GINS: Task #4

Hi! For this post, I was making connections between the novel study I am participating in (see here for more), and my academic consumerism tumblr (click top tab).

From reading the novel “War Brothers” by Sharon E. McKay, it came to my attention that there are many poor or impoverished people living in Uganda. 40% of all people living in the rural areas of Uganda are living in poverty - that’s around 10 million people! See, in the rural areas of Uganda, there are isolated from the developments and economic growth happening in the cities. As a result, they lack the technology to increase the efficiency of their crops and also to rid themselves of pests and diseases. And honestly, I wanted to know why they didn’t have the opportunities that we have here to improve their quality of life.

I was able to connect this to one very part of the government: social programs and services. Social services are provided by the government to help increase the economic inequalities amongst citizens, as well as promoting a better quality of life. In Uganda, there is little access to these type of services, such as health-care or financial support. There are huge amounts of people that also are sick from AIDS/HIV and don’t have the access or money for proper health care.

For the purpose of my mini-investigation, I headed to the Uganda Parliament website to try and get some insight into how and why their government uses their money. They do have a committee for social services, including health (and AIDS), education, and sports, but it isn’t clear what exactly their health-care looks like. I decided to try to find a bit more information about this. I found a rather interesting look at their health profile (http://www.who.int/gho/countries/uga.pdf), but nothing about the way their system runs. When I visited the Ministry of Health website for Uganda, the link that was supposed to redirect me to their practices said it was “hacked”. Interesting.

My point of this post was mainly to reflect and think about the difference in the life we have here as opposed to somewhere like Uganda. Our country’s wealth, government and economic system, allows us to live the lives we do and greatly affects our roles as consumers. I also don’t think we realize in North America the impact that social programs provided by the government has on the way we live each and every day.

Thanks for reading! Have a lovely day.