, the lottery decides.

But can we shed our scales?

So what can we do about it? Can we shed our scales? I’m not going to espouse my personal opinions on potential systematic changes like tax or universal basic income, but instead focus on three steps all of us dragons can take to change ourselves and shed our scales.

1. Realise you are a dragon. This may be the hardest step of all. It’s tempting and easy to tell ourselves and others that we are in fact one of the financial strugglers, usually by comparing ourselves to an even richer dragon. I’m afraid there’s always someone richer, unless you are Jeff. Once we realise though that we actually do have a $#!%load of money at least by global standards, we are set free to do something about it and take steps 2 and 3.

2. Disperse your hoard. Whether through personal connections or high impact charities, it might be time to start dispersing your hoard. If you’re interested in the best ways to give money to make the biggest difference, check out this thing I prepared earlier. You won’t be alone, giving away large amounts of money is no longer longer a fringe or religious activity. Through the movement “Give What You Can”, over 7000 people (many very young) have pledged to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities for the rest of their lives – a beautiful commitment.

I also want to personally thank a growing group of insanely generous partners and friends who have given away huge portions of their stash, often thousands of dollars at a time towards launching health centers in remote places like Pwunu Dyang through OneDay Health

3. Shift our future focus from stashing gold, to making a better world. We are so blinded by all our dragon friends with their huge hoards, we feel the need to keep up with the Jones’s by making our hoard bigger and bigger and BIGGER. When we realise we have more than enough to thrive, we can choose to change our life’s trajectory. Whether it’s through choosing a job which makes the world better, volunteering for charity or our struggling neighours, or even earning lot’s of money for the express purpose of giving it away, there are plenty of ways we can shed our scales or at least become better dragons. Be inspired by Gandalf, who knows a thing or two about dragons.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

And while the committed, talented, skilled and grossly underpaid Scovia rushed around to orchestrate the saving of Lucy’s life, I put my head in my useless hands and cried. I cried at my own iniquity, I raged at the unequal, unfair and unnecessary state of this precious earth we call home, but in the end I allowed myself more than a sliver of hope.

“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off … And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been… and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. Then he caught hold of me – I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on – and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again…”

Dragon Eustice has his scales shed – C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader 


* Lucy is not her real name
* Conservative estimates of over 7 billion dollars spent by Bezos and Musk on their space race would have been enough to buy enough to vaccinate the 1.4 billion Africans twice.