To Uganda and Back, Incredible Life Lessons Learned: Sydney McDaniel ’23
Alumni Office (A): Please introduce yourself, your graduation year, and where you are now.
Sydney McDaniel ‘23 (S): I'm Sydney McDaniel. I graduated from Breck in the Class of 2023, and I am a rising sophomore at Duke University.
A: Can you share your experience this summer and how you got connected with NGO Bringing Hope to the Family in Uganda?
S: At Duke, we have a program called Duke Engage, which Melinda Gates started. The initiative was to shift how we look at class and life experiences at Duke. Duke graduates were coming out a little bit, to be frank, close-minded in how we looked at the world and communities around us. They started Duke Engage as a program to send students across the world and country to work with different community partnerships, doing internships and different projects to expand our viewpoint on the world outside of the Duke bubble. I think that that's something that a lot of Breck students can relate to because the Breck bubble is similar. It is easy to get used to your own community.
And so I applied, and every trip that you go on is pretty much all expenses paid. There are two programs in Uganda, but I was in the Kaihura one with Bringing Hope to the Family (BHTF). We got connected through my professor, Dr. David Schaad. He's super awesome. He adopted his sons from BHTF and is connected with a Ugandan Member of Parliament and BHTF’s Executive Director, Dr. Faith Philo Kunihira.
A: Can you tell us about your experience with BHTF?
S: During my time there, I worked at the clinic Hope Again Medical Center and the private primary school. I worked at the school as a math and English teacher to P7. At the clinic, I would shadow doctors and nurses once or twice a week and check patients in. The school teaches you a lot; it teaches you about patience. It teaches you about gratitude. My class size was P7, which to us would be like a seventh grade, but it included kids anywhere from the ages of 13 to 17. Some of them were only one or two years younger than me, but they had this respect and reverence for me, which was interesting because that respect also comes with certain dynamics. I learned a lot about what it means to be American in the greater world and the privilege that comes with that. I say privilege for lack of a better word because I think privilege comes with this connotation of something being inherently better, and I don't want to say it's better, but rather that it's different. Looking at the image and scope of America compared to the remainder of the world, it's very honored and put in this high place. I spent a lot of time in the staff room because I wanted to get to know everything about their culture and share mine, see where those two linked up, and what their thoughts were on everything going on in the world.I learned a lot through that process about gratitude.
A: What are some things you want to take away from your cross-cultural experience on how you live every day?
S: I understand time in a different way now. I use it better now by reading a lot of books, taking a lot of time in silence, and being outside and cooking or being intentional about making space to spend time with community members. I never rushed anywhere or felt like I had to run to get somewhere because also in our community, we walked everywhere. I think it is important to remember because in our culture, especially at schools like Breck, Duke, or any kind of top institution in the country, you're surrounded by people thinking weeks, years ahead, even while we were there.
Something that also stuck with me is that it is very easy to become self-centered here in the United States. Our way of life makes it that much easier, and a lot of times, we focus on mine, mine, mine. It's my life, my career, and my ambition. The one thing that people always kept saying to us whenever they knew that our weeks to leave were coming up was, “Just don't forget about us. I know you guys will forget about us; don't forget.” Many of our team members were like, “Why would we forget?” But, as I sat there and we ate and talked, I looked around the table, and my team members said, “You're really silent. Are you okay?” I was being observant. I said, “The reason they're asking us not to forget about them is because they can see just in the way that we interact with each other that our minds are thousands of miles away right now. We are already forgetting.” A very simple ask, but also a very challenging task for a lot of Americans, is to say don't forget about the people around you, especially when you're sitting literally in the experience with others.
A: Are there ways your perspective on the world changed from your experience?
S: The concept of money and how it relates to ethical travel has changed. I learned that we have a lot of wealth stored in the States. For example, the cost for a private school primary seven kid is $100 to $200. That cost is a far cry from $30,000 tuition at Breck, Blake, or Providence. I think those things feel like a lot to us when we're struggling to just come into this concept of generosity and of not being self-centered. If we purchased fewer groceries or participated in fewer experiences, because, mind you, we all have things just in excess — food, clothes, materials, electricity, and clean water — our dollar could go a very long way.
When we travel, we don't even realize — because we're not getting educated on it — that the way we travel we may think we’re investing in this community and we’re not. If we go to Jamaica and stay in a resort, many times the lives of the people who are helping us from the island, whether that's bringing us food or cleaning the rooms, are treated with far worse conditions than we are. They're not experiencing the same hotel. They're not allowed to eat the same food as you. They're probably getting paid far less than you think. And on top of that, the resort system is pillaging through their community and not reinvesting. It teaches you a lot about how important it is to when you're abroad, really be safe and smart with your travel by looking at small businesses and being able to invest in communities the right way and don't think that just traveling someplace is investing in it because it's likely not unless you are with somebody locally who understands, I mean really understands how things work.
I also realized that it's not hard to be generous. I lived off of just under $100 for two months, paying for food, gifts, and drinks. Granted, they provided some food, but they give you the stipend knowing that's how much you need to live. I was able to live off of that stipend for two months, and to think that I could also change somebody's life there in just little ways is really amazing. It's not a lot, but it can really carry them places financially.
A: Are there lessons or experiences that you had at Breck that you used while you were in Uganda?
S: My mind actually first goes to teaching. At Breck, you're getting some of the best education in the country, right? Realizing that my raw education at Breck helped me know even more than some of their teachers who have been training for 15 years is eye-opening. I still gave them respect knowing they definitely know more about the academic system in their country than I do. I'm not saying that I was more knowledgeable than them; rather, I realized that I was put on a different kind of playing field. There were skills that I had built at Breck, even from knowing how to solve math problems a certain way to knowing how to approach English. There were all of these critical thinking skills and ways that I learned about the brain and metacognition that I was taught from a young age. I was able to then use that to figure out how to be an effective teacher to the P7 students I taught, and I was also able to apply that to their learning and problem sets and make recommendations to the teachers at my school.
The second thing I would say is the expansive perspective, like our community and different places and cultures that we have in Minneapolis, let alone at Breck, helped me to walk into the entire experience. Whether it was with the other Duke students or with the people in Uganda, having an open perspective and an open mind about acknowledging okay, who you are is a lot of where you come from or the opposite or a mixture of both. In Uganda, there were conversations we all had about everything from the concept of race to religion to science to education to just cultural norms of food and hygiene. I appreciated Breck for being so big on restorative conversation and reconciliation and a very collaborative environment to learn how to talk to people, how to understand where they're coming from, and how to realize that you can respect and walk in love with people without feeling like you have to agree with their standpoint nor share the same type of perspective or background. Those are the skills I definitely carried into a lot of those conversations, and they helped propel me to have many challenging conversations on that trip with the people who were on it with me. With our community in Uganda, I felt much more equipped for that than some of my peers who also came from great schools and communities, but I think at Breck we just do it differently.
A: What would you like the Breck community to know about Bringing Hope to the Family?
S: The first thing that comes to mind is realizing that this was all started by one woman, and I have to emphasize Dr. Faith's role in this because she's astonishing. She has diligently shown the power of reinvesting in your community because she came from Kaihura, grew up, and went to school in Kampala, followed by Jinja, which is just outside of Kampala. She has traveled back and forth to the United States several times and became a member of Parliament. She has done a lot. Her foundation’s work and her connection to different organizations and students who grew up to create NGOs have helped her rebuild her community and send hundreds of kids to university and primary school. She works to get them set up so that they, too, can come back and work in that community space or work abroad.
A lot of times, we take pity on people who are outside of the States, and I want people to acknowledge that she is just as powerful, just as driven, and has had just as much success as anyone here who has tried to reinvest in the community, if not more success. Her work should empower us to want to collaborate with communities, think spaces, and NGOs instead of seeing them as a “sad donation story.” This is an accredited organization with a powerful woman as its executive director, just like anyone we would know and respect here. I’m also always open to helping explain that experience and organization more to people.
There's also Bringing Hope to the Family USA. They have an LA base, and they travel between there and North Carolina and all around the country. I think they're planning to come to Minneapolis as well. They also have ambassadors, and their mentorship program is a big part of being a representative who genuinely cares for a community and tries to propel the best message forward for them. It’s not about how much money you give and sometimes not even about how much time you spend there, but rather it's how you can tell someone's story and relay that story in a way that is powerful, uplifting, and edifying for their community.
A: We're talking about living in the moment, but what are you up to this year, Sydney?
S: I’m still connected to the Bringing Hope Family and community members. I’m getting ready to apply to study abroad and gearing up for some internships, too. I actually go in to speak with the Vikings next week. I’m so happy about that, really grateful to see their whole day-to-day operations, and I'm preparing to start the pathway of my young adult life and my career. I will continue to do all the things that I do. I'm likely going to join some clubs, work in a couple of different kinds of executive positions, do Bible study, work out, and just really live at Duke and have fun. It's an amazing place, and I'm really excited to see just what's next. I don't even know if I could fully answer the question because I really am kind of embracing just being present.
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